Crimson Skies (2003)

Loop-de-loops, immelmanns, barrel rolls. What do all of these have in common? They’re all amazing flight maneuvers that you’ll probably never be able to do in real life (unless you’re a member of the Blue Angels), and they’re all easy to execute and fun to watch in the new game from FASA Studios and Microsoft Games, Crimson Skies. This game started out as a simple port from its PC iteration, but over time and many delays, this game has turned into one of the finest available for the Xbox to date.

This game has everything. It has a solid, albeit somewhat short single-player story mode, following the adventures of the air pirate, Nathan Zachary; and it also has an incredibly deep, fun, and challenging multiplayer component. Although it’s not incredibly long, the single-player mode found in Crimson Skies is still very fun and entertaining. The game takes place in an alternate-reality 1930’s America, where the Great Depression got so disastrous that the United States split apart into various countries and territories, and travel and commerce was taken to the sky. Now with zeppelins and planes controlling trade and travel, air pirates began to crop up as well. Nathan Zachary is one of those air pirates, and he loves his job. Basically, the whole story of Crimson Skies’ single-player game can best be described as Indiana Jones in the sky, which is probably the best comparison one can make. Nathan makes witty remarks, fights the bad guys, and even ends up tracking down some supernatural baddies. The missions in the single-player mode are pretty interesting. Each level takes place around a “hub” city, giving you the ability to do whatever you’d like. You can just joyride and fly around looking for upgrade tokens to improve the planes that you’ve um….acquired, you can take missions from people scattered around the map that both advance the story and give you some cash to upgrade planes as well, or you can be a real air pirate and attack the huge zeppelins that hover above most of the cities in the game. It’s not entirely open-ended, but it does give the player a lot of freedom, which is quite good, and works quite well in this game.

Now, before I start talking about the real bread-and-butter to Crimson Skies (the multiplayer), I’d just like to take a minute and talk about all the visual and audio goodies. First of all, the game looks amazing. The water is some of the best water that I’ve ever seen in a video game, and getting up close to it and flying right over it creates a really cool “splash” effect with little beads of water collecting on the camera, and rolling down the screen. Pretty cool stuff. Also, the plane models, animation, and just the sheer size of all of the cities are just great. Everything is top-notch, including the FMV cutscenes. This is definitely one of those games that you can use to show off the power of the xbox to your friends. The graphics of this game easily deserves to get a 19.

On the audio side of the table, the game is awesome. Dolby Digital 5.1 support is in full effect here. If you’ve got a bogey on your tail, you’ll hear him coming from behind you. And when you do a nose dive straight towards the streets in Chicago, the engine noises are simply incredible, giving you the feeling that you’re really about to crash into the ground. Not to mention that your heart will sink into your stomach as soon as you hear your engine stall out for the first few times. The voice-over dialogue in the game is also very well done. It’s nothing earth-shattering, like KOTOR’s, but it is definitely very well done, and fits the tone of the game perfectly. Camp. That’s all there is to say about it. The script and the dialogue for the game is pure camp, and it fits into the mood of the game very well. FASA studios really must have had a blast making this game, and it shows, because they obviously never take themselves seriously, especially once you hear the dialogue for the game. It’s just really funny. Nathan has some pretty good one-liners for when you shoot guys down, but you’ll hear them almost all the time, so some of them do get kind of old, but there’s enough variety to keep most happy. The sound in this game is great, but not great enough to give it a perfect score, so I’m giving it a 18.Ok, now since I’ve put it off for so long, here’s what I think about the multiplayer component of Crimson Skies. The multiplayer portion of the game revolves around a few different modes: Dogfight, Team dogfight, Keep away, Team keep away, Flag heist, and Wild Chicken. Dogfight I think is pretty self-explanatory, but man, is it fun. Watching 16 planes all converge at one point in an already huge map and shooting the piss out of each other is one of the funniest and fun things I’ve ever had the pleasure to see. Keep Away is set up a lot like Oddball is in Halo, and it works really well with this game too. Someone catches the booty, and tries to hold on to it for as long as they can, without getting blasted by everyone else. Believe me when I say that when you look behind you and see 15 guys on your tail, you panic a little bit. Flag Heist is good old capture-the-flag, and it’s done extremely well here, especially with the differences between planes, which I’ll get to in a second. Wild Chicken is probably one of the most fun modes in multiplayer. The others are great too, but Wild Chicken is just a hoot. It’s set up a lot like Football. There’s a chicken on the middle of the map, which both teams race to try to get. Once a team has the chicken, they have to get it back to their base to score 7 points. Now if the other team shoots down the player with the chicken, they get two points, as opposed to the normal one point that they would receive for shooting down anyone else on the map. The multiplayer mode is just amazing, whether you’re playing system link, split-screen or on Xbox Live. The system link mode is pretty nice, you can have 2 players on each xbox, and you can LAN up to 8 xboxes in one game. The split-screen works with up to 4 players, which makes me wonder why LAN only works with two. This game, however, is definitely made for Xbox Live, and this is a game to use if you want to show Live off to your buddies. You and a guest can sign on to Live on one copy of the game, and go to town in games of up to 16 players, which makes for some really hectic dogfights. The communicator lends strategy to the team games, and smack-talk to the free-for-all games. Either way you play it, this game is just unbelieveable. If you like flying games, or action games, this is one you’re going to enjoy. The gameplay is at least an 18 in my book.

  Now, on to the planes. I meant to mention this earlier, but I think this is more relevant in the multiplayer section of this review. There are a plethora of different planes available in the game to the player both in the single-player game, and the multiplayer. Every plane has a primary weapon, such as a machine gun, or a “pistol” shot that has unlimited ammo, but will jam if you use it too much, and a secondary weapon that has limited ammo, but is much more powerful than the primary weapon. The planes all have their own unique personality and weapons, like the Bulldog, which has a really weak “pistol” shot, and a shotgun blast as its special weapon. It is also the fastest plane in the game, but it has incredibly weak armor, making it great for flag-running, but not defense. There’s also some all-around planes, like the Devastator, and some big defensive planes, like the Doppelganger, that has an electric burst that can short out any planes’ engines if done properly. Now all planes handle generally the same, in the fact that they all have speed bursts, and they can all perform the tricks, like the immelmann, the barrel rolls and everything like that with easy combinations of the dual analog sticks, but each one has its own speed and cornering ability, which makes each one good for different situations. The fun factor of the game is always important, and I think this game is good enough to warrant a score of 19 for that category, with a replayability factor of 19 as well.

Overall, I think Crimson Skies is definitely one of the best that the Xbox has to offer gamers this coming holiday season. This game is a blast online and off, and the play seems to be just right. I highly recommend this to anyone that likes planes, Indiana Jones, or games in general. It really is a fun, fast, and enjoyable experience that you won’t be disappointed with, especially after your first few multiplayer games. This is one of those games that is “easy to learn, difficult to master”. This is definitely one of the games that you should ask for come the holiday season, because it is simply amazing

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