Crimson Skies Preview

Apart from the afore mentioned airplanes, other aircraft that can be expected are zeppelins, gyroplanes and recon balloons.

As Nathan Zachary, you will constantly search for new airplanes to improve you pirate squadron. Every information is important if its about a new type of airplane, or a prototype that should be "politely borrowed" from its owner. Apart from Nathan's, there are other pirate gangs, so the competition is stiff. Because of that, the player is constantly forced to make the right decisions to survive and dominate the skies. The atmosphere of the game increases through the missions, and by the end of the fifth chapter it culminates. For now, those are promises made by the developers, but judging from the first versions of the game, there's no reason not to believe them. Some details should be added and polished, but this piece of software is almost done and it looks good. Cockpit design is very realistic, and important for flight. There are numerous gauges, indicators, artificial horizon and the spyglass (for tracking the target). You also have data on the cannons and rockets and other important information for safe flight. Of course, the game can be viewed from the cockpit and from behind the plane (third person perspective).

Except the existing weapons, the player can use an array of invented arsenal, such as the Air Torpedo (intended for big blimps, which are like battleships and cruisers), Blind Rocket (for temporarily blinding enemy pilots) and other, smart killing machines. That will, of course, make the game even more interesting. Its market success will certainly be influenced by the "pay & play" multi player support on MSN Zone. There are other specific multiplayer modes, such as Zeppelin Fights, for defending the base, and Capture the flag. There are several modes that Crimson Skies will be played over the net. Its possible to play with your friends against AI enemies, squadron vs squadron, and solo dogfights. The multi player mode, as opposed to single, relies mainly on traditional FPS game, and standard opponent fragging. Through Instant Action mode you can fight any adversary, anywhere on any map. Note: this mode allows individual customizing of airplane and scenario. Once the plane is built, you can paint it at your own accord and make the paint scheme with pilot insignia, pin-up art and drawings on the nose of the plane. The game will use the renown and glorified GameZ engine of Zipper Interactive (Mech Warrior III, anyone?), which is on steroids this time and performs on maxxximum. Since the engine is so robust and flexible, no wonder the boys over at Zipper decided to use it again. A little coding, and presto- a brand new edition with excellent graphics and fantastic design.

The game's graphics were done at length and detail. The designers didn't stop at standard surrounding such as mountains, different obstacles, smoke and such. Au contraire, they went one step further and integrated smooth ground texture, clouds you can fly through and objects that suddenly appear. Since Crimson Skies isn't another airplane game, but a game anyone would want, the Microsoft and Zipper designers and programmers spent many hours developing new texturing techniques, so no matter the altitude of the plane the textures look magic and perfect. To fill the terrain, texture quota was reduced and mutually rotated, so the image quality is high. Many missions require very low flight altitude. That means the graphic design quality of the ground has to be high. At low altitudes, the impression of speed is higher, and that was taken into consideration. When on a long flight, you'll realize that the distances in Crimson Skies are lot shorter than it would have been expected. The planes can perform air acrobatics that are in compliance with laws of physics. If you get the hang of these acrobatics, dogfights will be smooth like silk.

If all designer promises come true in the final version of the game, it will be a turn in the world of arcade flight simulations. Setting of new standards is paramount since the number of good games in this genre can be counted on the fingers of one hand.