Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge Review

Even though Microsoft claimed that they would be the reigning champion of online gaming, Xbox Live has seen a weak performance, at best. MechAssault, Rainbow Six 3, and Unreal Championship are the only games worth playing on Xbox Live that are well known. Microsoft attempted to fix this problem with Crimson Skies, but did it succeed?

Basically, the story is that the United States broke up several years before the game takes place. Several nation-states emerged and fought each other. To further distance themselves from their neighboring states, they destroyed all roads that connected them together. Now, the only way to travel is by means of planes, zeppelins, and boats. With no federal laws, pirates run free, tormenting people with their looting.

You take the role of Nathan Zachary, a man that lost everything during the stock market crash of 1929. He is part of a team of pirates known as the Fortune Hunters, who steal from the rich and whose goal is to gain the fortune back that he had lost.

The main idea of the game is to steal planes, destroy enemy fighters, etc. You receive cash by completing missions; with cash you can upgrade your plane, repair your plane, etc. The game is open in the sense that you can choose from several different missions.

Don’t pay much attention to single-player mode, if you own Xbox Live. In multi-player, you can either play split screen, LAN, or Xbox Live. Xbox Live allows up to 16 different people to play each other, with no lag, making the war-zone atmosphere even better than it originally was.

Online play allows you to have several different choices, whether it is dogfight, team dogfight, capture the flag, or something else, they are all equally entertaining. If you don’t know the descriptions of these game-types, you must not play games much, but I’ll quickly go over them. Dogfight is basically a free-for-all killing-spree, where the best pilot ends up the winner. Team dogfight is exactly what the name says, dogfight, but with teams. Capture the flag is, well, capture the flag; you capture the flag and try to return it.

If you do not own Xbox Live, Crimson Skies might not be even worth a rental. The single-player, while beautiful, lacks the variety that other games do. The controls are superb for a flight shooter; Microsoft is well-known for their authentic simulators, don’t get this confused with one of those. It’s as simple as this; if you have Xbox Live, this is the best game that you can possibly play on it at this time.