Microsoft Flight Sim's Top Gun tie-in teaches you how to fly like a skillful maniac
Microsoft Flight Simulator is brilliant for a lot of reasons, but for me, it's pretty much just an opportunity to take leisure cruises through parts of the world I've always wanted to visit. With a new Top Gun: Maverick expansion released today, we're now invited to perform ridiculous, high-skill manoeuvres in a specially decked-out F/A-18E Super Hornet, thus eliminating every trace of «chill» this game normally offers.
The free update is a promotion of sorts, but there's no Tom Cruise skin. Instead, it adds a bunch of missions and challenges, all themed around teaching us how to command high-speed fighter planes. These center around the aforementioned Super Hornet, which is already in the game, but now has a special Top Gun: Maverick Edition livery to really drive the point home.
The three new training missions teach players how to pull off «radical flight maneuvers» like unrestricted take-offs, split S maneuvers, and navigating really hectic terrain at low altitudes. There's a carrier deck landing challenge, which is apparently much harder than it sounds (I guess landing on a big ship would not give much room for error), and most excitingly, «a never-before-unveiled hypersonic aircraft that can attain speeds of Mach 10 and altitudes greater than 150,000 feet above sea level.» Heck!
Elsewhere, there's a mission to reach the stratosphere, as well as five «high-speed, low-level» challenges that are also focused on navigating tricky, mountainous terrain without crashing and exploding and dying.
The update is free and available now. As for Top Gun: Maverick itself, the film hits cinemas on May 27, and received an impressive five-star rating on our sibling site Gamesradar.
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