Pros: Strong story. No technical flight-sim distractions. Fast paced action with a little strategy thrown in. Excellent sound and full of colourful voice acting. Entertaining aircraft designer sequence.
Cons: Aircraft graphics a little jagged. Some speech a bit repetitive.
Flight Sims - You either love 'em or hate 'em. Of course recently the term "flight sim" has loosened a little to stretch from the classical meaning which usually involves a cockpit, some seriously complex controls and several skip-loads of patience to 3D shoot-em-ups which any old hack can play just by grabbing a game-pad or joystick. Either way, for much of my extensive gaming career, I have fit quite firmly into the "hate 'em" category and usually steer clear of all things aeronautical with only a few major exceptions.
The first major exception came over ten years ago in the shape of Cinemaware's excellent Wings, which placed the player into the shoes of a budding WWI fighter pilot. Wings worked for me because it dispensed with the technical side of things and made flying and engaging in dogfights fun. There were no take-offs and landings and 20 minute flights to the contact zone, just pure game-play nicely tied together with an interesting account of the young pilot's experiences and real life happenings as The Great War winds on.
After Wings, nothing really caught my eye until Microprose unleashed European Air War on the public. The game looked absolutely sensational with incredible attention to graphical detail and historical accuracy, but despite this I found little to hold my interest beyond the initial gasps at the beauty of the graphics and I thought that plane games were to remain dead and buried for yours truly. That was until a couple of weeks ago.
A couple of weeks ago I read an Epinion on Crimson Skies which filled me with anticipation. Mission Based, Interesting Story, More emphasis on game-play than technical flight details - it all sounded very "me" so I picked myself up a copy without delay.
Crimson Skies introduces the player to the world of Nathan Zachary - Air Pirate. Zachary inhabits a sort of alternate reality mid 30's time-line where the United States has collapsed into anarchy after the First World War and history has taken a very different turn. The player takes on the role of Zachary who leads his band of pirate/pilots on various missions, all of which throw you more or less right into the action without any stuffing about.
Story is the strong point of Crimson Skies, with the introduction featuring a piece of Fallout 2 style newsreel footage which is incredibly well done and convincing. Even during the installation of the game the player is treated to revelations about Zachary and his merry men via a pictorial and audio portrayal of an action packed mission. By the time the excellent (and rather long) intro us complete, I was eager to fill the shoes of the infamous (yet really rather dashing) Nathan Zachary and see what Crimson Skies held in store.
Graphically, Crimson Skies does not quite match it with other games of it's genre, with pleasant looking landscapes, but slightly static looking aircraft. The graphics overall are nice, without being spectacular. Sound is excellent, with a boat load of digitized voice acting adding meat to the story and realism to the game (even if they do repeat a little more often than you would usually like) and of course there are the perfectly adequate plane and weapon noises.
The game-play does indeed put more emphasis on action over traditional flight-sim - In fact I would go as far as saying that this is not a flight-sim at all, but a full-on action blaster with plot. Controlling the planes is difficult to master and the flight does not feel anything even approaching realistic, but it is fun all the same as you mount your daring raids on a wide variety of craft in this new form of piracy!
Happily, the missions are not the only aspect of the game and your pirate raids are not merely arbitrary objectives that hold the game together. Money from your successful missions can be used to design and purchase new aeroplanes for your squadron, a highly enjoyable exercise once you get the hang of what will go where.
Crimson Skies runs acceptably on my PII/266 with maximum graphical settings (bearing in mind that I am not one of those "frame rate" retentives) and other than a bit of stuttering on some of the menus screens and the design section I did not have any technical difficulties to speak of.
Crimson Skies does not quite grab me the same way Wings did all those years ago, but I think to the newer generation of gamers of my ilk it will be a big success. Hard-core flight-sim fans should avoid this one like the plague, but action gamers, particularly fans of mission based play, should consider Crimson Skies to be well worth a second glance.
platform:windows 95/98/me/2000publisher:ataripackaging:jewel caserating:teenwelcome to the world of crimson skies! enjoy an all-new experience in flig...More at UnbeatableSale, Inc.
Brand: ATARI Category: GAMES - SIMULATION OPERATING SYSTEM: WINDOWS 95/98/ME/2000 PACKAGING: JEWEL CASE ESRB/AGE: TEEN UPC Code: 742725254138 Welcome ...More at eBay
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