Crimson Skies Impressions

Played a bit of Crimson Skies today, and thus far it is a pretty damn fun game. Controls are very well layed out, with the left analog for steering, the triggers for firing weapons, and the face buttons for turbo, brake, and action (docking, accepting missions, etc) You can also do special manuevers by pressing the right analog down, and pusing both analog sticks in different directions for different manuevers (barrel rolls, quick turnarounds, straight upwards boosts) Controls are very tight.

The game starts out with a little bit of story, then you hop in your plane and go on a little training run than turns into your first dogfight to get your zepplin back. The zepplin is your main base, where you can store planes at, and in the future do storyline missions. After that, you just fly around taking random missions for money. Ones I've done so far is protect a friend by killing a couple planes that are after him. Once you finish that, you can go to that person's place for repairs and weapons reload (costs you a little bit of cash) Also did another mission taking out fuel tankers all while planes are attacking you. Very hectic and fun stuff.

The graphics in this game are simply amazing with nice water effects. If you skim accross the water, you get some water drops on the screen which is a nice effect. The plane explosions are simply kick ass.

Only drawbacks thus far is that the game can feel like it's moving a little slow when you're not fighting, but thankfully the turbos help out in that regard. Also, you only have 2 different weapons, but hopefully that'll change later in the game.

Still haven't check out online play, so no impressions on that yet.

should be getting my copy soon

This is great to hear! I've been looking forward to this one for awhile and hoped it would live up to the hype! Looks like it does!

I will be playing this one on Live! very soon. I loved the PC version, but this one looks a lot more polished. I'm happy to see it's an all new game and not a rough PC port.

Sold out till next week.....damn it

what are the upgrades from the PC version...?

No one else is playing this game?

This is the best next gen game I've played in a long time. This game seriously kicks lots of ass. I've progressed through the game more, and while there is no way to have more than 2 weapons on any given plane, there are plenty of options in terms of weapons. Some planes have different weapons, and you can also upgrade your planes by earning enough money and finding enough tokens that are hidden throughout areas, and when you defeat certain bosses. The one plane I upgraded, instead of having 1 missle as the weapon, it now shoots 2. Sweet.

Also you can land on certain vehicles and take control of a turret gun. Now this is probably the best part of the game. Say your plane is taking some heavy damage, if you see a little green symbol by a boat or a truck you can land on it and take control of the turret gun to save your plane from further damage. Some turrets have different weapons too, even one where you can control where the missle goes. This helps out a lot in certain missions, in terms of surving, and having the extra weaponry. Usually in most missions, they'll let you know if there is somewhere else you can land and use the turret. You can even land on top of your zepplin and shoot some shit down.

I have to agree that so far, it kicks ass!

I haven't tried it on Live yet, but I will.

It does sound like a great game (haven't picked it up yet, but I plan to eventually). Gamespot gave it an 8.9 overall rating, just short of their "superb" 9.0 or higher score range.

Gameplay - 9
Graphics - 9
Sound - 9
Value - 8
Tilt - 9

However, to me it would have been nice if it were more arcade oriented, and less mission oriented. I was never a big Wing Commander fan, and prefer a simpler shoot'em up style such as Warjetz for PS2. I suppose the online mode makes up for the lack of single player arcade style . . . only good if you have a broadband connection of course.

Microsoft supposedly shipped mine already, I can't wait to play it. I won't be on Live for another week or so, but I'll get there eventually. That's where the real butter of the game will be.