Before this year’s Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, developer Asobo achieved something momentous in 2020: they found a way to make a Flight Simulator game feel not just relevant to a mainstream audience, but vital. For at least a few weeks there in that strangest of masked-up, doomscrolling times, we were all budding pilots, exorcising our lockdown cabin fever by exploring a virtual Earth from above.

The tech - some dark wizardry that pulled Bing Maps data from the cloud via Microsoft Azure - was eye-catching enough that even people who’d never dreamed of buying their own cockpit stopped what they were doing and paid attention. The trouble was, of course, there wasn’t much game to it.

That might sound like an unfair thing to say about a game that gave you an entire planet to fly around, and just about every known airport to take off or land on, but it’s true. Outside of a few scenarios and challenges, the experience was down to you to sculpt and define in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

Asobo’s 2024 follow-up addresses that point with a laser focus, introducing an all-new career mode that’s so astoundingly deep and varied that you can even play it purely as a business sim and take all the actual flying out of the equation entirely. If you do that, though, you’re missing out on – deep breath – firefighting, search and rescue, helicopter cargo transport, air ambulance, agricultural aviation, mountain rescue, skydiving, and aerial construction missions, each requiring a different set of disciplines and familiarity with numerous cockpits and flight models.

It’s here that the developer can really show you what all this ambitious streaming tech and map data can do. The locations are hand-picked for gorgeousness and just the right amount of flight challenge. It’s an absolute treat and an extremely shrewd addition from a studio that didn’t have to go this extra mile in order to impress. Career mode provides a clear mandate for a sequel, in an age when most simulators just whack a few new vehicles into the mix and tout ‘improved physics’. It’s going to keep the non-hardcore engaged for longer, and might even drive a few flight stick sales.

Failure to take off

Now to address… the unpleasantness. Career mode remained a mystery to me through launch week, not because it’s particularly impenetrable, but because I simply wasn’t able to access it. n the 16 years I’ve been reviewing games, I’ve never wrestled with a launch quite this bad. For the first 24 hours I couldn’t even say definitively whether the game had even managed to fully install itself, such was the labyrinthine mess of loading screens that I was presented with.

On the rare occasion that I did manage to fly a plane in that launch window, I was greeted by flip-book frame rates, random crashes, planes that seemed to have a life of their own, yet more life-sapping loading screens between menus, and poorly calibrated pad controls.

Most bizarre of the lot are certain landing challenges – and this persists to the present build – in which the plane takes a sudden, unnerving change of direction just before you take control of it and turns a simple test of skill into a harrowing air disaster, every warning indicator blaring in your ears as you try to wrestle control of the plane in time to avoid terra firma. Odd and nightmarish in equal measure.

The loading screens are much quicker now. The (technical) crashes have all but abated. But even on my 1GB internet connection, I’m all too often greeted by heinous low-res textures where an impressive view should be for too long. The streaming tech powering Flight Simulator 2024 simply can’t prop up the ambitions of the game for many of its users. I hope that changes, but during the process of reviewing the game I can’t simply assume that it will, nor ignore such an abysmal launch experience.

The first rule of flight club...

Now that what must be said has been said, we can transition back into the content. Where else does the new Flight Simulator build on its predecessor? Well, airports are notably more detailed now. And that’s just the auto-populated ones, not the bespoke ones Asobo offers in the various higher-priced editions of this game. Vehicular and human traffic is much higher, and the overall experience of taking off and landing is much more immersive.

The flight model, too, has had a tune-up. I must confess I didn’t notice this when using a pad, but with a HOTAS flightstick you can feel a bit more detail about the plane’s reaction to your inputs and the weather conditions around it. It’s especially satisfying to feel the gentleness of your inputs rewarded and to fly in a more precise manner afforded by some increased responsiveness.

There’s a ‘but’, of course. Particularly with a pad, but also with a flightstick, it took a long time to dial in the level of assists that made sense, and quite often I was left baffled by unresponsive controls or confusing results to my inputs that were down to a) I didn’t know that they were turned on and b) I didn’t understand the workings of.

To an extent, that comes with the territory. Planes are tremendously complicated things, and my penchant for flying commercial jets only exacerbates that phenomenon. Could you imagine actually piloting such a behemoth using an Xbox controller? What would that feel like? Terrifying. Confusing. A bad idea. Imagine boarding a flight and seeing the pilot charging up his controller before take-off. You’d be getting off that flight. With that in mind, this game does a pretty marvelous job of mapping such a complex array of instruments to a pad and having it feel fairly logical and responsive, most of the time.

But the fact remains that until you figure out each plane’s characteristics, you’re often wrestling with assists as much as physical forces. This befuddling assist situation also belies a weakness in Flight Simulator 2024’s Flight School mode. Learning to fly is the core activity of this experience, and the dedicated tutorials should go so much deeper than they do. More than that, they should explain which assists are on by default and let you experience what it feels like to fly with them turned on and off. They’re not particularly responsive to how you perform in each lesson, either. It’s nice to get a grade at the end, but I’ve been given Bs for terrifying near-death ordeals and what seemed to me to be nigh-perfect procedures alike.

Where I ended up having the most fun was in a slightly less forensically minded kind of experience, not trying to understand the subtleties of an Airbus A330, not trying to put out a forest fire in the most business-efficient manner, but taking photos.

Snap to it

World Photographer mode exists for the player who just wants to take in the best bits of that astonishing world map. You embark on short flights to picturesque locations, frame photographs according to a few specific criteria, and enjoy the views. It’s meditative, non-taxing, and demonstrates what the tech can do beautifully.

It couldn’t have been a worse take-off, but now that Flight Sim 2024’s airborne, the real work begins. There’s the blueprint for a fantastic experience in here, one that satiates hardcore sim heads and aspiring real-world pilots and also caters to casual players looking to sample the incredible tech without having to take an aeronautical engineering degree. Career mode is such a pleasant surprise, full of bespoke experiences that remold this sim sandbox into different shapes.

But the blueprint hasn’t been realized properly yet. I won’t pretend to understand the vagaries of how Microsoft’s Azure cloud data streaming actually makes this title work, but I can categorically say that it can at present be summed up as ‘not as intended’. There are still significant, miserable performance issues even after some emergency patching work - alt-Tab this game at your peril - and they simply don’t let you enjoy Flight Simulator 2024’s best qualities yet.

Should I play Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility

Never shy of adding menus and options, Flight Simulator 2024 has a welcome array of accessibility options that include text-to-speech functionality allowing players with differing setups to communicate, and an in-game text chat translation tool to that same end.

There’s screen narration, subtitles, and adjustable HUD opacity, along with scalable text size. Mercifully for the motion sickness, you can turn off camera shake, too.

A range of different input options are available here, from pad and peripheral inputs to old-school mouse and keyboard, including the ‘Legacy’ mode that uses the old ‘90s control layout.

Finally, colors can be adjusted to accommodate protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia, and you can find high-contrast menu schemes to aid visibility.

How I reviewed Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024

I logged around 20 hours of flight time using either an Xbox controller or a Logitech G X56 HOTAS, dividing that time between Flight School, Career, World Photographer, and the surprisingly compelling Landing Challenges.

The virtual cockpit for this one was my gaming PC, outputting to a 30-inch display via my RTX 2080 TI. This isn’t a resource-light title, but I typically found that connection speed was a greater deciding factor on performance than GPU, whereas its predecessor seemed more bound to local hardware performance.

First reviewed December 2024.

Open-world gacha game, Infinity Nikki, is the fifth entry in the Nikki series. The franchise, developed by Papergames / Infold Games, was previously available on mobile devices only. In fact, the series had completely flown under my radar until late September when I got the chance to play the Infinity Nikki demo at the Tokyo Game Show.

What intrigued me back then was the notion that this free-to-play game would allow me to progress at a leisurely pace and have a stress-free time, without worrying too much about leveling characters and gear just to take on tough bosses. This concept is almost antithetical to what I’ve experienced in titles like Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero, Wuthering Waves, and others, where “pulling for meta characters” and “min-maxing stats” are tantamount to improving your chances at completing late-game content.

Fortunately, Infinity Nikki managed to exceed my expectations, thanks to its gorgeous visuals and exploration beats, some of which reminded me of other successful titles. However, it does suffer from a few pitfalls, most notably those related to the series’ use of mobile game-focused ideas.

Welcome to Miraland

Infinity Nikki’s campaign begins as the titular character, along with her cat companion Momo, are sent to a magical realm known as Miraland. This leads to an isekai-style romp that takes them to nearly half a dozen explorable regions in search of the fabled Miracle Outfits.

These zones of Miraland include the city of Florawish, where I learned more about the setting, as well as the green fields of Breezy Meadows. Later, I marveled at the sights of the Abandoned District, a region consisting of multiple towering islands that are only reachable by gliding across tornado-filled seas.

Likewise, there’s the Wishing Woods, a forest that’s dotted with several twisting pathways, tall treetops, and thorny vines. Regions also have their own uniquely themed dungeons, such as a power plant in the sewers and a runaway train with scarecrow-esque ghosts.

Infinity Nikki’s themes and cartoony designs tend to be bright, vibrant, and vivid, as though the whole experience is meant to be a joyful celebration. Even the theme song performed by Jessie J, 'Together Till Infinity,' which plays whenever I launch the game, is so upbeat that I can’t help but tap my feet to the tune. But what makes the world truly come to life is the use of various environmental features to aid in traversing these aforementioned regions.

For instance, there are giant birds and paper cranes that give you a good vantage point of your surroundings. Do you want to reach a distant island? You can do that by passing through floating rings that are suspended in mid-air. Need to get to the top of a mountain? There might be a seal that could toss you over yonder. And, yes, there’s also a bike that you can ride across hills and fields.

However, the main downside is that comical and silly themes also cause Infinity Nikki's narrative arc to falter. Although some story beats have a more serious tone – such as Florawish villagers falling into a coma or hopeful wishes being stolen – some ideas just weren’t compelling and several supporting characters were plainly unremarkable.

Runway modeling and runaway spending

The Nikki series is known for its dress-up mechanics and Infinity Nikki is no exception, given that there are several outfits that grant unique abilities. Early on, I obtained attires that allowed Nikki to glide in mid-air, pet animals, catch bugs, fish in rivers, and even fix electrical panels. Later in the game, I actually made a dress that caused Nikki to shrink so I could control Momo instead.

These ability dresses, as well as many others that I found during my travels, can be used in Styling Contests and the Mira Crown. In these activities, I was graded based on Nikki’s clothing score or whim, denoted by attributes like ‘Sweet’, ‘Cool’, ‘Elegant’, and bonus points from cosmetic frills. All of these make for a very engaging gameplay loop that involves finding new outfits and then upgrading them to increase their stats, so you can defeat faction leaders and grab additional rewards.

The above concepts are complemented by a handy wardrobe menu where I mixed and matched clothing parts, hairstyles, and makeup. From dazzling ball gowns, fluffy jackets, shimmering tiaras, and high-heeled stilettos, to colorful blushes, peculiar accessories, floating neon effects, and alternative designs, there are a thousand ways to showcase your sense of fashion. Moreover, the game has an amazing Photo Mode feature that has numerous poses and effects, all to shine a spotlight on your style as you progress.

However, the most glaring issue here is actually tied to the gacha system itself. While cash purchases are disabled in the Infinity Nikki build that I played, I was still able to check out the in-game store and banner. The most telling fixture is that full outfit sets from gacha banners consist of nine or more parts, making it extremely unlikely to get a full set within your first few ‘pulls’ (i.e. gacha attempts). In my case, I spent diamonds, a standard in-game currency, on 100 pulls, and I still wasn’t able to get a complete 5-star set.

It goes without saying that players who are after all the item pieces might feel compelled to spend more money. While the ‘pity system’ helps guarantee a 5-star reward every 20 pulls, I feel that this would exacerbate the problem further.

Countless collectibles and content for the constantly curious

Another facet that bolsters Infinity Nikki’s quirks and charms is the countless collectibles and side content to discover in Miraland. There are collectibles known as Whimstars which are used to unlock outfits and perks in the Heart of Infinity, a skill tree with dozens of interconnected nodes.

Obtaining Whimstars tends to be an effortful and enjoyable endeavor. Some require running around to pick up fragments or looking for a star-shaped graffiti that’s hidden in the environment, while others are embedded in magical creatures that you should pet or catch. There are also those that are found in mini-domains with puzzles, akin to shrines in The Legend of Zelda games like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

Aside from Whimstars, there are orbs known as Dews of Inspiration, which are vastly more numerous. These are given to a friendly dragon named Kilo the Cadenceborn, who then provides you with extra attires. Additionally, there are side quests where you look for the correct Photo Mode locations, missing perfumes, and historical sites, as well as countless treasure chests to unlock.

In the same vein, there are ways to quickly farm for resources, including Realm Challenges that grant bling currency (i.e. gold) and a “Dig Pear Pal” panel where you passively earn items after enough hours have elapsed. All in all, even if you’re not focusing on the main quest, Infinity Nikki still provides many tasks that enrich the sense of discovery.

Combat conundrums and timegating troubles

One feature of Infinity Nikki that’s sure to be contentious is its combat system, or rather the very simplistic and lackluster way in which it’s presented. After all, this is meant to be a cozy game, right? Sadly, Nikki’s main offensive move is just an extremely basic projectile attack that travels in a straight line, and most enemies can be defeated in a single hit. Coincidentally, certain foes, including bosses, have relatively simple, repetitive, and easily telegraphed attack patterns. Combat is unchallenging to a fault that it’s something I tuned out most of the time while exploring.

Still, combat woes don’t hold a candle to the most egregious of all of Infinity Nikki’s flaws: its mobile game-style approach to timegating. To clarify, there’s already content that causes you to use up energy. But there are also portions of the campaign where you need to increase your Stylist Rank just to receive the next main quest objective. The Stylist Rank requires not just the overall tally of your progress, such as Whimstars collected, total number of outfits acquired, and so on, but also Daily Wishes.

Daily Wishes, as the term implies, come from the daily tasks you complete. Here’s the kicker: these cap at 500 points each day, but some of the overall requirements are not divisible by 500 (i.e. 1,100, 1,600, 2,100 points, and so on). A good example was when I encountered a progress-blocking bug as part of a quest. It took a while for that bug to get fixed and, once I had completed the quest, I was really eager to see what was next in store. Only then did I realize that I lacked points from dailies, so I had no choice but to wait for the next reset.

Timegating also extends to Insights, which are gathering and combat-specific tallies. As you pet animals, catch fish/bugs, take out enemies, and gather resources, you earn Insight points for upgradable perks. However, once you’ve done too many of these actions in a single day, you no longer earn the actual points.

Initially, I thought that these systems were put in place to combat gaming addiction. However, as the days passed, I began to think that these create an adverse effect where players feel more invested since they have no choice but to log in repeatedly. As such, even if Infinity Nikki does have brilliant ideas that kept me entertained, it still suffers from the same pitfalls that characterize forced time investment in mobile and live service games.

Should you play Infinity Nikki?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility

Infinity Nikki doesn’t have much in the way of accessibility features. At best, there are player view assists that cause the camera to pan automatically whenever your character is moving, falling through the air, or fighting enemies. There’s also an Enable Jump Guide Line option that creates a shining glyph below your character so you know where you’d land. Lastly, there’s an option to respawn Nikki in case she gets stuck in the environment.

How I reviewed Infinity Nikki

I played Infinity Nikki on a TCL P755 TV at 4K resolution and mostly high settings. My gaming PC has an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU, Intel Core i9-10900K CPU, and 32GB of RAM. I used a Razer Viper Mini mouse and a locally-made keyboard, as well as a Logitech F710 wireless controller.

My progress as of the time of this writing is around 40 hours across six days, and I was able to reach the main story chapter that takes place in the Whispering Woods. On days when I encountered progress-blocking bugs and gameplay mechanics, I opted to tackle side quests and look for collectibles just to get a good grasp of open-world exploration features.

First reviewed November/December 2024.

Mouthwashing has made a statement in late 2024. I wouldn't be surprised if you've seen it all over social media, as more streamers and gaming fans are diving straight into the latest indie horror game. It's easy to see why, even just saying the name of the game makes people go "Mouthwashing? What kind of name is that?". Well, nothing can quite prepare you for the next two hours or so worth of gameplay, I can tell you that much. A game with a title so strange deserves to be a wild ride and god, I'm going to be thinking about this for such a long time alongside many of the other best horror games out there.

Indie game developers Wrong Organ are the ones to blame for the inevitable onslaught of nightmares I'll have over the coming days, as they've burned their horrifying imagery into my retinas and they're probably feeling pretty gleeful about that. In fact, it's so utterly disturbing I've had a hard time picking out images for this article for fear of scaring away half our audience. I've spared you the worst of it, whether or not you go and see the rest for yourself is up to you.

In space no one can hear you... drinking mouthwash?

Mouthwashing has a wonderfully sadistic premise. The five-person crew of the Tulpar, a freighter spacecraft owned by Pony Express, find their ship in a state of emergency. It was intentionally crashed, causing irreversible damage, and now its crew is stranded in space. We learn this in the first 30 seconds of the game where a little tagline in the captain's log reads I hope this hurts. It only gets darker from that moment on.

Not only are they stranded, and they've had their personal credits docked due to navigational incompetence (you will quickly learn Pony Express likes to dock worker's pay), but food and supplies are rapidly running out. But, hey, they're transporting cargo! Surely there's something of value in there right? They'll be penalized if they take a little peek at what they're transporting, but surely it's worth the risk if you're literally stranded?

Well, as the title foreshadows, their cargo is useless. It's just boxes and boxes of mouthwash. No food in sight, nothing useful. As if being stranded wasn't cruel enough. Sanity is in short supply too, and that soon begins to dwindle.

We play as Jimmy, the co-pilot of the Tulpar. He's Curly's second in command, and the captain has seen better days. When we meet Curly, we learn he bore the brunt of the damage from the crash, rendering him mute, physically scarred, and without any hands or feet. He's in a terrible condition and has a frightening appearance, something the game does not shy away from.

The rest is made up of Anya, the nurse and sole female member of the crew (yes, that is an uncomfortable experience), Daisuke the cheerful, naive intern whose parents forced him to get the job, and Swansea the gruff, recovering alcoholic mechanic. The game is non-linear and moves before and after the big crash, where we get to see the dynamics between the characters and Jimmy's worsening mental state. His inevitable breakdown is where the real horror comes in.

The descent into madness

It's important to note that Mouthwashing is a very surreal game. You find yourself in impossible locations, you see things that don't exist, and much of the game is Jimmy hallucinating the most horrible stuff. There are a few jump scares here and there, especially the climactic vent scene near the end of the game, but much of the horror comes from the psychological aspects. Horrible visuals, sudden text popping up on-screen, and Jimmy's often deranged decisions are far scarier than things that go bump in the night. Or day. Frankly, it's hard to tell what time it is onboard the Tulpar and that's also pretty scary.

One of the Steam tags does describe the game as a walking simulator, but don't be surprised if it's more of a "frozen on the spot" simulator because you're bracing yourself for whatever horrors await behind closed doors or hidden inside vents. The game is dialogue-heavy in a lot of places - you'll read a brilliant monologue from Swansea late in the game - but the scares are in abundance too. It's hard to wax lyrical about how great this game is without going into full spoilers, so you're just going to have to see for yourself.

There's a limited amount of voice acting here but the sounds we do hear are crafted in such a way it'll make your skin crawl. Curly's wails and moans of pain, screaming sounds, and eerie corporate jingles are all this game needs to pack a very effective punch. It makes way for the haunting soundtrack to do most of the legwork, which only elevates the horror.

The less said about this, the better, as it really is a game you should go in and experience for yourself. You'll learn so much about the characters for better and for worse, and it leaves a lasting impression. You play for a couple of hours, but it will stay with you for much, much longer.

Should I play Mouthwashing?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility

Mouthwashing is very easy to navigate. There are different language and subtitling options, and since 99% of the dialogue is not spoken and comes up as text, it's very clear and easy to understand. You can adjust your camera sensitivity too, but I played on the default settings and had no issues.

There are also quite a lot of flashing images and things suddenly popping up that are unavoidable, and visually it can be jarring and distorted, but that is simply the nature of the game rather than a technical issue. If you do find yourself affected by these things, just be aware it's a very unforgiving game in that sense.

How I reviewed Mouthwashing

I tested Mouthwashing for around two hours and finished the main game. I played the game using a Lenovo Legion 5-15ACH6H gaming laptop with Beats Flex wireless headphones and a PS5 DualSense Wireless Controller. I also did additional testing with the laptop’s built-in keyboard and Steelseries Aerox 9 wireless gaming mouse, to check that the game ran smoothly in both modes.