Flying through the air like a tuna through water, Volo Airsport allows you to gracefully swoop through mountains like an eagle with a large brick tied to its chest.
Set in the surroundings of a large mountain, you wing-suit through this stunning visage, attempting to not crash into the side of a mountain. While you can just float and fly, enjoying the visuals, there are courses to be completed if that is your thing.
The graphics are very lovely, disregarding the little wing-suiter who is made up of a series of large blue ellipsoids. The mountains and hills look very elegant and awe inspiring from a distance. There is an entire tab of the options menu dedicated to the scenery, where you can adjust the time of day, when in the year you are flying, the weather, how far the snow goes down the mountain, and even how thick the snow is. There are also options to have the game simulate seasons, progressing through the year as you fly. This makes some truly stunning visuals. Personally I love the harsh lights of the December period, compared to say the warm glow of July. Volo is a truly beautiful game and I would love to see what stunning pictures people can take in this game.
I find Volo Airsport a very difficult game. I’m fine flying powered planes, pretty good at using the jetpack/wingsuit combo in Just Cause 3 but I just can’t fly this wing-suit. The controls are decent, with the mouse controlling pitch and yaw, with keyboard buttons deciding roll and hard turns. There are also buttons to go into a cannonball and to move to a more streamlined posture.
Nor are the physics the problem. The wing-suit feels and looks like it interacts accurately with the air, and there is even a mode you can turn on where you can see the game modelling lift on different parts of your body. The HUD (which can be turned off for a more immersive experience) details your speed, altitude, g-force experienced and your glide ratio, which according to google is the ratio between your horizontal distance and your change in altitude. What I understand from that it correlates with how far you go before you hit the ground.
And when you do hit the ground, don’t expect to just bounce off back into the air, nor will you crash and bury your body into the ground. Volo Airsport has a form of damage mechanics, wherein hitting the ground or course markers will damage your body, represented by increasing tones of red on the ellipsoids. Damaged limb segments flap around a lot and are less controllable.
Except that’s not how it goes. In all my hours of play I have never survived a crash. Even glancing a peak will result in a flat spin down towards the ground. Combined with the courses that are incredibly hard to start, and the little flying spheres which remain utterly befuddling to me, it feels all a bit jumbled. The physics engine is fine and it is enjoyable to fly around for a bit, but it got old fast. Give it a bit more time in the oven and a little fleshing out of the mechanics and Volo Airsport should be an enjoyable flight through the mountains.
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