A short but sweet single-player campaign combined with some of the best multi-player action on the Xbox make Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge a superb game.

Road to Revenge is set during the 1930s in an alternate universe. In short, North America is made up of small city-states and is engaged in almost perpetual war. You, a mercenary named Nathan, are loosely involved in various skirmishes until your friend is murdered and you seek � you guessed it � revenge. For all intents and purposes, the short story (10 hours) is mostly throw-away, and merely serves tie together the various environments you�ll be flying in. But arcade-style flight games such as Crimson Skies and Star Fox 64 are not popular for their storylines, but for their addictive and fun gameplay.

A pretty simple tutorial mission kicks things off, gets you familiar with the basic and intuitive controls within two minutes, and from then on it�s high flying. You start off with only one plane, but throughout the single-player campaign you can unlock and upgrade a number of others by making money, doing missions, and collecting tokens. Varying from experimental gyrocopters to maneuverable dogfighters to big and heavy craft with the firepower of gunships, there is a reasonable amount of depth to the game, with most planes having a rock-paper-scissors relationship to each other. All planes have a primary and secondary weapon, typically a machinegun and some form of missile launcher, though there are others, and all planes aside from the gyrocopter can perform a number of maneuvers, including barrel rolls and more complex flips and turns.

Simply Gorgeous

Some of the best looking environments, combined with solid artistic design and well-done cutscenes make Crimson Skies a graphical tour-de-force. The animations are great, with bullets ripping apart the hull of planes until they smoke, burst into flames, and begin to come apart. In short, visuals range from very good to simply beautiful, and with perhaps one or two exceptions, this is the best looking game on the Xbox.

Dolby 5.1, Baby

With all the attention given to Crimson Skies� graphical mastery, it�s easy to miss the strong audio. The sound effects of explosions, the air rush as you nose dive, bullets wizzing by your head, and your engine sputtering (don�t brake while flying straight up) are all spot-on. In addition, the music is good and accurately reinforces the atmosphere aptly created by the visuals. My only complaint lies in the just piss-poor humor. The voice-acting is good, but good voice acting can�t fix bad lines. The writing during cutscenes is good, but Nathan�s comments after he shoots down planes are obnoxious. There is a flood of clich�s and puns which will spew forth and convince you that the writers of Power Rangers were employed by Microsoft on this venture. But in the scheme of things, the torrent of bad one-liners isn�t really a big issue.

The multi-player, on paper, would not seem to be spectacular. There aren�t all that many modes (essentially Deathmatch, King of the Hill, Capture the Flag, and a game in which you chase a chicken), there are only five maps, and Xbox Live support is getting pretty common nowadays. But, whether playing split-screen or on Live, you�ll have a great time. Being spotted by a heavy fighter, avoiding a flurry of rockets and bullets with a dazzling series of maneuvers, nose diving into the streets of Chicago, losing your pursuer in a maze of buildings and alleyways, ending up behind your opponent and destroying him with a barrage of missiles is just par for the course. Xbox Live is worth buying just for Crimson Skies; it�s that good. Mow acres of lawns, walk as many dogs as you need to, but get it.

Get in on the Fun

I honestly don�t know a single person who has played Crimson Skies and not liked it, so I�d recommend it for everyone except perhaps the most die-hard story-driven RPG fans. Quick, fun, and arcadey gameplay combine with superb visuals and solid audio to make this a must-buy for almost everyone.