Crimson Skies

The Good
The atmosphere is perfect. Instead of fancy schmancy video briefing, Zipper wisely substituted a map with some animated icons and some photos with excellent voice acting instead. It makes you feel right in an old-fashioned radio show. Most of the movies are there in that brownish color of old movies complete with white streaks... even more authentic. You get a LOT of souvenirs from each mission, and there are plenty of enemies to shoot and planes to build or customize.

The Bad
One of the ways you "earn fame" is by stunt flying, and that means you have to fly through tight space that no one else would DARE fly into. Can you imagine taking a plane and fly through a TRAIN TUNNEL? How about fly through the arcs of a bridge, following the traffic lanes? THROUGH a hangar UNDER the zepplin already inside? If you have a steady hand this can be quite entertaining, but unfortunately I never was a very "precise" person and stunt flying proved to be extremely frustrating for me. I can kill enemy planes with no problem. It's these stunt tasks that had me completely beaten. At least the game lets you skip the mission if you failed it 3 times in a row.

The Bottom Line
Crimson Skies is a "lite" sim that dropped most of the flight model in favor of "fun", and it is a lot of fun.

Set in an alternate 1930's when the United States no longer exists. Due to the Great War, the Stock Market Crash, and the influenza epidemic, the country had broken up into multiple nations that rely on air travel, with planes and blimps replacing rail and cars as the ultimate means of transportation. Blimps can launch and recover aircrafts with landing hooks, thus allowing them plenty of range. Pirates raid commercial blimps, and mercenary airforces are often contracted to provide protection. You play Nathan Zachary, a "notorious" air pirate and noted ladies' man.

The game is your typical Wing Commander-style presentation. You see a movie to start you off in the right mood, then you're left in your "stateroom", where you have the choice of reviewing your missions, contract a new custom plane built for you (which costs money), go onto next mission, and a very nice touch: change the "momento" on your desk, which is a picture frame that contains a lot of pictures of pretty women and even your dog. As you go on more missions, you can get more pictures as keepsakes.

When you select "next mission", you get to mission briefing, which is a map with some movie icons and markings, with some pictures of notable persons or events, and a full voice narration between your persona and the rest of his "gang".

Once that's done, you can choose your plane and outfit it with the appropriate ammo. You can choose from multiple types of ammo from slug to explosive. You can also choose different types of rockets for your "hardpoints". Sorry, no guided missiles in 1930's (yet).

Then you watch an in-game cutscene of your blimp, the Pandora, and your plane inside being spun up for launch. You can choose from three different viewpoints: in-cockpit, no cockpit, or behind-plane. Most people will probably choose behind-plane as it makes stunt-flying a little easier.

The objectives will vary a lot, but mostly it involves shooting down enemy planes that attack, and sometimes it involves hijacking other planes, picking up people from trains, and more. There are even a few blimp-busting missions where you have to kill enemy blimps by hitting them when their gunports are open, or by killing their engines so they can be captured. There are even some ground attack missions where you need to take out enemy boats, ships, bases, etc.

Most of the missions are nicely designed, but quite a few have strict time-limits. If you don't kill of all the enemies in the alloted time you can't fulfill your objective, esp. on the escort missions. With some practice, it's easy enough, but the really frustrating points are the stunts.

As mentioned previously, you get souvenirs from each and every mission. In each mission there are certain stunts you can perform, mainly by flying through impossibly tight spaces like tunnels, hangars, and such. You'll hear a "camera shutter" sound, and get an extra photo for your scrapbook. However, some of the missions REQUIRE you to perform the stunts, and those can be pretty frustrating, as ANY mistake would virtually require you to start ALL OVER. Can you imagine flying through EACH of the O's in the famous HOLLYWOOD sign? You need a VERY steady hand.

However, do not despair. The game allows you to skip any mission if you fail it three times in a row.

The game has a LOT of atmosphere and is a lot of fun to play, except for the frustration levels of stunt flying and some of these "kill them faster" missions. Zipper should be commended for creating such a fine product. I just wish they would have left the stunt flying to be completely optional.

The Good
Strap on tight and get ready for some barnstorming aerial fun as you take to the skies in the coolest flight sim to come out of Microsoft. Well, actually calling it a "sim" is stretching things a bit, in fact the game might better be classified as a "sci-fi sim" in the same vein as Wing Commander or Tie Fighter, regardless of the prop aircrafts in it.

The game is based on the boardgame published by FASA (of Battletech fame) and probably came to Microsoft as an added bonus when they acquired the Mechwarrior rights. Taking it's cues from early 20 century radio dramas (wow, doesn't that sound right out of star trek or something? :)) the game throws you into an alternate reality 1930's earth where the great war has torn apart countries like the US in several independent states (like the Kingdom of Hawai!!) and the primary means of transportation and warmaking have become the airplanes of the era. Sort of like Interstate '76, only with the look of movies like the Rocketeer or Indiana Jones, and boy is that "look" realized! This is one of the most perfectly designed games in terms of style and presentation. The whole interface has 1930's written all over it and the game constructs it's radio-drama feel perfectly with a blend of stylish B&W photos, newspaper articles you collect in your scrapbook, funny "memento" pictures you take aboard your plane as well as the "News on the March"-like style of the cutscenes and the amazingly orchestrated serials-influenced dynamic soundtrack. Heck, the soundtrack alone deserves a place in the spotlight as one of the most fantastic soundtracks I've heard for these types of games, beaten only by X-Wing Alliance and its use of John William's classic score.

As for the story and gameplay premise, you play as Nathan Zachary, your everyday "gentleman pirate". You know, dashing, courageus, a hit with the ladies, and honorable as opposed to the other aerial pirates out there. From your zeppelin/capital-ship you'll launch with your merry band of pirates to complete a series of mercenary campaigns that string together a larger plot as usual for these types of games. Said campaigns take you all over the place from the pacific ocean to sky-scrapper filled New York, glitzy Hollywood and sunny Hawai.

As mentioned the game plays like a sci-fi sim, meaning that it emphasizes action and gameplay over realistic game mechanics. In fact, your airplanes might be X-Wings for all you care, having no drag, no stalling or climbing problems and unheard of aerodynamic properties. Not a problem for me, as I love these types of games! Wisely, the developers included a variety of camera views, but placed the focus on the default fixed chase cam, which essentially turns the game into a much more detailed aircraft version of Rogue Squadron.

Of course, unlike that game you have a much less arcadey gameplay premise and the missions often span several complex objectives that go beyond "kill X thing" and involve puzzle elements and scripted events. Also included is the aspect of stunt-flying which is a winner for me and that involves precision-flying through narrow spaces and tight locations. Several missions are solely dedicated to that, like a race through manhattan near the end of the game and a kickass hollywood stunts trial. These elements seem to be love-or-hate for some, but I think they add an original level of excitement and fit perfectly in the game world, as well as serving as a nice extra for each mission (most of the times stunt locations are hidden in the levels and are there for bonus purposes as they unlock new mementos or scrapbook articles).

As the leader of the mercenary squadron you also get to choose what type of plane to take with you, and after you have accumulated enough cash, build a custom plane yourself in the best I76 tradition, selecting from a variety of wacky chassis and gun calibers as well as rocket types and even color. Unfortunately you have a few missions which force a specific plane on you, and your custom plane cannot be modified, but what the heck, right?

Technically speaking it's worth noting the great graphics engine under the hood of this game, which delivers great models and detailed textures as well as other niceties such as impressive ground detail and draw distance. And you also have a multiplayer mode to continue the dogfighting bonanza after you've beaten the main game!

The Bad
Practically the only bad thing I can mention about this jewel is that some of the missions can be a real pain (that gyro mission alone is unbelievable in it's difficulty) but fortunately the game allows you to skip the missions if you are not up to it and try them later on. Well, I guess that leaves the long load times and the graphic bugs as the only main gripe, but if you get the patch then that's about gone too.

The Bottom Line
Fantastic stylish sim that blends exciting action and killer production design into a masterpiece of the genre. Do not miss this game! It's unique setting and incredible gameplay alone makes it a clear home-run.

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.

The Good
Submitted for your approval: imagine a world of air flight and combat simulators that aren't really simulators of what IS... but of what we wish COULD BE. These games already exist. Lucasfilm has released several "flight/combat simulators" under its fine line of Star Wars games -- Tie Fighter and X-Wing, for example. Are these games accurate flight simulators? Hell, no... but they're loads of fun, and packed with that Star Wars flavor, which is why you bought them in the first place.

"Crimson Skies" is that kind of game. It captures the flavor of its genre and time period like no other game I've ever played. Between the stylings of the scenery, the great little "newsreel" cutscenes, and even the interface, this game has 1930s written all over it.

It is NOT a flight sim, and the planes you will fly routinely ignore various laws of physics, as well as the technology of the time, but who cares?

The Bad
The game is not without its problems. For one thing, although this is very much an "arcade style" flight sim, you are going to want a joystick to play this one; trying to handle the flight controls via the keyboard just makes you wish you had a spare pair of hands. You're also going to want to download the patch; load times make this game a yawn until that patch is installed.

The Bottom Line
It's not a HUGE bargain... at least, not unless you already HAVE a joystick... but if you're a fan of barnstorming action or the genre in general, this game is a must have.

The Good
(1) Graphics
Crimson has some of the nicest graphics that I have seen. Unlike many other flight games the landscapes and environment feel REAL. Lighting and in flight music is excellent throughout the game.


(2) Storyline
But the best and probably the biggest reason why I like this game is the story line. In Crimson Skies the US has split into 20 or more different nations. Because of this air travel has become the primary means of transporting people and cargo. Thus air piracy has become a viable and lucrative business. Oh did I mention this all takes place back in the 1940's? Granted at first I didn't buy this product when it came out because I thought that the premise was rather strange. However I recently picked up this gem for 10 bucks and boy was I surprised. They lovingly styled the graphics and sounds. The effect of this effort was to make a story line as rich as it was new. I would compare this to what Interplay did with fallout and they way they styled the game to feel 1950s. My hats off to Microsoft and Zipper interactive.

(3) gameplay
While no one would mistake crimson as a "realistic flight sim" the gameplay is fund and enjoyable. One of the nice touches of the game can be seen when you shoot one of your opponents down. Often times the plane will start to smoke and slowly fall to earth. At the same time the pilot will bail out. The missions are varied and the scrapbook that is kept is excellent.

The Bad
Well first of all some of the missions (like the race in Hollywood) can be difficult to the extreme. Fortunately you can skip a mission after 3 tries. Also it seems that the Zipper did not completely test or fix the game. Often times the music will skip and lag in between missions. Also until the patch the load time for missions could be long.

The Bottom Line
Overall the game has little to be upset about and much to enjoy.

Unlike many gamers today I enjoy a good story, and boy does Crimson provide!