Customer Reviews

Crimson Skies (Jewel Case)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Crimson Skies game was originally developed as a tabletop game, using miniatures and dice to simulate dogfighting. Here that is translated into one of the best dogfighting sims I've ever played.

The storyline is based on an alternate history. It'd take too long to discuss it here, but in short the United States fractured into smaller countries in the early 1900s, and rather than falling in love with the automobile, America fell in love with the plane. This story takes place in 1937, where you lead a band of sky pirates against a number of enemies.

Combat is always intense without being stupidly difficult. This game shouldn't be called a flight sim, as it's focused more on fun than physics, and it pays off in a big way. The story is engaging and the voice work that goes along with it is intentionally cheesy to invoke the feel of old comic books... which it does perfectly. Multiplayer is also entertaining.

I'm glad to see it getting new life in the bargain bin form, because this one is well worth picking up. Now my friends have no more excuses not to.

I first saw this game at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant/arcade where you sit in a plastic bubble that rocks and rolls with the movements of your joystick, lending an immersive feel to this combat flight simulator. I'm glad there is a version for the PC. Sure, the flight model is not exactly realistic and your wingmen are pretty much useless, but I was impressed by the fine voice acting and the whole 1930's heroic action movie feel. Several of the missions are of the "You want me to do WHAT?" variety, such as fending off a dozen enemy fighters to do an aerial pickup of some guy off a moving train or zeppelin before it blows up. Although some missions took me many attempts to succeed, this game held my interest all the way through, and I completed every one to the game's ending.

Personally experienced technical issue: The game runs fine in Windows XP on Athlon XP 2500 processor with 1GB RAM at highest 1024x768 resolution (hardware acceleration) on Nvidia Geforce 5200-based AGP graphics card. However, the game has problems running at this resolution on newer graphics cards such as Nvidia Geforce 6800GT PCIe card; problems which include corruption of the in-game drop-down menus and unpredictable termination during gameplay to Windows. This is with the Nvidia drivers as of August 2006. Setting Win98 compatibility mode didn't work for me. A workaround that actually works is to set a lower display resolution such as 800x600 (software rendered), which of course detracts from the visual experience.

The game is old (read: cheap) enough to buy more than 1 copy to take advantage of the multiplayer feature. Playing on separate PCs, my 9-yr old daughter and I enjoyed: Capture the flag, head-to-head dogfights, and a variation of the zeppelin missions, in which we liked to help each other destroy our own zeps.

I played this game in college on Windows XP with an ATI graphics card. It played fine with no problems at all. It wasn't my copy of Crimson Skies and so I had to stop playing for several years, but then I found it here and bought it. Unfortunately, I had also been forced to upgrade PC's and had a newere Nvidia graphics card. That normally would not be an issue, but with this game it is. Nvidia did not wich to help, and MS certainly wasn't going to. I could find no help online whatsoever. So for the past year, I've had a brand new copy of this game sitting in a pile on my desk just wishing it could be played.

All that changed yesterday when I read J Pad's review and saw a glimmer of hope. I got home and looked up the file he referenced (csfix2.7z)and it works. IT WORKS!!!!! I was so excited, I played way too late.

But about the game. By today's standards, this game obviously has sub par graphics. At the time it was made they were great. There will be nothing astounding to you, graphically speaking, but it is still much better than many "flight simulators" or aerial combat games you will play. For many reasons.

For one, though the graphics may not be that good, most flying combat games put you over a large, nearly flat, texture. It looks fine from up in the air but when you get low you realize it's flat. All the "depth" you saw isn't depth at all but texture. Crimson Skies actually has hills, buildings, ships, clouds, etc. Sure they are pretty basic, but they are there.

Secondly, this isn't bogged down with real world physics to make it more realistic. That's a good thing. I've tried playing realistic dogfighting games and they aren't for me. I like a good quality flight simulator, but for aerial combat, I normally need something with a better balance between realism and an arcade. That's just me. And this game delivers.

The controls are a bit odd, I can't use my mouse even with sensitivity turned all the way down because my plane rolls over constantly to inverted flight. I remapped my movement keys to the number pad so that "8" is nose down, "5" is nose up, "4" is roll left, "6" is roll right, "1" is yaw left (turn), "3" is yaw right, and "2" is level off. This means I can dock with the zepplins much easier because I can make slight adjustments to my yaw without rolling the plane. It is just less effort. I need to remap some of the weapon buttons now but I haven't yet. Anyway, the controls are a bit clunky but you can remap them and will get used to them.

Another HUGE help is the slight autoaim the game gives you. You really just have to get close. You still have to work at staying on target because the planes usually do a good job of trying NOT to get shot, but if you can get near the right point the bullets will find their target. Also, if you fail a mission too many times the game will eventually ask you if you want to skip it. I like that becuase it takes a while, it's not just after 2 or 3 tries. And only one mission has proven impossible thus far (back in the day when I played it).

Once again, despite the old graphics, there is a lot of detail in this game. The planes show damage, as do the zepplins. They also show fairly accurate control surface movements and become sluggish (slightly) when damaged. Additionally, (and it may just be me) from time to time I'll have an enemy that "baits" me by flying straight so I'll chase it, and another one will get on my tail and shoot me. I'm not sure if that is actual AI or if it just coincidence, but I like it either way.

You can customize planes once you have money, and the further you go in the game the more options you have. You can load out your planes with different types of bullets and different rockets as well. It gives great incentive to go through the game unlocking things and earning money (which you can't help doing as you finish missions).

Finally, the story. Ah, the story. This game smacks of atmosphere. And that is typically rare in an aerial combat game. It is alternate history, and the alternate history actually, almost makes sense. It FEELS right. They give good reasons for the lack of ground infrastructure and reasons for all these zepplins flying around, and thus reasons for air piracy. Not only that, but the relationships within the game make sense for the most part, and the theme and atmosphere of it all is kept throughout the game. Even in menus and briefings. Add to that the various types of missions (not just flying and shooting) and you've got yourself a game. Fly low and slow over a car to let someone climb up to your plane, dock with a zeppling, shoot down a zepplin, defend your own zepplin, compete in an air race, etc. There is a lot to this game and it is very enjoyable, even for how old it is.

Graphics: 80% (and keep in mind they are old)
Physics: 80% (same here, and keep in mind that we don't want too much physics in a game like this)
Gameplay: 90% (controls are a bit odd but not bad)
Interface: 100% (there's a lot to this for a flying game and it is all very intuitive)
Artificial Intelligence: 95% (maybe not perfect but for an older game the pilots do a great job)
Detail: 95%
Maps: 100% (just for the variation in an aerial combat game)
Replay Potential: 85% (it will always be the same game but is pretty fun to play every once in awhile)
Story: 100%

Total: 91.67%. I didn't think I'd rate it that high, honestly. If you are a big fan of newer graphics or realistic combat, definitely discount my rating by at least 10 or 20 points. If you don't mind the graphics or arcade feel, I think my rating is pretty solid.

OK, so by now you've read how great this game is, and it IS wonderful! But it does NOT run well in any Operating System newer than Win 2000... this is due to driver structure in newer video cards. Since most cards these days won't support any game prior to DirectX version 8 (C.S. uses DX7) you get strange graphical artifacts and unreadable text in Win XP... until now!

Read thru this forum page:
[...]

A wonderful gamer who goes by the handle 'Timeslip' has created a fix for the graphic issues that haunt this terriffic game! Do a Google search for this file:

csfix2.7z (its a .zip/.rar/.7zip type archive)

Extract its contents into your CS root folder and start the game using the new Executable... the game works fine in XP now! I have been playing today and can verify this fix works! Buy the game, apply the fix, and relive all your favorite moments with Nathan Zachary's air pirates... or make some new ones!


I bought my copy of CS from Play It Now. The shipping was fast (only 4 days standard UPS) and it arrived exactly as described, brand new sealed in factory packaging. Would definitely buy from them again!

One of my all time favorite PC games. Not fully compatible with modern video subsystems (e.g., drivers, video hardware, etc.) or WinXP. I got it to work intermittently, but the text always displayed as rainbow colored noise. Would frequently crash to desktop, especially during cut-scenes.

It took some work, but this game did work for me on my older XP system. Try putting the .exe into "compatibility mode" and setting it to run like windows 98. On to the actual review!

I first played Crimson Skies on a motion-simulator arcade game. I knew this version would be a little different, but I bought it to run on a home-built arcade machine I am building. As you might be able to guess, I am not to concerned with the games "arcade feel". While my arcade is still in construction, I installed this game on my windows XP computer system. After setting it up, I was able to play it. I fell in love with this game! The graphics are good, though not up to today's standards of flight simulators. The voice acting fits, and doesn't seem cheesy or fake at all. Good is a relative term, when it comes to physics. While this game seems good in that area to me, I am sure a flight-sim purist would disagree. As another reviewer said already, the storyline just works. It fits with the game and seems like it could have really happened. The controls are the only real problem with this package. The mouse controls don't work well at all, and the keyboard is so-so. Only the joystick controls are really up to my expectation, but the keyboard will certainly do if you don't have one! Over all, I would definitely recommend this game! Even with its few flaws, it is a still an awesome game!

Note: There is now a patch for this game so it can fun on XP. See the other reviews for more information.

Good story. Great, balanced action; online combat. Modding planes. Really good controls & plenty of scenarios.

I purchased Crimson Skies because it fit the narrow window of being new enough to run under Windows 2000, but having low enough video requirements that it would play on my slightly outdated ThinkPad laptop. I installed Crimson Skies, and was delighted to find that the installer was smart enough to crank down the video settings to where it would actually play. This was a good trick, considering that my laptop only has 4MB of video RAM, instead of the 'required' 8MB. The video was a little choppy, but workable (anyone who's tried to get a video game to play on a laptop knows to be happy if it works at all!).

However, I was greatly annoyed to learn that, even though I had selected the 'full' install option, the game wouldn't play without the CD being inserted in the computer! This may just be an annoyance on a desktop, but my laptop has a separate, external CD-ROM drive (since this doubles the weight of my laptop, it doesn't get carried around very often). So my dreams of aerial dogfighting on the road were shot down in flames! I carried Crimson Skies home and put it on my desktop computer instead. With 32MB of video RAM, all choppiness disappeared, graphics were stunning and the sound was great. I looked forward to sitting down and learning the game. However, since it still required the CD to run, I decided to make a backup copy of the CD (just in case it got dropped on my hardwood floor or something). Guess what? The CD won't copy, either. Apparently, Atari screwed with the file system to prevent CD copying! Again, this isn't a big problem with desktops, just treat the CD gently and it'll last for years. But with most all notebook CD-ROM drives, the CD has to be physically pried on and off of the spindle, greatly increasing chances of fingerprints, scratches and general destruction. As it's currently set up, the game will only play until the first time the CD gets a scratch in it. By then, it'll probably be impossible to even locate another copy.

Why would Atari do these things to laptops owners? Why take a great game that actually plays well on any reasonably modern laptop and then deliberately make it hard to carry around? Well, Crimson Skies has a multi-player mode and would be great for LAN parties, so maybe these measures were designed to prevent people from buying one copy and then sharing it with ten friends. I realize that illegal file sharing is a serious problem. But I don't want to share the program, I just want it to run off the hard drive. I don't want to illegally copy the CD. I just want a backup copy in case the master copy gets damaged. Maybe these measures are necessary in today's world. However, it's still kind of ironic that the makers of a great game about Air Piracy in an Alternate Universe are so concerned about software piracy that they deliberately make their own product unusable in the real world.

Would I recommend the game? Definitely! But I really wish that Atari wouldn't let their paranoia get in the way of legitimate users trying to run their software.

Great game, excellent value at $9.99. Perfect for LAN parties at this price too.