Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge Is A Bonafide Xbox Classic

By GameFaqs [1], Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19852317

Microsoft are beginning to release some old Xbox exclusives to their Xbox Game Pass platform, and they started out with these first four Xbox exclusives. There was Conker: Live and Reloaded, which is a remake of Conker’s Bad Fur Day on the N64, which I already played. There was Fuzion Frenzy, which was Microsoft’s answer to the Mario Party series, and a game which demo I played significantly when I was younger. There was Blinx: The Time Sweeper, which is a platformer whose gimmick is that Blinx can control time (and the marketing claiming that the game is “4-D”). However, there was one game that caught my eye because I remembered how awesome this game was when I initially played it. 

Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge is an action-oriented flight game where you play as Nathan Zachary, who is the leader of the Fortune Hunters air pirate gang as they travel to various locales to avenge the death of his old friend. The graphics have obviously aged from the game's release in 2003, but they are still decent today. The thing that surprised me even today is unexpectedly strong the story, characters, and dialogue are. There are lots of fun interactions between the members of the Fortune Hunters, as well as the many characters you meet as you play through the game. Crimson Skies also took some risks with cinematics when there were not too many games doing that at the time. Nathan Zachary always felt like a type of "Indiana Jones" figure but he mostly flies planes. I also think that Nathan Zachary was a precursor to Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series.

The best thing about Crimson Skies is the arcade-style flight gameplay. I am glad the developers made the decision to make the gameplay more of an arcade game rather than a simulation game, as I think this decision would have attracted more players to the game. The plane combat/dogfighting is still so much fun, and the plane controls are simple and easy to work with. Crimson Skies follows an open-world structure with each location that you visit, where you can fly around to accept missions or discover hidden secrets. Most of the missions involve dogfighting, though there is some mission variety where there are turret and checkpoint racing missions as well. There are many planes that you can find and fly, though I wish there were more customization options.

If you have Xbox Game Pass, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge is a must-play. The main story only takes around 5-7 hours to complete so there is no major time commitment. You will have a blast flying around in these planes and trying to shoot the other planes down. This is a game I had fond memories playing when I had an Xbox and I am glad I got to relive those memories on Game Pass.