Gaming
Games
These are the best flying games ever
From Microsoft Flight Simulator to Star Fox, these are the flight games you have to play.
There's nothing better than soaring through the skies and feeling the breeze in your hair (virtual, or otherwise). There have been plenty of cracking video game versions of flying over the years, ranging from the arcade classics to the hardest of the hardcore, and everything in between.
Which should you play? These are the best flying games ever, that you should definitely play right away – even if it means you have to upgrade your PC or get the retro hardware out of the loft.
X-Plane
X-Plane in action
© Laminar Research
Offering unparalleled realism, X-Plane has gone through quite a lot of changes to bring it up to date as the hardcore flight sim that it is today. If you've ever wanted to actually learn how to fly a plane, this might be the best and cheapest way to start. With ultra realistic mechanics and visuals that will trick you into thinking you're actually there, X-Plane is about as comprehensive as it gets, and will see you scrambling to buy peripherals that connect to your PC to make it even more realistic.
Jungle Strike
It may look dated, but it was a great series
© EA
It's highly possible that you haven't heard of the Strike series at all. Famous and incredibly popular back during the Sega Mega Drive era, the EA-produced Jungle Strike (there was also a Desert Strike, Urban Strike, Nuclear Strike, and Soviet Strike) tasked you with flying an Apache helicopter around the environment to take out the bad guys, and rescue the good guys. It was arcade at heart, but lining up correctly to pick up people was often quite hard. A superb series we'd love to see make a comeback, somehow, somewhere.
Star Fox
We’ll never forget you, Skippy
© Nintendo
Another older game, but Star Fox was also re-released on Nintendo 3DS, with the latest entry into the series on Wii U (but let's not talk about that). Star Fox introduced a loveable cast of characters and the iconic "do a barrel roll!" phrase we all know. Flying around a polygonal environment was amazing at the time, but the core gameplay still holds up today.
Pilotwings
Pilot Wings Resort on 3DS was good, too!
© Nintendo
In many ways, Pilotwings was the original extreme sports video game. A mixture of all manner of air-based entertainment, this game switches from getting you to land a plane on a runway, to jumping out of a plane and feeling the g-forces as you plummet to earth, trying to stick a good landing. Visually, it's aged poorly, but this is another game we'd love to see a modern version of, perhaps on Nintendo Switch.
Microsoft Flight Simulator
Everyone's heard of MFS, right?
© Microsoft
If X-Plane is considered the most hardcore, MFS (as it's known for short) might well be the daddy of the flight sim genre. First released in 1982 as Flight Simulator, the game eventually evolved into Microsoft Flight Simulator, and we’ve seen numerous iterations over its 37-year history. It’s not been the smoothest of flights over the past few years, with little support following 2014’s Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition, but flight sim fans received a massive boon in the form of a reboot for 2020, with the latest version once again named Microsoft Flight Simulator. The alpha has already launched, and fans can look forward to new training missions, new aircraft and updates, and frequent development to keep the game running as smoothly as possible.
IL-2 Sturmovik
This series will chew you up and spit you out
© Ubisoft
Another hardcore flight sim, this one, but instead of teaching you to actually fly, IL-2 Sturmovik wants you to spend time learning how to get to the battlefield before engaging the enemy. Aside the flying, you'll have to learn to take-off and land properly, so even if you make it through a battle you're not done, which makes it a punishing but rewarding take on the genre.
