Product Description

Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge combines thrilling aerial combat with the swashbuckling style of a Hollywood action-adventure movie. Set in an alternate 1930s world of gunship diplomacy and sinister intrigue, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge lets gamers pilot powerful aircraft against nefarious air pirates and behemoth war zeppelins. As the daring air pirate Nathan Zachary, leader of the infamous Fortune Hunters, players take off on a high-flying adventure, filled with daring escapes and damsels in distress.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5268 in Video Games
• Brand: Microsoft
• Model: 805529097681
• Released on: 2006-06-15
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platform: Xbox
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .75" h x 5.25" w x 7.25" l, .25 pounds

Features

• It's the 1930s and you play a dashing air pirate named Nathan Zachary -- travel around the world with him, to solve the mystery of his friend's murder
• Pilot ten different war planes armed with everything from napalm to magnetic grapples
• Swoop high & low in search of stunt zones, where you'll uncover game secrets and weapon upgrades
• Use the environment as a weapon -- trigger landslides, collapse water towers, and shoot down bridges
• Four-person multiplayer madness as you enter dogfights with enemy aircraft

From the Manufacturer
Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge combines thrilling aerial combat with the swashbuckling style of a Hollywood action-adventure movie. Set in an alternate 1930s world of gunship diplomacy and sinister intrigue, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge lets gamers pilot powerful aircraft against nefarious air pirates and behemoth war zeppelins.

As the daring air pirate Nathan Zachary, leader of the infamous Fortune Hunters, players take off on a high-flying adventure, filled with daring escapes and damsels in distress.

Customer Reviews

Great game, and a few corrections
Crimson Skies is a superb blend of action, comedy, camp, and noir. Do you like Indiana Jones? Do you like James Bond? How about Casablanca? How about the classic Private Eye stories full of mobsters and dames? Crimson skies is a flying game backed by a superb action-adventure story line, and yes it's worthy of comparison to the above. Note: I don't have XBox Live, so this review is entirely based on the singleplayer. That said, I love this game enough to give it 5 stars for singleplayer alone. Live is the super atomic icing on the cake. And I'll try to keep this pretty much spoiler free.

The story(10/10): You are Nathan Zachary, a former playboy who met unfortunate circumstances (along with the rest of the nation) and is fighting his way back to the top. Along the way, you form a rag-tag band of air pirates as you explore this strange quasi-America and unravel a mysterious plot.

The immersion factor(10/10): Amazing. From the moment the intro cutscene pops up, you're going to be completely immersed. Segments like this do tons to push the story, and you're going to love savoring every moment of them. You're quickly thrown into the fray as you hop into the pilot seat. This game makes you remember why you always wanted to be a plane/ bird/ pilot/ superhero/ mobster/ pirate/ (you get the idea) as a kid.

Controls(9/10): The first "level" is a mini-tutorial that's quick and fun. Controls are super natural and goals are (almost) always extremely clear, so you have tons of time to enjoy flying and rarely have to spend time wondering about objectives.

Value(9/10): The singleplayer is long enough to please and worth every moment. I'm not even finished yet, and I would be 100% content if the game was only as long as I've played to. Very nice. There's not much replayability aside from collecting more tokens or exploring more areas, but for some (like me) it'll be more than enough to warrant a few more games.

Overall: This game is FUN. The story needs to be a movie yesterday. The controls can be picked up instantly, but there's plenty of room to grow in skill. The gameplay ranges from frantic dogfights to free-form exploration. Yes, you will find yourself just skimming a lake to see the water splash on the camera, or buzzing through a canyon to test your skills. The combination of graphics, control, and gameplay combine for what may be the best flying experience ever. Sure, die-hard sim fans will gripe about the realism. But do you ever really want too much realism in an action-adventure? I think not.

Bottom line (9.5/10): I think this game is going to start showing up on a couple "Top games of all time" lists. Not THE top game, but definately not far.

Great Live Game
Even though most other reviews have already said it, it bears repeating: this game is great online! The game types are: dogfight, team dogfight, capture the flag, keep away (a sort of tag-like game), team keep away, and wild chicken (a game similar to capture the flag, but with only one flag).

The downside to live is that you're dependent on the number of other people online. You can always find a dogfight game going on, but it's harder to find a keep away or wild chicken game going on at 7 on Sunday morning.

The single player mode is good, but repetitive. There's only so much flying and shooting you can do before you get tired of seemingly doing the same thing over and over again. You can get into AA guns and fire from the ground or from vehicles, but overall this doesn't add too much in the way of variety. The storyline is pretty ridiculous (not in the good way like odd world), and it lacks any sort of complexity.

Overall, I really wouldn't recommend buying this game unless you have x-box live. It's got the great microsoft-title graphics (ala brute force or halo), so it's definately worth renting for that by itself. But if you don't have the challenge of playing other people online, this game's playability is pretty thin.

Great for kids, too
My six years old is a budding ace on this (better than me at this point, I fear). The learning curve is perfect, with lots of encouragement, relatively frequent autosave points and a very simple UI. There's no death (pilots parachute out) and, like a good Pixar movie, the jokes work on many levels, so kids and adults alike will find it clever.

And the biggie: it's great fun, and looks amazing. The Xbox is thin on games that are appropriate for kids, and Crimson Skies is a very welcome arrival. Highly recommended.