Review: Crimson Skies: High Road To Revenge

Crimson Skies: High Road To Revenge (FASA Interactive, 2003) is a period sci-fi aerial combat game.

You know what? I'm bored with how I usually write reviews. Let's try something different. Um... Hmm. I hadn't given this a lot of forethought.

Crimson Skies is set in an alternate past right out of the old pulp magazines, with dashing sky pirates fighting for the various city states of the former United States of America. The game does a good job creating the feel of pulp reality with crazy plane designs, a brash, brawling, womanizing hero, and zeppelins. You can't have an alternate reality without zeppelins.

When I started Crimson Skies, I thought I was going to hate it. It took forever to take down enemy planes, and the upgrade tokens I was hoping would turn my plane into something worth flying were a huge pain to get to. The first island has blimp wrecks all over, many of which have upgrade tokens in them. But the collision detection in narrow spaces is pretty iffy. Sometimes I would bounce off a wall and keep going. Sometimes I'd get stuck nose first in the wall and grind to death. Luckily, most subsequent levels put the icons in easier to reach places and didn't have so much finicky architecture. There was a cave complex near the end that sucked, but mostly it was fun. Flying between (and through decorative holes in) buildings in Chicago was especially keen.

The fighting itself wasn't bad once I upgraded my plane. The planes are all built for multiplayer, so once they're upgraded, there's nothing they can't fight one on one. I actually never used anything besides the upgraded starting plane (unless the mission required something else). Well, actually, that's not entirely true. There are a lot of gun emplacements in the game, and no plane has enough endurance to get through many of the missions, so a third of the game is a shooting gallery. But there was generally enough to shoot at and enough switching from one gun position to another to make it fun. Plus shooting at stuff from a zeppelin does feel different than shooting at stuff from an emplacement or a truck or a boat or a plane, and the variety adds a feeling of depth to the world.

There's no on-foot action, which I didn't mind. All the "human scale" interaction takes place in cut scenes. Maybe my history is off, but I thought the cut scenes were very well done for 2003. They weren't impressive or spellbinding, but they made me smile from time to time.

The music was also a standout with a stirring period sounding score. It would occasionally play action music when there wasn't any action, but for the most part, it significantly improved the feel of the game. It sparked my imagination, which more than compensated for the mediocre visuals.

A lot of the game takes place in natural settings, which look fairly bland. I have some mixed feelings about FASA going out of business. On one hand, my first experience of them was Battletech, a pen and paper wargame with giant robots... all stolen from a Japanese cartoon show I was very fond of (Robotech). Part of me never forgave them for that. But the thought that there won't be any new Crimson Skies games, with shiny planes, billowing smoke, and simulated cloth zeppelins to shoot makes me sad.

Final Score
3 of 5

P.S. I forgot to mention the controls. Trying to control a plane with anything other than real plane controls is always a compromise. Being unable to steer and look around at the same time or correct my orientation and keep a hand on the throttle at the same time was a bit of a pain. Maybe there was an alternate control scheme in the menus. It's an arcade style game, so perhaps I'm asking for too much control, but it would have made the game better. I am one of the weirdos who actually liked the interior view in the Rogue Squadron games on GameCube because it let me use the right thumbstick to look around.

Come to think of it, the PS3's controller might be perfect for Crimson Skies. The tilting could be used for what the right thumbstick is used for in the Xbox version, and the right thumbstick could be for looking around. It might even be better to put the throttle commands on the L1 and R1 buttons. Yeah. That could work.

Oh, I've been talking a lot lately about game length. Crimson Skies is a good length. I almost thought it was too long. There was a plot twist I would have been happy to see "To be continued" after. But the game didn't go on super long after that, and had a big giant action finish which was cool. Also it wouldn't have made much sense to end at the earlier twist, since the revenge from the game's title hadn't happened yet.