Rating: 
Summary: Now I'm cooking with gas!
Review: A while back I gave Crimson Skies 1 star for a simple reason, it was a monster on my system, it took ages to load levels and drop screens became a hard drive grinding trap, I swear it even took nearly 4 minutes just to change options or simply exit the game so why my change of tone? Simply put, RAM is the answer! I have just recently beefed up my Compaq PII, 450 mhz, 32mb ATI Rage 128 Pro system from 128mb SDRam to 256 and it was one of the best investments I've made to date! I am now able to click through Crimson Skies radiant screens with ease, drop down's are painless and the levels load like budda! I'm able to crank the graphics to 11 without so much as a glitch or one missed frame, you'd swear I was running a $10,000 gaming machine, fantastic! With the cost of RAM today (I paid $20 at a leading retailer for 128mb) there's no reason not to take full advantage of the amazing, white knuckle adventures Crimson Skies has to offer and it has many, the stunning visuals, super sound, nutty dialog and rollercoaster game play make this title a winner from start to finish!
Rating: 
Summary: Great fun, can't wait for the sequel.
Review: If you love high adventure and plenty of knuckle whitening action, this is the game for you. No thousands of button's to remember, no
"playing the picolo" on numerous thruster's and joysticks. Just fight and fly. Good story, great sound track. I love this game. Would buy it again if I could.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent game, except...
Review: The graphics are great, the flight model is a supurb example of how a completely arcade game should play, and all of the options are wonderful. Why then, one star? Every other mission (sometimes I can manage two in a row), after I've completed it, I get crashed back to the desktop w/o an error message. Microsoft support of course, knows nothing of the problem. Perhaps it's my computer (a P4 1500 w/ a Geforce 2), as noone else really mentions this problem, but this has made an otherwise 5 star game unplayable.
Rating:
Summary: If only there was more of it.
Review: Between the ability to customize your own planes (once you have the cash) to the intelligence of the AI this is a great game. The missions are varied, its just too bad there's only 26 of them. If you get this game, get on the Gamezone, we need more targets.
Rating:
Summary: An Entertaining Gem of a Game
Review: I have always enjoyed flight sims, but I was never big into reinacting historical combat or being locked into strict physics modules. I have always like creative stories and fascinating ideas, but it is becoming harder to find such creativity.So when I say that Crimson skies has really grabbed me and consumed enourmous amounts of my spare time, it should be apparent that it is soemthing special. This game has managed to take a wonderful story- involving alternative history, a style of story-telling that echoes of '40's radio drama, swashbuckling action and wonderful voice work- and combine it with a flight engine that is close enough to real physics to feel real but far enough removed to be fun, easy to learn and challenging without requiring you to be a pilot. Atmosphere is the byword to describe this game. The designers adapted the concept wonderfuly and it is totaly engrossing and enjoyable. I heartily recomend this game, which I feel is one of the best and possibly THE best, in the genre of action flight games.
Rating:
Summary: Crimson Skies: One of the Greatest Games of All Time
Review: I have been playing video games since the late 70's. Arcade, console, and PC. I've played on them all. On each and every format there always seemed to be one or two titles that stood out from all the rest and made me want to come back time and time again. These games are the same ones that become the "benchmarks" on which all other games are judged. These games all had one thing in common. Great gameplay. Graphics may differ, story lines are different(or non existant), but they all are fun to the extreme. Crimson Skies is one of these games. I have'nt been sucked into a game this deeply in ages! This is the 1st computer game that made me run out and by hardware to hotrod my pc to improve my framerates! The online game is insanely fun! The in game AI aren't the brightest at times, but crank the difficulty level up and they provide quite a challenge in almost all the levels. Now that the price has been dropped, this is an absolute must have game for anyone who has a pc. Buy this game! You won't regret it!
Rating:
Summary: Your machine WILL crash, but you will still want to play it
Review: I read all the bad reviews, But after downloading the demo I was hooked. I thought, maybe the full version won't crash my system every other time I play it. wrong, it did. I had the same problems everyone els did, it would just freeze and I would have to restart, basicaly, a major pain in the a**. I tried the above mentioned things (the "patch" and Direct x 8, still the same. I think it is a ram problem, I have 128 mb, and most of the bad reviews I have read have the same. So, on a whim I disabled all the in game music, and set the sound quality to low, and it didnt crash! well, every now and then but still much better, I guess the music uses up that last little bit of ram the game needs. Also, in instant action, I limit the number of enemy planes to 3 or so,this seems to help too. Even the menus arent so sticky now. I hope this will helps out. it is easily a 5 star game, when it works.
Rating:
Summary: Fly, Shoot, and Blow Up Things...no expertise required
Review: One of the biggest drawbacks of most flight sims is that they assume that you have some interest in learning how to really fly -- from takeoff to landing. I dont. I don't want to worry about fuel levels, or landing, or taking off (where most of my other flight sims destroy me). With C.S., you drop out of a balloon, shoot up your targets, head towards the home zep, and press "A" to autodock. Some missions start off like you have to perform incredibly difficult air stunts, but in many cases, you can just ignore it and go for your target (you'll here lots of insults from the enemy, but, I repeat, ignore it). As for the hardware / software issue - yes, that can be a problem. With a PIII 833, 128 MB RAM and a 32 MB Video Card, no game should give you a problem...but I did have the occassional lockup. Additionally, I had to reconfigure my joystick settings every time I used the game (I'm left handed, and use a Cyborg 3D gold - but it's not the joystick's fault; the necessity to reconfigure didn't happen until well after the joystick had worked fine). It's odd that Microsoft can't get a game to work flawlessly under a Microsoft operating system, but nevertheless, the game draws you back, and you grudgingly learn to live with those little problems. The storyline and the action is so addictive that they become simply inconveniences. C.S. is a great game, excellent thought behind it, exquisite design, with crappy programming. So fly, shoot, and blow up things, and don't kick the computer when it locks up.
Rating:
Summary: Great idea
Review: The story/idea behind this game is great. It's like the kind of adventure seen in Indiana Jones. It's just plain white knuckled, yet carefree action. I love it! But...I have a top notch machine and find that the game is SLOW. So far my experience with Microsoft games is always alike: they run too slow. Other games requiring a better computer usually run fine. What gives? Other than that, it deserves 5 stars for originality.
Rating:
Summary: VAW_Basilisk06 Gives his view
Review: I have owned or played virtually every combat flight simulator that was ever worth anything on the market and even experimented with a few. This is by far the most enjoyable online experience with customizable planes, armor, ammunition and engines you can practically create your own weapon of destruction or flying coffin. I have played the game through to the end and enjoyed every minute of it. Although the enemy AI could use some work the flying challenge in some of the missions make up for it. Also the Difficulty level can be increased to provide that extra challenge. The slow menu load time is a known glitch and I fell with the quality of the graphics , is worth the wait. I have run this game on a COMPAQ Presario 1700XL laptop PIII500 with 196MB ram and it plays fine. My main system is a PIII650 256MB RAM Voodoo5 5500 64MB and I have had no problems at all. It plays much better in Windows 2000 Server as well as Professional than in Windows ME with greater stability both online and offline. I guess the issue is whether or not your mix of harware is optimized to run the game not necessarily the specs. If your hardware must use extra resources to intercommunicate then you would realize degraded performance. Hell It worked on the laptop with 8MB of video ram and no voodoo or high end graphics just a Rage mobile graphics chipset. I think the increased hardware requirements are overrated. I have tried it on 4 machines and have had no need to go any higher than PIII650. The Voodoo3 issue is valid though I have encountered the crash with the demo and did not have the card available for the full version test.
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