Crimson Skies

The place is America, the time is the Great Depression. The formerly united states have splintered into a patchwork of warring, fuedal nations. Roads and rails have been cut and zepellins now transport freight across borders. Where there are rich, fat, slow pickings there are air pirates.

That's where you come in.

Crimson Skies : Highroad to Revenge is a fantastic, rip roaring game of aerial combat, dogfights, races for money and air piracy. The environments range from lush Caribean islands to the desolate badlands of the Indian Nations, from Lost Cities and active volcanoes to the glittering sky scrapers of the windy city of Chicago. Each level offers a variety of missions that you can tackle in order you like, with tokens to search for that allow you to upgrade the various propeller driven planes that you can add to your hangar on the giant, armoured zepellin that forms your mobile base.

I played for most of today, and finally finished the single player game with a frantic escape from an exploding mine and a final showdown over a hurricaine wracked Chicago. I played online as well, bumping up my stats a little until at one stage I was 128th best in the world this week (still somewhere in the 50,000s in the all time rankings though). I was able to talk to and shoot down stoned Americans, tired Swedes, cocky Australians and a couple of brits (hello to Red Mancunian!).

Highly recommended if you have an xbox, even more so if you have Live as well.