Crimson Skies (2000)
Genres:Shooter, Simulator
Themes:Action, Fantasy, Historical, Warfare
Game modes:Single player, Multiplayer
Story:The series is set within an alternate history of the 1930s invented by Weisman and McCoy. Within this divergent timeline, the United States has collapsed, and air travel has become the most popular mode of transportation in North America; as a result, air pirates thrive in the world of Crimson Skies. In describing the concept of Crimson Skies, Jordan Weisman stated he wanted to "take the idea of 16th century Caribbean piracy and translate into a 1930s American setting."Show more
Vote to bring this game to GOG and help preserve it.8 754
I bought a budget double-pack of Crimson Skies and MS Combat Flight Simulator years ago and while I didn't spend a lot of time in CFS, I did spend a lot of time in Crimson Skies. I had never heard of dieselpunk before and I must say I enjoyed the setting immensely. Flying around the skies of a completely different 1937(if memory serves) America and fighting sky pirates and occasionally foreign militaries and mercenaries was a lot of fun. I also remember there being a stunt mission having to fly a certain way that took me a while to nail, but it was rewarding. It was a very fun adventure with a nice mix of simulation and arcade. I wish we'd get a sequel or something similar to it.
Crimson Skies was the reason I became a real world pilot. As a kid, I remembered playing the demo version of it on a shareware CD my dad had brought home and I immediately fell in love with the story, the airplanes and dirigibles, and the overall gameplay. I've played countless flight games like it in the past, but nothing hit home like Crimson Skies. I ordered a copy and when I booted it up on my PC, I could never leave it. I wanted more and more like it. Eventually, the enjoyment of flying around is what I truly sought after, and I remember how this game brought me to it. Eventually I got my pilot's license, and to this day, it and other helpful things, made me the pilot that I am today.
Many people have fond memories of the Xbox classic "Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge".
Many didn't know, though, that High Road to Revenge is actually a sequel to THIS game, released only on PC way back when. This is a shame, since this original release had even more swashbuckling aerial flair than the Xbox game, a lot of plane customization, and decent story/voice acting. It even had multiplayer mode, with Zeppelin versus Zeppelin combat (though that was only provided via MSN gaming zone, so it hardly ever worked or had players).
It'd be great to see this title resurrected, not only so the xbox fans can experience the prequel story, but also since it's such a well done example of pulp genre fiction.
Microsoft has a huge back catalog of flight games for PC, but Crimson Skies is the one that deserves to be brought back the most. It has a cool, unique setting with great plane designs that encourage you to try them all out beyond just simple stat changes. What really makes Crimson Skies so great is the combination of relaxed physics that let anyone get into the game and the variety of missions and locations making every level memorable with plenty of objectives to do beyond just dogfighting enemies.
The only problem is that this game does not take kindly to modern hardware. It's very buggy and glitchy on Windows 10, and if you have AMD hardware it might not even boot even with fan patches. If GoG is truly dedicated to helping preserve old games and make them available to the common person then they could do a lot of good by putting their efforts towards this title.
I can't think of another game with a named and voiced protagonist, that makes you feel like you're living that adventure, I remember repeating missions over and over to see all the locations in the game.
The moment I started to play Crimson Skies, I became enthralled by it's alternative history world and style, from the wild designs of the planes to a soundtrack that included 1930s inspired instrumentals. It made sense that I made it the first game I've ever streamed. Mote people should get to experience not just this game, but the game world that inspired it.
A stone-cold classic aerial action game, with great retro vibes. Also an absolute chore to get working on a modern PC, if you can even find it. I can still hear its soundtrack echo in my head sometimes, and it'd be great to experience this dashing adventure again.
I wish Crimson Skies would be available on GOG so I could relive the thrilling aerial dogfights and captivating storyline on modern systems. It's a timeless classic! 🛩️✨
Crimson skies was amazing! Great story, fun flying and wonderful dogfights! It had it all. Some of the coolest airplanes as well. I ended up with a copy of it because my original disc died. Was always a fan of the Disney cartoon TaleSpin, and this is the video game that fell right with it. Sky pirates!!
The Operative: No One Lives ForeverNo One Lives Forever is to be a fast-paced, story-driven first-person shooter that delivers over-the-top action, outrageous villains, and wry humor in the tradition of the great 1960's Bond films. You play Cate Archer an undercover operative for MI-Zero. Your mission is to arrange for the defection of a prominent East German biophysicist that goes by the name of Otto Dentz. However things go wrong when a terrorist group known as the HARM abducts Dentz during a flight to England.
Assume the role of Cate Archer, an operative working for UNITY, a secret organization fighting to free the world from the clutches of H.A.R.M.. From tense subterfuge to in-your-face combat, No One Lives Forever ups the ante with 1960's-influenced spy action, vivid international locates, and deadly arch villains.Top Trending Action Comedy Stealth
No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s WayA year after the first No One Lives Forever, tensions are rising between United States and Soviet Union over the tiny, but strategic Isle of Khios. Jones, now the sole Commander of U.N.I.T.Y. (after Smithy was discovered to be a H.A.R.M. spy in the first No One Lives Forever), is taking a vacation and leaves Temporary Director Lawrie in charge.
The sequel to the award-winning No One Lives Forever returns you to a world of espionage, intrigue, and dry humor. In her second adventure, British UNITY operative Cate Archer must investigate a super-secret Soviet project that, if successful, could bring about the third world war.Top Trending Action Fantasy Historical Comedy Stealth
Stronghold 2Tax, torture or treat your peasants! Rehabilitate criminals or sentence them to death? Decide as you joust over a lavish banquet, all while under siege from the warmongering Lord Barclay. Will you entertain with medieval tournaments or rule with an iron fist and dispense feudal justice to overworked and malnourished peasants? With powerful barons jostling for power over a disintegrating kingdom, it is up to you to stem the tides of ambition and unite the land under the one true King!
Building on the sim gameplay of the original Stronghold, Stronghold 2 allows players to rule as they please and still conquer each skirmish. Unhappy peasants turn to crime and must be punished, rival lords can raise entire armies on their title alone and sieges must be fought tooth and nail, with close combat taking place inside castle structures. Stronghold 2 Online extends this gameplay to competitive multiplayer for up to eight players, with offline skirmish mode also available against computer-controller opponents.
The online services used GameSpy which was shutdown. The Steam Edition is the only version of Stronghold 2 that still features multiplayer using Steam Multiplayer.Action Historical Warfare Sandbox
Hellgate: LondonHellgate: London combines the depth of role-playing games and action of first-person titles, while offering infinite playability with randomly created levels, items and events. The player creates a heroic character, completes quests and battles through innumerable hordes of demons to advance through experience levels and branching skill paths. A robust, flexible skill and spell system, highly customizable appearances and a massive variety of randomly generated equipment allow players to create their own unique hero.Action Horror Science fiction Survival
Max PayneMax Payne is a man with nothing to lose in the violent, cold urban night. A fugitive undercover cop framed for murder, hunted by cops and the mob, Max is a man with his back against the wall, fighting a battle he cannot hope to win. Max Payne is a relentless story-driven game about a man on the edge, fighting to clear his name while struggling to uncover the truth about his slain family amongst a myriad of plot-twists and twisted thugs in the gritty bowels of New York during the century's worst blizzard.
The groundbreaking original cinematic action-shooter, Max Payne introduced the concept of Bullet Time in videogames. Through its stylish slow-motion gunplay combined with a dark and twisted story, Max Payne redefined the action-shooter genre.Top Trending Action Thriller
BioShock 2BioShock 2 is the second game of the BioShock series and the sequel to BioShock. It continues the grand storyline of the underwater metropolis Rapture. BioShock 2 capitalizes and improves upon the high-quality effects, unique gameplay elements, and immersive atmosphere that defined the first game. It explores more brutal gameplay than its predecessor, with new enemies, weapons, Plasmids, and Gene Tonics.Open world Action Thriller Science fiction
Ace Combat: Assault HorizonAce Combat: Assault Horizon is the 14th game released in the Ace Combat series. It took place in the real world, albeit in a different timeline from that of Joint Assault. Players took control of various members of Task Force 108, most notably William Bishop, as they shut down the threat posed by Andrei Markov and other rebels from Russia.Action Warfare
Duke NukemDuke Nukem is the debut of the world’s greatest wise-cracking, alien-punching, gun-toting badass - a man who would later go on to combine both ass-kicking and bubblegum in a revolutionary way. In a world ravaged by Dr. Proton’s villainous ambitions, the original video game action hero must rise against the evil scientist’s army of sinister Techbots. And although Duke isn’t exactly what the Doctor ordered, he’s exactly what the world needed.Action Science fiction
Deuteros: The Next MillenniumDeuteros: The Next Millennium is the sequel to the sci-fi strategy video game Millennium 2.2, published by Activision for the Amiga and Atari ST.
While the game shares themes of space exploration and resource gathering - plus some elements of its interface - with its predecessor, the two are different in gameplay.
The object of Deuteros is to mine and manage resources, explore the Solar System and beyond. For this, 3 categories of civilians are trained: Producers, Researchers and Marines, out of a pool of 6000 population. The longer these teams are used, they are advanced in three levels, required for some later action (some inventions can be manufactured only by a producer who is at "Expert" level while Pilots with the rank of "Admiral" will be more effective in battles).
New bases built on other planets must be manned with new teams of Producers in order to construct the shuttles and derricks needed for supply. Some of these events are "milestones" which will trigger new technology to be researched by the scientists.
The player has to take care mostly of the transaction between the planets and the factories and distribute their supply with shuttles and long-range spacecraft. New technology (such as automatisation computers or teleport) will replace some of the player's involvement, as the player must later concentrate on war.Science fiction
FreelancerEight hundred years prior to the start of our story, bitter conflict divided all of mankind. A handful of colonists struck out on their own to begin anew - far away from the Earth and its turmoil. Several ships were launched with enough equipment and supplies to give the hundreds onboard a fighting chance - but since the area around far-off Sirius had never been surveyed, no one really knew what to expect. What they found was a new frontier of free-flowing natural resources, unexplored territories, great wonders and lurking dangers. Each ship, representing the clusters of people and their earthly place of origin, settled into different parts of the galaxy pre-selected by their ship-board computer to give them the best chance of survival.
Life was hard in the beginning, but over the 800 years the different colonies prospered and expanded their territories, claiming more and more systems for their own. Survival and propagation eventually led to growth and profit as each of the colonies developed specialties and fostered commerce. As the colonies grew and time passed their connections with their roots on Earth dwindled and they lost their memories of the conflicts of the past. Soon their attention was dominated by new, more immediate conflicts. Feelings of lost ancestral connection spurred anachronism in the look of the great cities, and created a somewhat distorted image of each colony's cultural heritage. In the ever-expanding outer edge of the territories, frontier lawlessness prevailed.
The Houses: Each shipboard colony that left Earth carried some memory of its origins in its name. The Liberty carried Americans, The Bretonia flew from The United Kingdom and surrounding territory, The Kusari from Asia, and the Rheinland launched with Germanic cargo.
As each ship settled and colonies began to expand, they knew little about each other and their advancing development. Finally, little by little, the individual colonies found each other and began to set up trade routes to link their systems for commerce and solidarity.
Today, with each colony firmly rooted in its respective corner of the galaxy, the colonies rely heavily on each other for trade and industry but also compete for resources and new territories in the Border Worlds. The colonies mandate member governments in "The New Alliance" within the Sirius sector. To control conflicts, each colony has forged alliances and treaties with others as they have grown. Competition remains fierce, however. Struggles rage for supremacy in business, commerce, resources, power and control. There can be tenuous peace between colonies' political agendas, but the grabs for holdings constantly unsettle the volatile frontier.Our Pick Top Trending Science fiction Sandbox