Game: WorldWide FlightSimulator
Genre: Simulation, Action, Sports, Racing
System: Nintendo Switch
Developer | Publisher: Airror Studio
Age Rating: US Everyone | EU 3+
Price: USD $24.99 | UK £22.49 | € 24,99
Release Date: August 25th, 2022
Review code used with many thanks to Airror Studio.
I have a long history of being around flight simulators. My dad is a pilot, and he has a physical flight simulator in our house that was always the first thing my friends would ask about when they came over when I was a kid. It was also a great way to play airline pilot when my sisters and I were small. He’s also had PC flight simulators as far back as I can remember. So, although I’ve rarely tried them, they’ve been a large part of my household. I thought it would be fun to try one on the Switch when this opportunity came up. Let’s see how it went.
A Note About Flight Simulators
Flight simulators exist in an area between training tool and video game. Some people use flight simulators extensively for training on a particular aircraft, others use it just for fun and relaxation. It has often been a point of debate in my house on whether using flight simulators makes you a “gamer” or not (if it does, my dad is the hardcore gamer I ever met!). Just wanted to put this title in context.
Gameplay
You have 7 aircraft to choose from when you decide to go flying. You’re shown a map and allowed to fly anywhere in the world! The scenery is built from a service called mapbox (so if you don’t play connected to the internet this game isn’t for you). Depending on what you selected, you either drop into the air flying or find an airport to take off from. Then you just…fly. You can’t crash (a grave disappointment to me as that is what I do best). Landing is possible, but good luck finding another airport. You have to already know where they are to find them on the map in the first place. This is not a game where you’ll be yelled at by the tower if you break flight rules because there’s no tower at all! However, for a flight simulator that’s basically stripped down to work on the Switch I found the gameplay to be fairly reasonable
Sound, Graphics, and Controls
I don’t think the Switch Lite was made to make airplane noises. So, I won’t take any points off here, but I will say that I mostly turned the sound off to play. That said, I’m also always asking my dad to please turn the sound down on his flight simulator, so maybe I’m just airplane noise adverse.
The graphics aren’t bad, but they’re not my favorite. Be aware that the maps do simulate ground height (such as mountains) but not features like buildings. They appear as sort of square grey splotches without height. If there were any man made objects with actual height somewhere I didn’t find them. However, my expectations probably started a little too high for the hardware in this department.
The controls are great. I had no issues with them at all. I think they make logical sense on the Switch.
Additional Points
The simulator does not have a full instrument panel, which I found disappointing. It has 4 instruments and a throttle indicator. That’s not a lot for an airplane. However, it does have the attitude indicator which has always been my favorite airplane instrument to watch on a simulator.
One neat aspect of this game is that you can level up based on how many hours you fly. Since how many hours you have in the air is something that matters in flight training I liked this touch.
Conclusion
Although I’m not by any stretch a flight simmer, I’ve been around them long enough to have a sense of the fun, recreation, and education they can provide. After messing with this title for a while I’ve decided that although it can’t really hold a candle to the more developed simulators on PC, it really is a nice thing to have if for some reason you REALLY want a flight simulator on a portable system. I doubt with the limited instruments (and no ability to stall or crash) that it will teach you anything about flying. However, it will fill the very specific niche of buzzing through the skies on a handheld system.
Final Verdict: I Like it.