So High In The Sky

I've mentioned once before my interest in alternative histories. One of the other things I used to have considerable interest in was fighter aircraft, especially World War 2 era airplanes. There's just something fascinating about how, in a short period of time, you had countries go from using biplanes (such as the British Gladiator fighters and Swordfish torpedo bombers), to early jet aircraft. Plus, it seems to be the time when air power really became a battlefield force to be reckoned with, so there's some good literature out there on it. But that's not the point of today's post. Today's post is about what you get when you mix those two things together into a game, then present for my approval, in the form of Crimson Skies: The High Road to Revenge.

Crimson Skies is a flight sim set in the late '30s. The U.S. has fragmented in the wake of Prohibition and the Depression. Why those events would cause the United States to break into several smaller nations, I have no idea, but it did, and now air travel is where it's at, especially when it comes to commerce. And where you have big fat zeppelins full of goodies, you'll have air pirates. Naturally.

You play as an air pirate that gets mixed up in something a little bigger than you like, after you find an old German scientist friend of yours dead, and opt to go after the killer. Starting from the West Coast pirate hangout of Sea Haven, you travel to Chicago (heart of the Industrial States of America), Arixo (Arizona + New Mexico), and Brazil. You'll dogfight with your enemies, law enforcement, protect air shipments and passenger blimps, as well as do a little smuggling here and there. If your plane is damaged, you can look for a repair shop nearby and get patched up (for a fee), or find a hanger, and appropriate a plane (and if you keep that plane through the end of the level, and take it back to your blimp, then you get to add it to your selectable crafts). If your so inclined, you choose to board your blimp during a fight, and man the guns, just keep an eye on your health bar.

Flying is easy, pulling off aerial tricks is just a matter of how you pull back on the two thumbsticks, though those moves pull from the same "special" meter as your boost button does. There aren't any jets, but there are about a dozen different aircraft to choose from, including a mini-gyro (best used to snipe from a protected position). There are large, slow, heavily armed craft, faster, less armored ones, and a few in between. You collect enough tokens (which you can find floating around in levels, or receive for completing missions), you can upgrade a plane, boosting some of the stats. It won't make a huge difference in performance, but every little bit helps.

Crimson Skies does have multi-player, and that can be a lot of fun, especially since it seems to be the one game Alex has some real skill at (he's gotten quite a bit better than me at it). It's not particularly difficult to pick up (my dad figured it out quickly enough), and if you enjoy flight games, you would probably enjoy this.