Crimson Skies

Moby ID: 2320

Windows version

Not much for the hard core simmer, but likely the most fun you'll ever have

The Good
Basically I'm a hard-core simmer and I love a good physics engine. So my fav games are ones like Fighter Squadron, A-10 and Su-27. But on the other hand I realize physics isn't everything. CFS2's physics engine is laughable, yet it's a pretty well produced game and that makes up for it to some degree. In fact I'd say that Red Baron represents this sort of ideal very well, it has a downright terrible engine, but it's still one of the most fun flight sims ever written.

Crimson Skies takes that "second way" to it's logical end. It's based on the CFS2 engine and thus has lousy physics, but of course that also means that it has excellent graphics and terrain. However they have toned down the flight model even more than CFS2 to the point where the planes are utterly unrealistic - they can climb straight up for instance. But it doesn't make a difference, the GAME is so good that even I don't care - I'm having way to much fun playing it!

You play the roll of Nathan Zackary, dashing leader of a band of sky pirates flying from their zeppelin, the Pandora. The action takes place in the 1930's in a world without the United States. Instead the US is broken down into several independent countries, Dixie, Hollywood, Pacifica and others. The game seems to stay within this setup quite well and never seems to stray, but that's likely a side effect of drawing on the rich FASA supplied world.

Off in search of fame and fortune you have to complete a series of missions that take you from an independent Hawaii, to Boeing field, to Hollywood where you do battle with Howard Hughes' cronies. The missions pit you against the military forces of these various nations, as well as England, the USSR, and the rest of the pirate fleets of course. And the missions are FUN too, they're fairly detailed and grow in difficultly to the point where you have to try some of them several times before you get it.

Each mission is introduced on map showing the various waypoints and goals, with "you" providing the voiceover narration. Other members of the crew chime in here and there while their pictures appear as photos in the upper left corner. Some sort of movie would have been better here, but this will do. After that it's off to the cockpit to see if you can complete the goals.

As the missions progress you make money that you'll need to buy new aircraft to stay with the state of the art. If you don't you'll eventually end up completely outclassed by the newer planes your enemies are flying and you WILL lose every mission. Sadly while it's fairly clear how to improve your own plane and your wingman's, it's not entirely clear how to get everyone to fly newer designs (or maybe wingman actually means wingmen?).

And the planes themselves are a wonderful selection of bizarre alternate-reality designs. Wings sprout out all over, guns are the size of cannons slung under the plane, and you even get to paint them they way you like. Again, the planes fit within the game very will and seem completely convincing.

The entire game has a definite old-movie feel to it. Corny voices, stirring music, missions where you rescue people in your plane using a rope ladder, movie starlets, you name it. Although it seems dated that's the whole idea. The result is flawless. This is one of the best produced games I've ever seen.

I'm about half done the game now, and loving every minute of it. This is by far the most FUN I've had playing a flight sim, and likely the most fun I've had in general since Half-Life.

The Bad
My main concern was the seemingly random setup of the ordinance you carried. You had a series of guns starting .30 cal to .40, .50, .60,. 70. Hmmm, see a pattern? In all of these cases the weapons can fire the same types of bullets, which leads to silly things like the .30's firing explosives. Moreover the only difference between the weapons seems to be that that larger ones fire slowly. The end result being that all the guns seem to put out the same amount of lead - fewer bigger bullets or more smaller ones. I would have much preferred to see certain types of ammo only available for certain guns, adding to the design problems.

Another related complaint is that if you load up your plane with more of the same sort of gun - say two sets of .30's - you still can't fire them all at the same time. Instead need to switch between the two sets, which pretty much makes it pointless as you'll never run out of ammo for the first set anyway. And the flight model is really bad on this point. If you remove guns the plane should fly better, but that doesn't happen, so there's no real point in removing them.

The only other complaint I had was that some of the enemies seem, well, "wrong". For instance in one mission set you repeatedly attack Hughes' combination of aircraft factory and movie studio, defended by autogyro's. These things are practically impossible to shoot down! You can't hit them for some reason, and when you do they seem to be built out of a single block of steel. Meanwhile the various other forces come in equipped in huge planes that you dispatch with ease. Bad play balance.

Finally I have a real problem with the plane purchase system. There's no way to simply modify an existing design that I could find. So if you only have enough for a basic model plane at one point in the game, you can't simply go back and bolt on another gun later, you have to rebuild the design from scratch. This really got on my nerves.

The Bottom Line
I used to think that Red Baron was the most fun a flight sim could be. I was wrong, Crimson Skies is that game. It's one of the best adventure games in a while too, with compelling scenarios set in a fascinating alternate reality.

by Maury Markowitz (266) on November 27, 2001

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