Crimson Skies takes place in North America around the 1930?s, America is no more. Instead she has been split into several regions; each is at war with each other. There is no law and the only way to get around in Crimson Skies is through the air. More on that later. You assume the role of Nathan Zachary who runs a gang of air pirates called the ?Fortune Hunters?. He and the rest of his gain are committed to putting an end to the greedy mega-millionaire William Harriman and his cronies.

How is the Gameplay?

The controls of Crimson Skies have an extremely arcade feel to them. The right trigger fire?s your plane?s primary weapon while the left trigger fire?s a special secondary weapon such as a torpedo that causes electric currents to surge through your enemy's vessel. The left thumbstick is used to control the plane while the right thumbstick is used for evasive maneuvers. By clicking on both thumsticks and pulling them both backwards, your plane will spin around allowing for quick 180-degree turns. The game?s camera is stationed right behind the plane and you can use the directional pad for looking left or right. What would an action packed flight combat game be without a wide assortment of planes? Crimson Skies packs almost a dozen different craft for you to spin around in. Unfortunately the game?s default craft the ?Devastator? is almost too powerful, once fully upgraded it?s really the only plane you?ll need to finish the game. Which is a shame.
16/20

What does it look like?

Crimson Skies boasts some very impressive graphics, but that's a given since this is a Microsoft first party title. The in-game cutscenes look very impressive, each character in the game has a good amount of polygons, and the only downside is that it isn't used enough. The environments in Crimson Skies are some of the best parts of the game, only one word describes them. Massive. You'll get to explore locals such as Chicago, Sea Haven, and Mexico. Spread throughout these places are varying side quests which have you racing the local speed demons, delivering cash to a merchant, and destroying trains. The icing on the cake are the explosions which you?ll see a lot of considering the many different ways of shooting down the dozens of bad guys occupying the screen.
8/10

Stability:

The game never once crashed once on me or had any clipping issues
5/5

Interface:

Very simple, one button takes you straight to the single player game, another takes you straight to the multi-player.
4/5
The sound in the game is good but not outstanding, you'll hear the same explosions, which can get monotonous and the engine sounds are decent at best.
6/10

Replayability?

Crimson Skies is value packed. The single player portion of the game will take around 12 hours to complete depending on the amount of secrets you can find. But the most important part of the game is the multiplayer, and its good enough to make you put down your Halo 2. Upon entering the lobby you?ll get to choose from all of the planes that you played with from the single player mode. There are also around 7 different game types including, deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture-the-flag, keep away, and wild chicken which has you and 15 other players shooting down a flying chicken for points. I?ve spent about 15 hours in the multi-player and basically all of my games have been lag free. If that?s not enough, we also get tons of free downloadable content courtesy of the game?s developer ?Fasa Studio?. Planes, maps, game types it just feels good getting free material.

Appropriateness:

Violence: In Crimson Skies you spend all of your time shooting down enemy aircraft, thankfully every time you do a parachute pops out and they float slowly back down to earth. (-3 points)
There is no blood in the game (-0 points)
There is no gore in the game (-0 points)
Minor swear words are used throughout the game (-2.5 points)
There is some sexual dialogue used (-2 points)
There is some sexual content such as Nathan waking up next to a character named ?Betty? one morning and remarking ?I hope I was a perfect gentlemen last night? its unclear whether they?re wearing clothes or not. (-4 points)
There is no occult or supernatural environment in the game. (-0 points)
There is no occult or supernatural in the game. (-0 points)
The game puts you in the seat of an air pirate, I think we all have a good definition of what pirates are. (-2 points
There is no gross humor in the game (-0 points)