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Crimson Skies Redesigns, Emerges Invigorated
Thanks to TeamXbox for their review of Crimson Skies: High Road To Revenge, as the long-in-development Xbox sequel to the cult FASA/Microsoft PC flight game finally ships today, and, according to the reviewer, "...has added a whole new feel to the genre." 1UP also like the results, mentioning the "decent, but nothing worth getting too worked up about" version that showed at E3 2002, and lauding the year's delay which led to such massive improvement, noting "...the Xbox Live modes extend the lifetime of Crimson Skies several times over all by themselves." Finally, GameSpy join the others in giving the game a thumbs-up, suggesting: "This game exemplifies the sleeper hit; its unique feel, solid gameplay, and great aesthetics offer up something a little left of center, but it's something that anyone who's remotely interested in the genre should be checking out."
At least we know this game won't be used to teach Air Force or other "underground" military organizations to pilot potentially dangerous air machinery!
You're just mad because the voices in your head talk to me.
The whole chronicle leading up this this game was shown on some show on TechTV, IIRC. Anyhow, the show focused on XBox development and featured insider footage with the development teams and the product managers. This game went through several rewrites before the original team was let go and eventually canned. The game just sucked to begin with and you could tell from the tedious process they were going through and the dead ends they kept hitting. The product managers disliked everything they kept bringing to the weekly meetings. They even showed the dev team "showing off" completed scenes. I watched and kept thinking "This game is going to SUCK!" Later in the show, they revealed that the team was so far behind schedule and so mediocre that they were canned. They brought in a completely different team and they started from scratch. This is the fruition of their hard work. Congrats, guys, on what looks to be a job well done!
...I have heard rumors that one of those piracy "groups" is working hard to rip Sega/AM2's unreleased multiplayer flight combat simulator "PROPELLER ARENA" for the Dreamcast.
r eamcast/propar ena.asp
Preview & screenshots:
http://sega.gamerweb.com/previews/d
Circumcision is child abuse.
IGN gave it a 9.1, Gabirel from Penny Arcade just got it today, and thinks its great. no links for you. < /soupnazi
Newsie, Moderator, www.tauniverse.com
We spent some hands-on time with a pre-release build of Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge a few weeks back and although the multiplayer/Xbox Live play wasn't up at the time, the single-player game wasn't bad. We'll be publishing more detailed impressions of some of the pre-release builds of games coming out this fall as part of our X03 feature (more coming soon), but in the meantime you can look at some screenshots of Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge and a few other new games.
To call it a sleeper is pushing it a little. Even casual gamers were aware of the Crimson Skies franchise because of Microsoft's marketing campaign for the original PC game and it's clear there is a core of support for the franchise. The PC version obviously had enough success for Microsoft to invest in and complete an Xbox version, otherwise the project would have been killed long ago if the original Xbox game was as bad as described.
We'll reserve final judgment until we get a look at the gold/release version.
I absolutely adored the original Crimson Skies on my PC. Couple it with a wireless gamepad and you are ducking and swooping along with your planes.
It did get a little tricky thouigh. Never did managed to complete the Hollywood level so I had to skip it.....
One of the best features I thought was the fact that it didnt use any flashy prerendered cutscenes or cheesy mission introductions. They used something akin to a radio play. Some very well voiceacted scenes with banter between the various characters. It really conjured up the atmosphere.
I have no sig yet I must scream.
Now I know how all the *nix zealots feel.
ahem.
Is there any chance of this being ported to Windows, I wonder? I adored the first Crimson Skies and played it endlessly. But I don't own an xbox, and don't plan on owning one.
Still, even if this doesn't get ported to any other system, I'm glad to see the Crimson Skies franchise being used again. I really enjoyed the world that it was based in, and the not-real physics of flight were nice. It's a minority view, but when i'm playing a flight-based game that has lots of gunfire and dogfights, I prefer the physics to be less realistic, so you can get in closer to the enemy, and actually see those wonderfully detailed models. radar lock & firing missiles at blips on a screen are more realistic, but boy howdy are they not visually exciting.
OK, ever since Pilotwings introduced me to what I shall call "Arcade" flying - I have long sought for a flight sim that gave the simplicity and fun that Pilotwings did. Crimson Skies was close, but it suffered a lot of bugs and other things (I had also just upgraded to Windows 2000 at the time, so it isn't entirely fair to blame the game).
Anyway, with Halo, Midtown Madness, Crimson Skies, and I am sure there are plenty of others that started out with the PC and then went XBox only, it really seems that MS is neglecting the PC gamer in a big way. Some games just play better on a PC (Halo) where others with a proper gamepad (I have several, none of which are MS) can be every bit as good. Besides, the experience gets better over time as I upgrade my hardware etc, which is something that will probably never happen on hardware. I remember when I got my GeForce 3 card and could semi-reasonably play Midtown Madness 2 at 1600x1200, that was just cool...
I really just wish MS would stop cannibalizing the PC market so much in hopes of pulling the Xb0x0r out of the bottomless money losing pit. Please give us our games back, in all their glory (not missing cool features like co-op from Halo!!!)