Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge was originally created by Zipper Interactive, who may be best know for MechWarrior 3 and SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALS. FASA Studio, whose previous credits include MechCommander, MechAssault and MechWarrior 4, ported over this Xbox version. It has to be said that FASA has done an amazing job in bringing the game to the Xbox. In fact, they have gone well above and beyond what was found on the PC original in nearly every way.

The game puts you in the shoes of Nathan Zachary, a dashing, smooth talking air-pirate, who could be best compared to Indiana Jones. Set in an alternate version of the 1930s, Zachary becomes inadvertently entangled in a Hitler-like madman’s plot to develop a powerful new weapon and take control of portions of the U.S. Under the combined weight of the Great Depression, regional Prohibition and mounting isolationism, the United States broke apart into ever-squabbling nation-states. The transcontinental railroad and the budding highway system have become useless as they now cross hostile borders. Commerce and trade leave the ground as air travel now becomes a vital lifeline connecting allied countries -- and a national obsession -- while daring air pirates and valiant air militias battle for control of the skies. Giant zeppelins (zeps) crisscross the skies, carrying both passengers and cargo. It is also a time of gunship diplomacy and airship piracy, as well as the age of the fighter pilot and a time of daredevil adventure. As Nathan, you must research the increased hostility, and try to get to the bottom of the recent goings on.

After a brief introduction of the back-story, Crimson Skies provides a few straightforward options. The game simply offers a single player mode, a multiplayer mode, and settings option. Single player is essentially the “Story Mode”, as there is absolutely no other way to play the game with one person. Multiplayer consists of split screen, system link and the all-important Xbox Live mode.

The Story Mode for all intents and purposes is the real meat of the game. As Nathan, you begin your journey around the Arixo (Mexico/Arizona) border in a fairly simple environment where you will learn how to fly the aircraft. The aircraft are mostly single or bi-wing propeller driven machines, but with some additional horsepower and firepower in the way of a jet engine and loads of missiles. The planes, and really the entire game itself, feels like a mixture of Star Wars and The Red Baron. Crimson Skies is not about being a flight sim in any way, as the game is primarily centered around dogfighting. The controls are mostly arcade-like, and not much in the line of previous experience is needed. The left stick controls movement, the right stick controls rolls and special maneuvers. The triggers handle primary and secondary weapons. The A button is used for zooming in with ground-based AA guns, the B button is your air brakes, X is used for actions when in proximity of an action to be performed, and Y is a boost. For anyone who has played an air/space combat title in the past, the controls are spot on. Mastering the use of brakes and boosts is essential in keeping enemy aircraft in your sights. If you do happen to find yourself on the other side of that equation, then the right-stick-click special maneuvers can usually solve that problem. Both the boost and those moves eat up your special meter, but thankfully it doesn’t take very long for it to regenerate. Chasing down baddies through a canyon or a city while firing missiles and guns is never really a chore.

Getting back to the specifics of the Story Mode; In the beginning, you must fly around and chat with a few locals and then slowly piece together what has been going on in your neck of the woods. You can freely take on small tasks in order to earn cash, explore the environment, and find tokens, secrets and new planes. At first, the Republic of Hollywood, which exists where California is now, is causing trouble in your local area. Some missions revolve around you escorting big zeps to certain places, taking out a fleet of Hollywood gunboats or planes, or exploring the environment in some way. The missions throughout the game piece together parts of the story, and certain missions are required to push the story along. Most are free flying and can usually be completed in more than one way, and there is really a great amount of variety to them.

Having to man the immense anti-aircraft guns, mounted on the ground, a train or on the massive mobile zeps, is just plain awesome. Some missions require you learn the guns well, but others can be optionally completed by just docking your machine during a battle and blasting away with the AA guns. Goals throughout the missions change frequently and without warning, and friendly non-player characters will make sure to let you know what needs to be done next. The battles are pretty chaotic, and really do a great job in putting you right in the middle of the action. One small problem I had with the game was related to the instructions being unclear, mostly because they are 100% voiced and rarely repeat. Some characters have accents or speak quickly; so misunderstanding what to do does happen occasionally. Subtitles would have been immensely helpful.

Cash earned by performing a task or completing a mission is used for buying simple repairs during a mission, and cash and tokens are used together for upgrading any plane that is in your possession. There are only about 10 planes throughout the game (along with a insane gyrocopter), total, and each can only be upgraded once. The choice is never overwhelming, as each craft is only rated on 3 stats. I found myself using the upgraded default plane (Devastator) all the way through to the end, as well as during nearly all Xbox Live play. It becomes clear quite quickly that the game is absolutely not centered on having to upgrade each and every part of your plane.

On the default difficulty level, most missions range from easy, to just hard enough to feel challenging. There are a few individual ones though, one being about halfway through (a gyrocopter escort mission) and another towards the very end (a massively unfair underground dogfight), which are fairly tough and almost border on annoying. The game stays fun all the way through to the end and overall the length is just about perfect. The only other problem I had with the game’s single player experience is that after completing the story mode, there is nothing else to do in the game. Of course, the entire game can be played again, with your now fully powered up aircraft, and the last few tokens and planes found and missions completed. But that’s really it. If you have Xbox Live or a few friends who don’t mind playing split-screen or lugging their Xbox and another copy of Crimson Skies over, then replayability goes way up.

We had the opportunity to put in a nice amount of time on Xbox Live and went head-to-head with other members of the press along with the developers of the game. Modified versions of the mission maps are available to play a variety of multiplayer games on. Up to 16 players can compete online in Dogfight (deathmatch), Team Dogfight, Flag Heist (capture the flag), Wild Chicken, Keep Away and Team Keep Away. Keep Away and Wild Chicken was among the best bouts of online competition I can remember in quite some time, in both fun and intensity, even for a beginner. The modes can be modified somewhat, and the default settings seem to be tuned pretty well. You won’t find yourself being shot down instantly upon respawning for example. Microsoft also plans on releasing downloadable content, including new maps and planes.

Visually, Crimson Skies is a great looking game, and definitely a step up from the PC original. Absolutely huge environments, with impressive undulating environments, deep canyons, congested cities full of skyscrapers, and those amazing trademark Xbox water effects in the ocean, ponds and rivers. Both from afar and up close, textures look really nice and are definitely up there with the best of PC titles. The cloud and weather effects are also quite noteworthy. The voices are well done, and the game is chock full of motion picture quality music, and you would swear that John Williams was somehow involved.

With its original story and theme, motion picture-quality soundtrack, and tried and true mission-based flight combat gameplay, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge is quite a nice Xbox title to add to your library. Besides some somewhat long load times between chapters, the only other major gripe is that the game lacks replayability for those without access to Xbox Live. That little issue does bring the score down a tiny bit. Regardless, it’s fun, just challenging enough for most gamers to feel satisfied, and offers some top rate Xbox Live online gameplay.