Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge
Posted November 7, 2003
Like Midtown Madness 3 before it, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge is a new installment in an established Microsoft franchise that's making the transition from the PC to the XBox. The game is set in an alternate version of the 1930s, one where the world is still licking its wounds from the Great War and boasts impressively advanced technology. North America has been left in tatters, and with transporation and distribution leaning heavily on the shoulders of zeppelins and assorted aircraft, it's a lucrative time to be an air pirate. Crimson Skies is centered around the adventures of Nathan Zachary, who heads up a band of thieves appropriately named the Fortune Hunters. The game begins with Nathan reclaiming a plane he'd bet in a poker match against a group of Cajuns, quickly pitted against a small army of the Southern fried pirates and shortly thereafter the remnants of a government determined to stomp out these bandits once and for all. Nathan's high-flying exploits are spread across the continent as he makes the world safe for piracy, staving off the destructive whims of a madman.
Gameplay:
The controls are in keeping with the instantly accessible arcade-style gameplay, and the excellent tutorial that opens the game should sufficiently iron out any sort of learning curve. The left thumbstick tackles movement, and control of the planes and anti-aircraft guns throughout is tight and responsive. The right thumbstick rolls, and combinations of the two sticks unleash any of a number of special maneuvers, including barrel rolls, snap rolls, yo-yos, a power climb, a split-S, and an Immelman. (If those terms are meaningless to you, as most of it was to me until I first gave Crimson Skies a spin, take a look at Tailslide's Air Combat Glossary.) The shoulder triggers provide primary and secondary fire, and other face buttons are used to speed up and brake. Because fast-moving enemy craft can be tough to keep on-screen at all times, a press of the black button rotates the camera to show a current opponent in relation to the player. Other views can be selected with the directional pad.
There are a variety of different planes that can be commandeered throughout the course of the game, varying in speed, strength, and resistance to damage. Rather than just a stats-swap across different aircraft, the planes in Crimson Skies feel and play differently. There are ten planes throughout the game that can be acquired, each with its own set of primary and secondary weapons. The primary weapons, generally machine guns or cannons, have unlimited ammunition, but aren't as strong as the finite secondary weapons. Among them are a variety of rockets, magnetic missiles, an electrical pulse that both damages and immobilizes enemies, fireballs, and the aircraft equivalent to the standard FPS sniper rifle. If Nathan amasses enough cash and finds a sufficient number of upgrade tokens scattered throughout each stage, planes can be upgraded, beefing up their stats. To snag the funds necessary for the upgrades and repairs, Nathan can bet in races against other cocky pilots, and stealing the cargo from fallen enemies and completing some missions further fatten his bankroll. Being a pirate and all, looting is also an option, though it's not without consequences. Nathan can switch aircraft by heading back to the Pandora or keeping an eye out for docked planes on the ground.
Not all of the action takes place with the player perched in a cockpit. Anti-aircraft guns are scattered throughout the levels as well as atop the Pandora. Just as there's a reasonable amount of diversity in Crimson Skies' aircraft, there are several different anti-aircraft guns. One type fires rapidly but the individual bullets do comparatively little damage, another is more explosive but takes longer between blasts, and a third launches a guidable rocket. There is often the option to cycle between multiple types of these guns, moving Nathan and accordingly altering his plane of view, so to speak. A number of missions require helming the anti-aircraft guns, but in some of them, players have the option of taking the game's advice or opting for a dogfight regardless. There's a trade-off between taking out enemies in a plane or manning the anti-aircraft guns. Obviously, the guns are stationary, and if a plane leaves Nathan's field of view, there's little he can do. However, the anti-aircraft guns have the ability to zoom in, making it easier to get a bead on an opponent from a distance. A lot of the time, when games cram in different types of gameplay, they seem really jarring and out of place. The anti-aircraft portions in Crimson Skies are handled very well, although I have to admit that I leaned towards a dogfight if I had the option just because I enjoyed chasing down my opponents more.
The single-player game takes place across twenty levels (nineteen, if you exclude the opening tutorial), with dozens of individual missions spread throughout them. There are the obligatory escort missions, but don't fret -- the craft being escorted in Crimson Skies aren't pushovers for the most part, and these missions are actually very fun. Many of the other goals include, not surprisingly, blowing up most everything in sight: planes, boats, fuel tanks, zeppelins, gun towers, bandit camps, and...yup...colossal bosses. It's a lot more varied than one might expect, bolstered further by goals such as delivering and collecting items, passing a series of tests that challenge control of the plane more than mere gunplay, and springing a pal out of prison. Many of these tasks have to be selected, rather than just thrusting an unprepared player into the action, providing an opportunity to fly around and acquaint oneself with an area in the vein of Grand Theft Auto. Checkpoints follow each completed goal, and automatic saving staves off a few unnecessary button presses.
The general convention with many of the currently available XBox Live releases is that a game can have an excellent single player mode or excellent multiplayer, but the two up till now have appeared to be mutually exclusive. Crimson Skies greatly bridges that gap, offering a compelling single-player experience as well as some of the best multiplayer gaming on the XBox, enabling players to duke it out on a single console, gun each other down using the local System Link, or dogfight over the Internet via XBox Live.
Before delving into the individual game types, it's worth noting how perfectly Crimson Skies nails multiplayer gaming. Titles with an emphasis on multiplayer often require plodding through its single-player game to unlock the vehicles, characters, and assorted elements that make the multiplayer at all appealing. Midtown Madness 3 offered almost all of its vehicles immediately over XBox Live, and Crimson Skies takes that exceptionally welcome approach a step further. Without even completing the initial single-player training mission, all of the planes are accessible in all of its multiplayer modes. Crimson Skies also accomodates split-screen multiplayer over XBox Live, a feature that's often overlooked. No matter how many people are playing at any given time, there are no stutters or hiccups in the frame rate, and I didn't encounter any lag. Players can also choose to participate in games where statistics aren't tracked, easing up on the stats obsession with which some gamers seem to be afflicted.
There are a variety of different multiplayer game types, available both in split screen multiplayer and over XBox Live. "Dogfight" is a free-for-all deathmatch, and "Team Dogfight", as the name suggests, is more of the same, grouping pilots into teams. Another familiar mode is "Flag Heist", the requisite Capture the Flag mode. Although it's not expressly noted in any of the documentation I sifted through, each team has to have its own flag at its base to score with another team's flag. "Keep Away" is kind of a cross between King of the Hill and Capture the Flag; each level has some loot that the players are gunning for, and the plane that snags the booty and holds onto it the longest is the winner. "Team Keep Away", again, adds a team component to the gameplay. The final mode, "Wild Chicken", is bizarre and infectious, which accounts for its popularity among online gamers. "Wild Chicken" functions on a point-based system, and each plane that's shot down nets the attacker a single point. Pretty straight-forward so far, but to really tally up points, players pursue poultry throughout the level. Players who grab a chicken and return it to their base without getting blasted out of the sky are rewarded with seven points.
The multiplayer modes are all uniformly excellent and elevate Crimson Skies from what would have otherwise been a merely great game to an incredible, virtually indispensable one. There are a few slight drawbacks, though, which I only mention because it's part of the job description. At least at the outset, there are only five levels, though admittedly they're five exceptionally well-designed levels: the fog-draped Windy City, a futuristic Chicago, the twisting turns of an Incan-ish Lost City, the sparse, expansive Sea Haven, and the canyons of Arixo. New maps are almost a certainty for future downloadable content over XBox Live, but I wouldn't have minded having an additional setting or two straight out of the box. Crimson Skies also benefits from having a number of players participating. That's clearly not a concern when playing against online, but the one-on-one matches I played with friends weren't nearly as exciting. I like having a lot of targets to choose from, and hunting down a single evasive plane in these sprawling levels didn't impress the same way matches over XBox Live did. Though I didn't experience this myself, I've read on various message boards that some users have had trouble making the transition from single player to multiplayer in a single sitting, with saved games intermittently losing data in the process. There also appeared to be some confusion with new games inadvertently being started when a game would end. These sorts of concerns are fairly minor overall, and many of them, I suspect, will be corrected with the first batch of downloadable content. For those who haven't made the plunge into XBox Live, Crimson Skies includes a two month free trial to the service.
Graphics:
The graphics in Crimson Skies are nearly as impressive as the gameplay. Its plane models share a similar propeller-based appearance but all look remarkably different from one another, benefiting greatly from the game's Elseworlds-ish '30s setting. Blowing up everything in sight in video games is always a blast, but Crimson Skies makes it a visual treat as well. Opponents exhibit incrementally more damage with each hit, smoldering and collapsing until their inevitable downward spiral and explosion. Wearing down zeppelins in particular impressed me more than any other graphical aspect of the game. The stages are reasonably expansive and richly detailed, boasting some of the most jaw-dropping water effects I've had the pleasure of seeing.
Crimson Skies supports progressive scan but does not have a widescreen mode.
Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio in Crimson Skies is engulfing, offering a number of smooth pans and distinct effects in and across channels. The center speaker lies dormant for the most part, with dialogue being one of the only notable exceptions. In the cut scenes, the dialogue is spread across every single channel; when Nathan or any of the number of other characters in the game start chatting, players will hear each syllable from five different directions. Bass response is thunderous, particularly as smoldering planes and zeppelins careen towards the ground.
The voice acting is solid throughout, and Crimson Skies is among just a handful of games that successfully tries to intermingle humor with the action. The one-liners after shooting an enemy plane out of the sky didn't become particularly repetitive as in games like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and several of the dry quips in the well-rendered cinematics left me laughing out loud. There are a variety of sound effects for each plane and weapon, and the score matches the visuals exceptionally well, furthering its vintage white-knuckle Hollywood action feel.
Conclusion:
Despite facing a number of stumbling blocks throughout its production, many of which were detailed in a special on the Discovery Channel, Crimson Skies soars, well-worth every microsecond of the additional time that went into its creation. Addictive gameplay, stunning graphics, a fully fleshed-out single player experience, and a variety of infectious multiplayer modes make for one of the most compelling XBox purchases of the holiday season. Highly Recommended.
Demos and Videos: Crimson Skies includes a playable demo of Voodoo Vince, along with a barrage of video previews for XSN Sports titles.
Related Links: Video Game Talk's Aaron Beierle has also written a review of Crimson Skies, for those interested in a second opinion. The Crimson Skies site at XBox.com has videos and more details about the game.
Gameplay:
The controls are in keeping with the instantly accessible arcade-style gameplay, and the excellent tutorial that opens the game should sufficiently iron out any sort of learning curve. The left thumbstick tackles movement, and control of the planes and anti-aircraft guns throughout is tight and responsive. The right thumbstick rolls, and combinations of the two sticks unleash any of a number of special maneuvers, including barrel rolls, snap rolls, yo-yos, a power climb, a split-S, and an Immelman. (If those terms are meaningless to you, as most of it was to me until I first gave Crimson Skies a spin, take a look at Tailslide's Air Combat Glossary.) The shoulder triggers provide primary and secondary fire, and other face buttons are used to speed up and brake. Because fast-moving enemy craft can be tough to keep on-screen at all times, a press of the black button rotates the camera to show a current opponent in relation to the player. Other views can be selected with the directional pad.
There are a variety of different planes that can be commandeered throughout the course of the game, varying in speed, strength, and resistance to damage. Rather than just a stats-swap across different aircraft, the planes in Crimson Skies feel and play differently. There are ten planes throughout the game that can be acquired, each with its own set of primary and secondary weapons. The primary weapons, generally machine guns or cannons, have unlimited ammunition, but aren't as strong as the finite secondary weapons. Among them are a variety of rockets, magnetic missiles, an electrical pulse that both damages and immobilizes enemies, fireballs, and the aircraft equivalent to the standard FPS sniper rifle. If Nathan amasses enough cash and finds a sufficient number of upgrade tokens scattered throughout each stage, planes can be upgraded, beefing up their stats. To snag the funds necessary for the upgrades and repairs, Nathan can bet in races against other cocky pilots, and stealing the cargo from fallen enemies and completing some missions further fatten his bankroll. Being a pirate and all, looting is also an option, though it's not without consequences. Nathan can switch aircraft by heading back to the Pandora or keeping an eye out for docked planes on the ground.
Not all of the action takes place with the player perched in a cockpit. Anti-aircraft guns are scattered throughout the levels as well as atop the Pandora. Just as there's a reasonable amount of diversity in Crimson Skies' aircraft, there are several different anti-aircraft guns. One type fires rapidly but the individual bullets do comparatively little damage, another is more explosive but takes longer between blasts, and a third launches a guidable rocket. There is often the option to cycle between multiple types of these guns, moving Nathan and accordingly altering his plane of view, so to speak. A number of missions require helming the anti-aircraft guns, but in some of them, players have the option of taking the game's advice or opting for a dogfight regardless. There's a trade-off between taking out enemies in a plane or manning the anti-aircraft guns. Obviously, the guns are stationary, and if a plane leaves Nathan's field of view, there's little he can do. However, the anti-aircraft guns have the ability to zoom in, making it easier to get a bead on an opponent from a distance. A lot of the time, when games cram in different types of gameplay, they seem really jarring and out of place. The anti-aircraft portions in Crimson Skies are handled very well, although I have to admit that I leaned towards a dogfight if I had the option just because I enjoyed chasing down my opponents more.
The single-player game takes place across twenty levels (nineteen, if you exclude the opening tutorial), with dozens of individual missions spread throughout them. There are the obligatory escort missions, but don't fret -- the craft being escorted in Crimson Skies aren't pushovers for the most part, and these missions are actually very fun. Many of the other goals include, not surprisingly, blowing up most everything in sight: planes, boats, fuel tanks, zeppelins, gun towers, bandit camps, and...yup...colossal bosses. It's a lot more varied than one might expect, bolstered further by goals such as delivering and collecting items, passing a series of tests that challenge control of the plane more than mere gunplay, and springing a pal out of prison. Many of these tasks have to be selected, rather than just thrusting an unprepared player into the action, providing an opportunity to fly around and acquaint oneself with an area in the vein of Grand Theft Auto. Checkpoints follow each completed goal, and automatic saving staves off a few unnecessary button presses.
The general convention with many of the currently available XBox Live releases is that a game can have an excellent single player mode or excellent multiplayer, but the two up till now have appeared to be mutually exclusive. Crimson Skies greatly bridges that gap, offering a compelling single-player experience as well as some of the best multiplayer gaming on the XBox, enabling players to duke it out on a single console, gun each other down using the local System Link, or dogfight over the Internet via XBox Live.
Before delving into the individual game types, it's worth noting how perfectly Crimson Skies nails multiplayer gaming. Titles with an emphasis on multiplayer often require plodding through its single-player game to unlock the vehicles, characters, and assorted elements that make the multiplayer at all appealing. Midtown Madness 3 offered almost all of its vehicles immediately over XBox Live, and Crimson Skies takes that exceptionally welcome approach a step further. Without even completing the initial single-player training mission, all of the planes are accessible in all of its multiplayer modes. Crimson Skies also accomodates split-screen multiplayer over XBox Live, a feature that's often overlooked. No matter how many people are playing at any given time, there are no stutters or hiccups in the frame rate, and I didn't encounter any lag. Players can also choose to participate in games where statistics aren't tracked, easing up on the stats obsession with which some gamers seem to be afflicted.
There are a variety of different multiplayer game types, available both in split screen multiplayer and over XBox Live. "Dogfight" is a free-for-all deathmatch, and "Team Dogfight", as the name suggests, is more of the same, grouping pilots into teams. Another familiar mode is "Flag Heist", the requisite Capture the Flag mode. Although it's not expressly noted in any of the documentation I sifted through, each team has to have its own flag at its base to score with another team's flag. "Keep Away" is kind of a cross between King of the Hill and Capture the Flag; each level has some loot that the players are gunning for, and the plane that snags the booty and holds onto it the longest is the winner. "Team Keep Away", again, adds a team component to the gameplay. The final mode, "Wild Chicken", is bizarre and infectious, which accounts for its popularity among online gamers. "Wild Chicken" functions on a point-based system, and each plane that's shot down nets the attacker a single point. Pretty straight-forward so far, but to really tally up points, players pursue poultry throughout the level. Players who grab a chicken and return it to their base without getting blasted out of the sky are rewarded with seven points.
The multiplayer modes are all uniformly excellent and elevate Crimson Skies from what would have otherwise been a merely great game to an incredible, virtually indispensable one. There are a few slight drawbacks, though, which I only mention because it's part of the job description. At least at the outset, there are only five levels, though admittedly they're five exceptionally well-designed levels: the fog-draped Windy City, a futuristic Chicago, the twisting turns of an Incan-ish Lost City, the sparse, expansive Sea Haven, and the canyons of Arixo. New maps are almost a certainty for future downloadable content over XBox Live, but I wouldn't have minded having an additional setting or two straight out of the box. Crimson Skies also benefits from having a number of players participating. That's clearly not a concern when playing against online, but the one-on-one matches I played with friends weren't nearly as exciting. I like having a lot of targets to choose from, and hunting down a single evasive plane in these sprawling levels didn't impress the same way matches over XBox Live did. Though I didn't experience this myself, I've read on various message boards that some users have had trouble making the transition from single player to multiplayer in a single sitting, with saved games intermittently losing data in the process. There also appeared to be some confusion with new games inadvertently being started when a game would end. These sorts of concerns are fairly minor overall, and many of them, I suspect, will be corrected with the first batch of downloadable content. For those who haven't made the plunge into XBox Live, Crimson Skies includes a two month free trial to the service.
Graphics:
The graphics in Crimson Skies are nearly as impressive as the gameplay. Its plane models share a similar propeller-based appearance but all look remarkably different from one another, benefiting greatly from the game's Elseworlds-ish '30s setting. Blowing up everything in sight in video games is always a blast, but Crimson Skies makes it a visual treat as well. Opponents exhibit incrementally more damage with each hit, smoldering and collapsing until their inevitable downward spiral and explosion. Wearing down zeppelins in particular impressed me more than any other graphical aspect of the game. The stages are reasonably expansive and richly detailed, boasting some of the most jaw-dropping water effects I've had the pleasure of seeing.
Crimson Skies supports progressive scan but does not have a widescreen mode.
Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio in Crimson Skies is engulfing, offering a number of smooth pans and distinct effects in and across channels. The center speaker lies dormant for the most part, with dialogue being one of the only notable exceptions. In the cut scenes, the dialogue is spread across every single channel; when Nathan or any of the number of other characters in the game start chatting, players will hear each syllable from five different directions. Bass response is thunderous, particularly as smoldering planes and zeppelins careen towards the ground.
The voice acting is solid throughout, and Crimson Skies is among just a handful of games that successfully tries to intermingle humor with the action. The one-liners after shooting an enemy plane out of the sky didn't become particularly repetitive as in games like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and several of the dry quips in the well-rendered cinematics left me laughing out loud. There are a variety of sound effects for each plane and weapon, and the score matches the visuals exceptionally well, furthering its vintage white-knuckle Hollywood action feel.
Conclusion:
Despite facing a number of stumbling blocks throughout its production, many of which were detailed in a special on the Discovery Channel, Crimson Skies soars, well-worth every microsecond of the additional time that went into its creation. Addictive gameplay, stunning graphics, a fully fleshed-out single player experience, and a variety of infectious multiplayer modes make for one of the most compelling XBox purchases of the holiday season. Highly Recommended.
Demos and Videos: Crimson Skies includes a playable demo of Voodoo Vince, along with a barrage of video previews for XSN Sports titles.
Related Links: Video Game Talk's Aaron Beierle has also written a review of Crimson Skies, for those interested in a second opinion. The Crimson Skies site at XBox.com has videos and more details about the game.