14 DAY TRIAL // I spent more time trying to download, install and run Microsoft Flight than with any other free-to-play video game and I suspect it is all the fault of Microsoft’s incredibly annoying Game for Windows Live client.
When I accessed the official site of the game, I was prompted to download the game and play it immediately, and I got a small GfWL file which I ran.
I then waited patiently to see it download about 1.5 GB of info and install it and tried to launch the game, only to be met with an inscrutable error from Windows.
I retried the process and got the same result so I fired up the actual Games for Windows Live client to see whether it recognized the Microsoft Flight install.
It did not so I tried to get the game from inside the GfWL interface, which seemed to work up to a point, where the download process just froze up.
I finally managed to get the game going by doing a full uninstall and then I downloaded the entire package again, via the client, from the official Games for Windows Live website.
It all took close to 2 hours (I was doing other things at the moment) and I was then able to fire up Microsoft Flight, which is free-to-play and offers some paid content, and fly around, something which was surprisingly fun given that no airplane on airplane violence was involved in any way.
The game offers a number of small training missions, which show players the basic controls for the airplane and a few points on keeping it airborne, and then everyone is free to fly around, crash spectacularly and try to perform tricks.
The game handles well with a controller and at times the feeling of actually flying is pretty intense, but Microsoft Flight cannot escape the fact that it looks pretty date, and both the world and the planes lack any sort of detail.