Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight

Review:
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight continues Microsoft's utter domination of the flight sim market, and now adds in a nostalgic twist, allowing you to pilot historic planes on notable flights from the beginning of aviation to present day.

The historical aspect of the game serves only as a novelty, but a fun novelty at that. The truly amazing feature of this game, as with all of the Microsoft Flight Simulator games, is the absurd attention to detail. Just about every airport on the face of the Earth, from the muti-runway major international airports of modern cities to dirt strips obscured by lush foliage in the Brazilian rainforest, has been programmed into the game with such loving care. Natural landforms look photorealistic and cities have all of their recognizable landmarks.

The aircraft, jet planes, prop planes, sea planes, and even helicopters, all look and perform just like their real life counterparts, which introduces one of the biggest problems with the game. These planes have no gun turrets, rocket launchers or ejector seats, and the all of the fun in the game is supposed to be derived from staying as true-to-life as possible. However, very few people can enjoy moving smoothly along a serene blue landscape, watching wispy clouds roll by, no matter how realistic they may be. Picture-perfect cities would be a fun place to have a dogfight, but they add little amusment in this game, where their only role is to sit there and be thoroughly avoided.

Also, the online multiplayer mode hardly adds to the game at all, other than making you announce your flight plan to other players before you take off. Once again, the Microsoft Flight Simulator series has given us the closest thing possible to actually gassing up and piloting a real plane, but other than true hardcore aviators, who cares?

Reviewed by Alex Weinberg