 Whatever happened to flight sims? A few years ago there
wasn’t enough time to play them all, but in 2000 they’ve become (along with war
and adventure titles) one of the endangered genres of computer gaming. With many titles cancelled and few new games
forthcoming (excepting Microsoft’s Flight Simulator 2 and Hasbro’s B-17), it
appears that flight sims are in danger of becoming yet another of those dreaded
“niche” markets. It’s
difficult to fathom how one of the once most-popular game genres could descend to such a
state so quickly, but I’m inclined to blame it on the fact that most recent flight
sims have chosen to pursue realism over playability.
In other words, while they focused on detailing impeccable flight models and exact
cockpits, they forgot that the vast majority of people buy these things because they want
to play a game. And games are supposed to be fun. While hardcore flight
simmers—along with wargame grognards, the most demanding and socially retarded of
computer gamers—surely reveled in Falcon 4.0’s tome of a manual, they’re in
a distinct minority. Frankly, your garden variety gamers lean toward flight sims like the
old chestnuts Battlehawks 1942 or Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe or the original Red
Baron. The hardcore can condescend as much as they want (and they will, oh yes, they
will), but for most the measure of a computer flight sim isn’t how well it models
spins; it’s how much fun they have playing it. And that’s why Crimson Skies is such a hoot--it models
flight about as accurately as Quake III models combat, and it makes no apologies about it.
The focus here is entirely on a good time, and realism be damned. Crimson Skies is wacky, it’s imaginative,
it’s way more fun than any flight sim released in the last five years. And with any
luck it’ll give the stagnant sim market the kick in the ass it’s needed for
about that long.
 Crimson Skies is modeled on FASA’s board game of the same
name, and takes place in an alternative 1930’s where the Great Depression, the Great
War, and Prohibition have caused the USA to fragment into a collection of independent
regional governments—with names like the Confederation of Dixie and Appalachia and
the Nation of Hollywood. Since none of these states gets along with the others, the
ex-nation’s railways are no longer tenable modes of transportation. Undaunted,
America’s teamsters turn to an alternate mode of transport—the Zeppelin, of
course. And air traffic begets air piracy. To its credit, Crimson Skies does a great job
of capturing the atmosphere of this improbable alternative 30’s. Partly this is done through allusions to icons of
30’s pop culture like swing music, hep cat slang, Howard Hughes and the Hollywood
studio system. There are plenty of references to world politics, too—you’ll run
into haughty Brits trying to colonize Hawaii in anticipation of the Japanese threat,
“Red” Russian zeppelins, and of course Nazis. On top of this, the game’s
designers have gone out of the way to give the game the feel of a thirties radio
serial—the dialogue and situations are hilariously spot-on, right out of Tom Mix and
the Air Pirates.
 In Crimson Skies, you take the role of Nathan Zachary, a
swashbuckling cross between Indiana Jones and Errol Flynn.
You’ll lead a group of air banditos named the Fortune Hunters through a
campaign of 24 missions, passing through five locales---Hawaii, the Pacific Northwest,
Hollywood, the Rockies, and New York City. In the course of the campaign your status will
rise from that of small-time air crook to Robin Hood-like celebrity. The campaign’s
story is captivating, full of Betrayal! Romance! and Adventure!, and campaign missions are
a riot. While almost all of them contain at least one massive furball and plenty of
Zeppelin-busting, they’ll also ask you to perform a variety of more spectacular
tasks, like lowering a ladder to someone on a speeding train, stealing prototype aircraft,
or sinking Nazi freighters. Throughout, the emphasis is on pure action, and in Crimson
Skies action means blowing stuff up real good and barnstorming. Almost all of the combat in Crimson Skies takes
place on the deck, so don’t expect to fly at 10,000--or even 3,000—feet. To this
end, the good folks at Zipper Interactive have done a superb job of crafting environments
that offer plenty of opportunities for daredevil stunts. The ground doesn’t typically
play an enormous part in most flight sims, except to serve as something to crash into, but
in Crimson Skies you’ll find yourself weaving in and out of buildings, bridges,
caves, and rock formations.
And man, do they look good. Crimson Skies’ graphics are attractive and colorful from
the ground up. The planes are very nicely done, even though they’re so fantastically
constructed (most of them are pushers) that they’d never get off the ground in real
life. Especially nice are the cloud effects and explosions, which easily rank amongst the
best I’ve ever seen. And the game’s interfaces and scrapbooks (which allow you
to collect memorabilia from your missions) are done the best pulp-30’s fashion, which
adds even more panache to the game’s already stylish feel.
 As for flight models--well, there really aren’t any
flight models in the hardcore sense of the term. Sure, some planes are faster or more
agile than others, but all of them are capable of aerobatics that even the most nimble of
WWII fighters would have trouble pulling off. You’ll not be troubled by bothersome
realities like stall or spin or black outs, and every plane’s engine is apparently
powered by plutonium—unless you’re damaged, climb rates are ridiculously fast. What this makes for is deliriously hectic combat,
as planes pull impossible loops and dart through narrow apertures in mock-ups of Egyptian
monuments.
Planes are armed with machine guns and you can choose to arm your hard points with
a wide variety of rockets—the most useful being high explosive and flak. In combat, weaponry is quite effective, and damage
is modeled, uh-- abstractly. Situational awareness is never a problem, since you can
easily scroll through potential threats by using your plane’s “spyglass”
feature, which shows you a magnified image of your enemies and gives you their location,
even if they’re hidden by clouds or behind a mountain. Extremely unrealistic, of
course, but it sure makes for nonstop action.
Online multiplayer play is excellent
and includes the usual assortment of connection options. Games include deathmatch,
zeppelin vs. zeppelin (you defend your zep while trying to take out the other team’s)
and capture the flag. There were plenty of willing opponents on the Zone, and Crimson
Skies played very smoothly.
 I suppose, after all this raving about Crimson Skies,
you’re wondering why I gave it four stars. Well, the fact is that I almost gave it
three. That’s because Crimson Skies as it now stands is one of the most frustrating
games I’ve ever played, and desperately in need of a patch. Here are some of the
problems I ran into: sudden crashes to desktop, wingmen who habitually flew into my plane,
extremely slow load times, and—even on my 733 with a GeForce 2 and 128 megs of
RAM—very annoying frame rate slowdowns. Most of the slowdowns can be worked through
in combat-oriented missions, but some of the missions require you to fly through obstacle
courses, and the split-second maneuvers required just can’t be executed through the
chop. Worst of all, Crimson Skies will
sometimes eat your saves. In the campaign, the program automatically saves after
you’ve completed a mission. When you start the game back up, you’ll begin with
the next mission. That’s the theory, at least. Twice already I’ve booted up my
game, only to find that all my hard-fought missions have been erased—I had to start
over from the beginning. This is inexcusable. The campaign game is pretty linear, so
there’s not a ton of replay value. Being required to play through the first several
missions three times now has not made me happy.
Crimson Skies has almost all the qualities of a five star, A-list, matinee idol
game--compelling story, imaginative setting, thrilling action, killer graphics, lots of
stuff to blow up. But until some very serious problems with the campaign game are cleaned
up, Crimson Skies remains at the B-movie level.
--Rick
Fehrenbacher |
