Summary
Do you like flight sims with a difference? then you should try this
The Good
A simulation that has you flying Mail runs from many different airports in one of 5 states of America.For a game that arrived some 24 years ago now, it still manages to feature an impressive amount of remarkable details for the time, such as VOR towers readings, DME, ILS, and coupled with the game aspect that is to deliver post, Solo Flight is clearly quite unlike what you will have played before
Score for choices made meaning you must ponder certain things like how much fuel you might need for each delivery.Each mail delivered is to a different airport but the option is also there to carry several loads, each an additional weight that needs to be taken into account.Having a heavier payload means burning more fuel but it's also a potentially higher score as well.It's this design that makes Solo Flight so intensely fun each time
Weather conditions such as clear, nighttime, light cloud and even a heavy cloud that requires IFR skills - it's entirely possible to fly using just instruments in blindness up until the point you pop out of a cloud to see the runway hopefully as you had planned.Plot your route accurately using both VORS and you could have yourself precisely lined up and ready for a final descent using ILS.
Relatively slow vector graphics do a perfectly reasonable job at conveying distance and speed, with extra believability heightened further by the effective use of C64 sound.Once you get past what is obviously quite a primitive simulation by today's visual standards, you will truly feel delighted with what Solo Flight does differently.An increase here to speed or improvement to visuals anyway would destroy a lot of how immersive this feels given the physics were planned round these limits.
One of a kind here so give it a try but please do understand that great though this is, you're unlikely to be bowled over by it's seemingly naff movement and presentation at first - it's over 20 years old of course.
Other versions exist but the C64 by comparison was more realistic in colour palette and certainly less garish
You really do need the maps though and attempting Solo Flight without them is fairly pointless - playing this seriously requires maps for VOR plotting
The Bad
I liked it all.
The Bottom Line
Without equal.
