Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 review: a wonky career mode gives meaning to the formless flight sim

London Gatwick Airport is a rare shade of brown, known to neither science nor art. A brown that doesn’t appear on the light spectrum. No easel contains it. It is a dusty brown, a damp brown, a hot and earthy brown that hums with the stinging malodour of disturbed ancient moss where once old forests stood. Descending into Gatwick’s cloying brown from 33,000 feet is like flying under and up Gandalf’s wretched cloak and landing in one of the several horrible little magic pouches he keeps by his balls.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 captures Gatwick’s brown perfectly. Next to the stupefying natural beauty of Yosemite, the imposing imperial skyscrapers of the Manhattan skyline and the surging majesty of the Alpine peaks, this local rot-tinged patch of West Sussex is the most impressively realistic depiction of a place I have seen in a game.

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