Rebel FM
Rebel FM Game Club: Crimson Skies: HRTR -- Episode 4
Matt and Ryan of Area5.tv once again join the Rebel FM crew (sans Tyler, sadly) for the final part of the Crimson Skies Game Club. This week discusses chapters 17-20, covering the final portion of the game. For the next show, please play through level 3 of The Thing. Enjoy!
[Music] Hello, hello, welcome to The Rebel OFM Game Club Episode 4 for Crimson Sky's High Road to Revenge. I'm so glad you remembered the subtitle. Where you should have played the game to completion. Yep. And where we left off last time was right at the start of looking for the lost city. For bonus points you could also smash yourself in the balls repeatedly. Which is what Arthur chose to do. There was a point in time during this that I definitely didn't think I was going to complete it. Like, two specific parts, you know, getting a little bit ahead. Anytime I had to fly in caves, actually let's just start off this. Right when we start, the first mission you have to do is do a few missions while the guy tries to decipher how to figure out to unlock the location of the lost city. Yeah. Okay. So the first one I did is I tried to do the race. We didn't introduce anybody. Oh, sorry. I just assumed you noticed by now. That's Anthony. That's Arthur. That's Matt. I'm Ryan. Let's do this. You know it translates really well on a podcast? Pointing. I'm Anthony guy. He's biting me. Don't bite me. He's talking to a cat by the way. Sorry, Anthony. The person getting bitten by that. You should probably just leave her alone. The person that's getting bitten by a cat, that's Ryan O'Donnell from Area 5. And then with me is Arthur Geeze. You guys. And Matt Changerine. Hello. I don't have a cat to bite me. If you're left out. Yeah. Well, Arthur's cat won't bite my cat's kind of a woman. He just wants to lay and be warm. Man, that sounded awesome over the headphones. So I need to make a looper of that. So, yes. So the first part, you're doing missions to kill time while he tries to decipher the thing. And the first one I tried to do was the race. And I could not release the race. Really? I wanted to let you know that I went from $40,000 to $3,000 trying over and over again. What plane were you flying? My biplane. And it wasn't that I couldn't complete it because of time. It was because I would die every time I had to do this case. Because I didn't know the caves. So I was just looking for where the arrow would tell me to go. So the arrow would all of a sudden be above me. So I'd like turn up and hit a wall bounce and bounce dead. No, I think I definitely had an advantage in this because I went. Excuse me. I went flying around the island looking for upgrade tokens. And I found the caves way ahead of time. And I was flying through all these caves. And I was like, man, it's really cool that there's all these caves here. Fuck, they're going to put a mission in here. And then I'm going to eat them. Five minutes later, man. All these caves suck. But I did the race. That was actually my favorite race in the game. I jumped into Bulldog and bet the maximum money. That's what I did too. When you're playing games, do you slowly just pound your head into the monitor when you're doing it? No, Matt apparently is good at games and we suck. Oh, that's what I'm trying to say. I didn't play the race because I just decided not to. See, you didn't have to. I thought you had to. You learned very early on that you don't need to do the races. You just got to do enough missions in the area to unlock it. No, it's just races are optional. Yeah. I think you have to do one mission in the area. Yeah, so then I did the other mission. You know, shoot more blimps down than the other guy. Yeah, it's the remote control shooting of the blimps. Right. And then retrieving the keys from wherever the player is. Okay, we talked about those a little bit last week. No, we mentioned that you pull the first one from the Despena base. Right. And then you need the other three pieces. Right. Why do they call them keys? They're fucking pieces of that giant medallion, right? Yeah. That's what they are. But they go on a completely different pedestal than the actual medallion. Yeah. Not only that, but jerk. It was a super pain in the ass. Like once, okay, so after you retrieve the three keys, which is really easy. There's basically no resistance. But the third key, I could not find that fucker for the life. Neither could I. Or the one that's underground. Because I didn't do the race. So, and I didn't go exploring for tokens. So I didn't know where it was. I just like, it says it's in the middle of this fucking mountain. How do I get in there? You have to take one of the three different ways that you can get into there. Well, I told Arthur the way I found it was eventually I just flew up super high and came down and saw that there was a hole vertically in, which is like the most dangerous way you could go in. And it actually tells you. Like the third time I did it when he's telling you where, like, okay, now get the third one. It says it's in the volcano. Yeah. It does say that. I didn't even have it. Yeah. I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot. You're deaf. The weird part to me was the mission right afterwards. Yes. So you have the three keys already? Yeah. Well, he says the keys are in their places now. You have to go shoot the keys to make it work. And you shoot it once. And I remember this happening. I was like, I'm just going to go shoot these things. But I bet you a million dollars there's an order that I need to shoot these things in. But I'm just going to shoot them all. So I go and shoot them. The mouth opens and it flames me. Well, it's blamed. And I was like, I'm going to go because I think it's probably the fire will stop. And then I just hit the fire and killed me. See, I flew right by the fire and I was like, who cares? No problem. There's been flame turrets all over this game before this. I'll just shoot the fucking turret and go inside. But he's like, no, no, no. Obviously, this isn't going to work. And I was like, one flame turret. One flame turret and we're turning around. Come on. I'm in the giant mouth. I am a man. I'm in the fire. He's like, what's the order? So I did the order like three times. And then eventually he's like, oh, now I know it's actually just this and this. I know. Oh, he told you. So he told me, well, this time, you know, what we've realized is that you don't have to shoot all three keys. You just need to shoot two. So I was like, fucking, I'm going to shoot this one and this one. And those turned out to be the right way. Yeah. He got it right. Yeah. He was like, yeah, it's actually discreet. Yeah. You only had to fuck it up twice for that to happen. He tells you. And also what they don't say is that you have to shoot two and then just let the timer run out. Yep. Because if you like, oh, I guess I did it wrong. I better shoot the last one. Nothing fucking happens. Yeah. That's not a very good mission design. Especially in this kind of game. And that really just starts to pile on and pile on as we approach the end. Of course. That's right. Yeah. So now that you've unlocked the cave, it's time to go flying in. And for some reason, no one thinks, maybe we should do this on foot because that's probably the type of technology that people had to build this on. Like, fuck it. Inside cave. Send a plane. And I made the mistake of not taking the gyrocopter, which I did it with the Devastator. Me too. And I did it with the gyrocopter and it was delightful. I did it with the Devastator as well. I actually. So let me set this up here. I follow Arthur on Twitter. And I had. No thanks. Just before. I follow you too. Oh, that's cute. Should we leave you too alone? Just before. Not yet. I had to play. I read this tweet from Arthur saying, "I think I've played one of the worst levels that I've played any game in Crimson Skies just now." And so I'm thinking, "Well, I don't know exactly what he's talking about, but he's probably talking about some portion of this cave's part." And that Arthur guy's usually full of shit. No. Well, I was like, "Well, now I'm prepared and I'm going to be very careful all of the way through this." And so I basically held down the Discelerate button the entire time and flew my plane in. And it was very pain free. I think the one thing that I think is pretty tricky about the caves is it's really hard for me to judge the distance of my distance from the Pendulums that are swinging. Yeah. So I would like be like, "Am I slow? Should I slow down?" Oh, no, no. I wasn't close enough yet. I slowed down. Oh, now it's hitting me. And now I'm getting bashed. So I got bashed maybe once by a Pendulum on the way in. Flying in was tedious. It was tedious. But in the world. And I was thinking, "This is pretty cool. It's not the coolest stage ever or anything." But it was a totally different stage than anything I'd played before in the game. And you're just saying to yourself, "Well, Indiana Jones wouldn't get out of his plane. I'll do this." Yeah. What cave people were like, "We need to put some giant fucking Pendulums in the entire day." Yeah. They had a very advanced anti-plane defense system. Yeah. Yeah, I never really understood the context of why they needed it for it to be some kind of ancient civilization thing. I don't even understand why that needed to be. Because that's what Nazis were all about, looting ancient magic. Yeah, but I just didn't know why that needed to be in the game at all. Especially for this world, which is focused entirely around your plane. I think they could have made a better decision for the setting of this level. But the level itself, like Ryan, I found relatively painless. My big problem was that I would get into a situation, especially where I was in a dog fight with somebody in a cave. And I would lose track of which way it was up and down until I was holding in the B button and my plane would stall. And I died two or three times by having a stalled plane that just ran into the ground. Yeah. This was one of the parts in the game where, well, I guess in the few parts in the last stage where plane management kind of becomes a really, like, a big part of the game because you don't have a repair facility. So you're like, "All right, well, I got what I came in with. And well, it looks like there's two other planes here." And there's, like, hidden health occasionally. Yeah. And sometimes you're like, "Well, I don't know if it's this first one. I think it's like the second or third. When you're coming back out later, you have to do a couple dog fights, and I'm sure we'll talk about how awful that was. But yeah, sometimes you're like, "Why is this health box lying on the ground here in the middle of the ground for no reason at all?" And it's the only one that I can find. I'm going to fly around all over this place to find another health box, and there's not one around here. This is awful. The ancient people that figured, "Well, we have some pretty hardcore defenses in here. If somebody makes it through, they deserve to be healed." Oh, okay. I just remember thinking, as I came across the first, I spin a base inside the mountain that, "Man, these guys build bases really fast." Yeah, they do. It's like they've been there, what, for like a week? There's something? Two runways set up, and like, when you build in. Like, they're going to go on airfield. They might as well have like a brothel and a bar, if you can set up. Oh, it's there. It's down next to... You didn't see it? No. I don't see efficiency, yeah. The saboteur burned me out on World War II era, boomers. So, there you go. So, you fly through, and eventually, you reach the end. Well, you give me a couple of dogfights on the way. Yeah, you get into some dogfights, and you finally get the last... I finally got the last plane here, which is the second I spin a plane that has like a... The double, the "Hivac hard-core" turrets, both of them. Yeah, basically. And it's kind of crap, actually. I'm just missing a plane. I... You're probably disregarded because it looks like the other dice been a plane. It's blue. No, no. I've picked up every plane that I came across in the game. I think I just must have missed one in an earlier stage. Oh, by the end of the game, I had an empty slot. I mean, you... I didn't have much of a problem with the dogfights at first, because like I flew in with my gyrocopter, I might snipe a couple of those things on the down low, and then I would go to one of the planes and fly it around, and I didn't care that I was fucking it up because I figured, well, I'm just going to write back to my gyrocopter as soon as this thing is done, and I'll be fine. And I was fine for most of it. And so you finally get through, and you find I spin it. Like, not I spin it, but Dr. Frank and Furtur, or whatever. Yeah. And you have like a worst gun battle with you. Yeah. Oh my God. It is awful. It's like Mel Brooks directed the secret piece. It feels like 20 minutes. I mean, you know, it's like really only like two minutes long, but it feels like 20 minutes of dude shooting and not hitting anything that the box is around them. But occasionally you don't even hear gunshots. They'll like, and then I'll suddenly cut the other guy in a big ditch, ditch, ditch, ditch. They're like, yeah. They're slow bullets. They're deadlier. And what's her name gets shot, Maria? Yeah. And that was her payment, which as far as I'm concerned, whatever. Yeah. He was like, he's he's shed a tear for some, but whatever she got was coming to her. Yeah, there was nothing sympathetic about that entire scene. Yeah, so after the prolonged conversation between the two over a gunfight where no one hits anything, that was the world's dumbest gunfight. Yeah. It was like, it was like just two people firing and making like that part of conversation. This is my part of the conversation. Over. Now I like Bam Bam. And it really is like, I'm going to tell you every part of my evil plan now. Ha ha ha. I don't even need this place. It's basically a big setup to get you back to Chicago in a game full of silly moments. It easily takes the cake as the stupidest thing in this game. Yeah. And that's, I mean, man, that is like the Olympics of stupid. It's even dumber than like leaving the giant plans in your coat pocket sitting up. Yes. And I mean, really, you really have to work hard to be that. So in a way, Bravo. And then, so one thing I can't remember, though, is why does the base start falling apart? He, he hits the base destruct button. Oh, okay. Okay. I'm falling apart. The part that's unclear to me is, is it supposed to be that I'm actually flying out the exact way that I came in? No. No. No. Because it felt like a different path. He actually says that there's a back route. Yeah. Yeah. You get cut off from the way in because like it collapses first and then you have to fly out. So what's annoying about it is it's essentially the same thing. It looks almost exactly the same. It has the same number of places where you stop in new dog fights it seems like. And it's about the same length as flying in. There's more pendulums, though. Yeah. Let's talk about those dog fights on the way out there. Well, like before that, okay, so you're the, all the pendulums and the flying and stuff. It's already hard, but now you've got explosions and like lava burning your pipes coming up and burning you. But again, like I was still, well, actually I wasn't, oh, this part was awful. Okay. I didn't die once in this entire part. I don't think I did either, but I did have, you guys are good. I did have live. I wasn't the gyrocopter. See, I was flying the Devastator at first, but during the dog fight, just before the awful cut scene, there's a, I think it's a dolphin is what it's called, the plane that has like the triangles between the two sets of wings and it fires the, it's the one with the double. Yeah. It's the one that has the double machine guns basically. And I picked it up just to finish off the last few guys because it had a lot of health in my plan was to get back into the Devastator. But after that cut scene, everything's coming down and you can't get back into the plane which they actually, that's something that they get really bad about near the end is that you go into cut scenes and you come out of them in a completely different place. Yeah. And that's especially annoying if say you were about to grab a token as it invokes a cut scene, or you're about to fly into a wall. Exactly. Like as you come out of the repair bay in that valley, you are that like inches away from crashing into a wall. Well, in this game is. Oh. Yeah. Every fucking time. Yes. Awful design. Awful design. It doesn't matter if you hold down the decelerate button, you're still going to hit that wall. Every time. Awful. Awful design. Yes. Not to mention the fact that the game is just buggy and you just don't know if you're going to get repaired when you go in there anyway because half the time you do and half the time you don't. This whole escaping part actually forced me to use all three planes every stop, every time. And even the shitty thing would be is that the whole time I was taking off and landing. I was just getting nailed with lightning. Oh, yeah. Like the whole time. It was just like I was being attacked no matter if I was in a cut scene or not. The first one was bad for me because I hadn't died in the escape section with all the lava and crap. But I did get hit. I made a few mistakes. I got hit by a pendulum and it knocked my health all the way down. And then it checkpointed just before the dogfight, which makes perfect sense. But I go into the dogfight and I couldn't the way that it spawned me in. It would go. I'd fly into the space, then it was like cut scene where it was introducing that planes were coming in. And then it's right after that, I was getting hit by fire. And there was nothing I could do to change it. So I and I only had a sliver of health. My health was already red. So I just kept dying and dying and dying. So I actually had to turn my plane around after it reloaded and fly back into the awful caves to just like search to try to find a box of health somewhere. And it eventually gave up because I'm pretty certain that it closed a wall behind me and I couldn't go back any further to where I thought I had seen a health box. So I just had to make my way in there. And eventually one of the times the cut scene happened a little differently and then they weren't firing me when I got in. I had just enough time to grab a health box. What I really like is that at times the textures on the doors that close behind you will turn black, making it look like there's not actually exactly and we'll fly into it and ricochet all over the place and die. I did that. Brilliant. The first thing is like the first one you just fight planes, but it's the second fight on your way out where you fight the blimps and that's where I watched Arthur die more times than anyone I've ever seen that in a game. It was like I just kept hearing the thing like don't they know that it's crumbling or something over and over again coming out of the way. Don't they see what's happening? Yeah. That was the battle that I was referring to with the resource management where there's one health box lying on the ground in the middle of nowhere and I had to use every plane and I don't know how I made it through. Yeah. And this wins the title for the worst game, worst level or encounter I've ever played in a game. Wow. Ever. My favorite part, tell me if this is the same for you and I, you know, sometimes I wonder if this is just a 360. I hear it's different for everyone there first time, but the zeppelins are like black in there. They are really hard to see. Yeah. You can basically see the blinking light. Yeah. Or where the electricity is coming from that's blasting you out of the sky. Yeah. I think it's probably a monitor issue because on my, because I'm playing this on my Dell monitor, which has doesn't have a very good contrast ratio, so I don't have any true blacks on my screen. Ah. And I was able to see them pretty good. Yeah, I didn't have a problem seeing them, but I could see how that would be an issue. It's been dark on my flight. For me, it's. I tried to turn off the brightness and there is no brightness option. Right. Well, they just come. It's just there's so many and they come from out of nowhere, like. Well, they're all, they're all sitting there anchored actually. You can start shooting them before they even fly. That is how I beat them is by shooting them while they were anchored going straight for them at the beginning, like saying, fuck these planes that are flying around. Right. Because I died several times and I was just like, all right, I'm going straight for these fucking zeppelins. Yeah. They're all anchored there. Anthony saw me do this, except I was in the gyro counter. Oh. And so every time any lightning with an Arthur, it was like, half your health's gone. Yep. Immediately. All right. And the plane, I was flying. The lighting basically does not. Arthur had a hard time even just booking it and making it to a plane to jump into. Yeah. And so then I had to destroy like four or five tesla fighters. Right. And then the four to six. It seems like it varied. Like sometimes there would be four and sometimes there would be more zeppelins. I only remember two. I only remember four. Oh, they were definitely more than two. I remember four. Whatever. But yeah. It's just I died. Anthony played on easy mode. Over and over and over and over. I have never yelled at a game like that before. You yelled at games. Not like that. Well, you were in a terrible situation to begin with. You had the gyro counter. You had the gyro counter. Being in that with the gyro counter. I mean, it was great probably flying around the obstacles and stuff. I mean, Anthony said, I can't believe you're done with that section already. Yeah. But going into that section with a gyro-copter is like trying to climb a wall with a knife in your belly. Well, I mean, just think about my in my situation, had I gone in with gyro-copter, I wouldn't have even had it coming back out because like I said, they took my plane that I went in with it for me. It's just like in that that cavern is it's fairly open, but it's still like there's shit exploding on the ground. And I guess looking back, I think that that's part of what they want you to use. They want you to fly, fly past those and get other planes to get caught on those explosions, but it never works. And those planes are so powerful that when they do do a strafe on you, it's like a third or more your health. And then they zap you with the Tesla cannon and you collide with shit. Okay. So I had problems in this cave where like there were columns and then there were things next to the walls that looked like columns and I'd be trying to fly around and be like, oh shit, that's connected and I would find out too late and bounce off the wall. Yep, this is where the disappearing texture thing got me a couple of times because I was like, oh, oh thank God, I can just fly past everything into that hole. I tried that once too and just bounce all over the place until I die. So I think actually, you know, you think the last cutscene was the stupidest part in the game. I actually think the stupidest part in the game is that they have you go all the way in. You come all the way back out like long as time coming all the way back out of these goddamn caves and it cutscenes and cuts before you even get to fly out and you don't even see your plane fly out of this entire fucking awfulness that you've gone through. You don't even get to come out and the cutscene doesn't even show it. I really thought that it was going to be like, oh, all right, I go into a cutscene. I thought it was going to be like Star Wars with the Millennium Falcon with a flying out with a bunch of fire coming out of it. No, no, no. You're just like, oh, oh, everything's okay. One. Let's go to the map, kids. I couldn't believe it. I was like, are you kidding me? That was just such a narrative misfire. It's like they planned for something there and just never got to finish it. The design for this part felt like instead of trying to make it challenging as a way for someone to have fun playing it there, like, okay, so this is our game plan to destroy the player every time it comes through. It's like a bad dungeon master or something like who wants to kill his players instead of wanting them to succeed. I got more frustrated in the final battle than you did. Yeah, so let's get to that. Yeah. So we go to Chicago. Yeah. You fly to Chicago because his plan is to take his megazepilin, which he used the doctor's plans to build, which basically creates category five tornadoes out of this thing's asshole or three assholes. I think there are three category five tornado cannons coming out about this one. I think there's only one in its belly. All right. But I could swear that I saw. There's more fans, but I thought like the tornado, it doesn't matter. But either way, it poops out tornadoes is what this Ebon does. To me, it looks like a bunch of like, yeah, whatever, I don't know. The art is wrong for it because it looks like it's just dropping columns of rock, even though it's supposed to be sucking up a bunch of stuff. I got caught in the stupid wind, you know, yeah, yeah, if you fly in front of it, you get zapped with a tessel blast that is so powerful. It turns your screen white and will send you colliding with the building. And it's another one. Remember the repair shop that send you right into the wall from the previous stage? This one, as soon as that mega zap, okay, well, first, before you fight the mega zap and you come to Chicago and it's beautiful. I think this is the best looking stage yet. It's like cloudy on the bottom of the screen. I didn't like that. I couldn't see the screen that I couldn't see the streets though that I was like, oh, I guess. But I mean, we'd already seen that stage to me. I never felt like I would have time to look at the streets visually. It was like pleasing to me, I thought. Yeah. So you kill some zap-- I just remember you kill the spider thing. You kill a lot of zap ones. You kill a couple of zap ones. And then after that, you kill the spider tank thing that you fought before. Right. What planes is everyone flying in this? A bi-plane. Devastator with the double machine. I was also flying the bi-plane because that is the plane murderer. The entire end part of this game, I was flying the one with the turret on the back. Right. The fascist plane. Right. I had finally upgraded-- I had like so many upgrade tokens and money and stuff because I was just using like the same couple planes all the time. And I finally upgraded that one and I used that for this entire rest of the game. And I was like, I am a death machine. I did upgrade that plane and it does do quite a lot of damage that way. But it's very effective against zap ones and-- The-- man. I really enjoyed it. The double machine guns on that bi-plane are just tear through things so quickly. Yeah. Yeah. I used the Devastator because the rockets on it were great. They basically took down the generators and turrets in one shot with the secondary fire. So-- Yeah. So you fight this-- I don't have anything to say about fighting the fucking spider head boss again. It was exactly the same as it was. It was actually really easy. It was super easy. So what really annoys me is that after you do it, it cut scenes you. It shows you the giant Zeppelin Devast-- crazy thing flying in. And then immediately after that, your plane like flies into the shot-- excuse me, I hit my mic there. Your plane flies into the shot and you get zapped immediately by electricity and there's nothing you can do to dodge it. I think that's bad game design. It is. If they just take the control away from the player into a damaging situation, then yeah, that's terrible game design. Because you could-- you don't enter that cut scene with full health. You enter it with whatever you had after you killed the spider boss thing. And that thing is damaging when it hits you too. So the first time I tried to fight that fucker, I had like five rockets left, five of my secondary ammo, and like a quarter health. And I started fighting it and I died. Luckily, there was a checkpoint there, so it started me right again. And I was like, all right, fine, I'll do it better this time. I'll go get repaired first, since I'm automatically getting get damaged by this electricity. It did it and I started going through with the process and ended up getting through the first part where you take out the external generators and then started to go into the second part where you go into take out the internal generators. And it wasn't working, I was starting to die and I was like, man, this sucks. And then I died. And it checkpointed me, of course, at the very beginning of the battle. I was like, I think it's crazy that there's no checkpoint after you take down the external generators. So the checkpoint thing that should on me more than that is that for some reason I was in the level in a way that as soon as-- like it triggered me before the cut scene that introduced the mega Zeppelin. And then so it showed the mega Zeppelin and as soon as that cut scene was over, whether I skipped it or it played through, I would just get blasted by its Tesla canon. Right, that's what we were just saying. Okay, I'm sorry, I spaced out for a second because I get a text message and I'm a bad person. It's always. You cannot avoid that Tesla canon fire. You can't avoid it. So you can't avoid it. You guys had so much trouble with this because I pretty much did it on my first try. It's not that it was like, I didn't think that I had so much problems with it. It was just annoying. Like-- It just didn't feel very well implemented. So here's what would have fixed that scene. Checkpoint after destroying all external generators. Checkpoint after destroying internal generators. And then you're fine because at that point taking out the final bit of the-- Can you lose if you let him-- Well there are four sets of generators. Because he killed four buildings. Yes. Yes. The last building that he kills is the bank which is the most important building of course. It's Chicago. Right. And if he kills that last building and the way that I found this out was that after fighting through all this stuff-- and I died several times trying to-- I actually thought it was a cool boss. I like the fact that it was like this fortress that you had to fly inside and outside of. And like I really enjoyed it and I had to attack things from above and from below. And so like that whole thing was really cool. And I got to the end of it and I'm like flying around in the fans trying to hit the-- That was tough. Final generators inside the fans. Oh that was easy for me. Yeah. It was-- well it's easy if you get past like that first level, you can just fly around in a sort of-- That was the thing is that I kept on trying to go up and I kept getting whacked by blades. Yeah if you just stay at the same level you can do it but anyway. Fly down, fly down, fly down, fly down circle, fly down circle, boom. Yeah. So I was like-- so I was there and I was doing it and like-- and then I got the last internal generators like you did it, we won, yay, and then all of a sudden it went-- oh my God, he's got the bank building. And it destroyed the bank building and I lost the game. I was like but I-- but-- but-- The worst part for me was that-- it totally-- sorry, it totally reminded me of the same thing that happened to you like a couple weeks ago. No, it was where I finished the race and it was like the whole cutscene that it was like fail. Yeah. Dude. For me, at one point it just was one of those non-monter game things. At some point I realized I don't have enough health or energy to beat this. I'm just gonna manually restart it so that I can start over. There's your mistake. Restarted the whole mission, had to fight the spider thing again, had to fight all the crap all over again. I was like ah, this game, driving me nuts right now. I told that story weeks ago. No, I know. I think for me it was-- it was frustrating because it just-- the Tesla planes that fly around it spawn endlessly. Yeah, you can't kill them all. And there's a timer so even if you couldn't kill them all which you can't, it just-- you will never have enough time. Yeah, I didn't have any trouble with the planes though after I was shooting the generators because I just flew along the belly of it like so close that the planes couldn't-- didn't ever-- See, I never went under the belly because every time I did I would get sucked in by the tornado. I didn't go under the belly either. I'd start on the side. Well, I'd come straight at it. I'd go straight in and then there's a way on front and the back of each of those kind of lanes where you can-- you turn around and go back in. Yeah, I did. So I never had to go through the bottom and right. I did find it funny on my radar watching when enemy planes would get caught in the tornado because this red dot would just start spinning around. I never noticed that. Well, did you notice that the Zeppelin doesn't appear on your radar at all? Yeah. That was fucking frustrating because when you fly into the garage and fly out, you're like, "Uh, where's Zeppelin?" Well, I know where it was. You get zapped every time I come out of the mirror. It would show me a yellow circle on my radar that was the next generator that needed to get shot. Yeah, the objective market really. Yeah, but I knew-- but I always knew where it was because I'd fly out of the repair shop by the maker and then zap. Yeah. No, you fly out of the repair shop and make a right and it should be right there. I think the-- Right, which is when I get zapped. Frustrating moments of that other than the, "Hey, fly into this hallway with buzz saws to destroy this generator," because that makes sense, was I finally got the turbine at the top turned off so I could fly into those fan blades and start destroying those generators. And I did that and it said, "This thing is falling apart. I better get out of here." So, of course, I fly up. Oh, right now. And then I-- Classic mistake. I am rocketed back into the walls and quickly destroyed as the turbine on the top all of a sudden turn right back on. It's like, "Wait, didn't I destroy the generators that power things that--" It said it was turned off. It's like, "No, you have to be pooped out the other end." And I thought the ending was going to end with some awesome-- Pooped out and appropriate analogy. With some awesome-- won't buy awesome myself, seriously, cutscene, but it doesn't even do that. It's just like, "Oh, it does a cutscene, but it's like in-game." Generate the room report. Just lying. Talking about-- oh, I guess that does do that. At least, yeah, it does show him blowing up. But I thought it was going to end with me and that girl that I'm with maybe getting together or something. Nope. I mean, there's a throwaway line or something like that. Well, yeah. But you think that that's because, "Oh, well, she wants to do it," but then he's like, "Oh, that's right. Last time we went to a casino, I got robbed and we had to fly to a fucking mystery island." Right. Right. Basically-- And then there's credits. Yeah. It's kind of a letdown at the end. Yeah. But back when this game came out, most games were letdown at the end. It's true. It was a while before-- I mean, it was extremely rare at that day and age when a game would actually give you a satisfying conclusion. It was like it took so long, like most of the time that I've been playing games for games to actually give you something satisfying at the end and to realize that, you know, going towards a satisfying end goal was something that was appropriate and desirable in games. And even games that one man thinks ends well while another person thinks has a shitty ending. I don't know. I feel like the 32-bit era is the last time that we saw endings that were decent. And then for the Xbox PS2 period, that's when endings really started getting underwhelming. Mm-hmm. I don't know. Do you ever beat Jackal on the NES? Mm-hmm. Just throw it out there. What kind of fucking mausicus would you be to try to beat Jackal on the NES? That game was hard. I beat the game a lot. All there is a fucking sunset at the end. It's annoying. [LAUGHTER] Um. So, yeah, so Crimson Skies from Fassa, Fassa was dissolved by Microsoft because the guys who fucked this game up then fucked up Shadowrun. This game kind of scares me because I had- I didn't think Shadowrun was bad, by the way. I'll just throw it out there. I don't think it's bad. I just didn't think it was all that good. And it's ugly, but whatever. The thing- I had fond memories of this game and now going- having gone back and played it, I understand- I understand why I had fond memories of it, but it just doesn't hold up. Because you didn't know any better. No, I just don't think games or games have advanced Fassa. 3D games have- are done better now. There's more better checkpoints than- Yeah, the nostalgia goggles are rough having them taken off that way. Well, the core gameplay is actually still pretty much there. It is. It's like all the other parts of the game that have, you know, over the past few years, we've just gotten better at doing- Well, in this game- Game designers like me, you know- Well, in this game is best, just kidding. This game is best when it's in wide open spaces, in kind of an open world setting, where there's things that make sense to you, where there's like, you know, dog fights and, you know, yeah, unique boss fights, but not unique boss fights, but not boss fights where, you know, you have to go down the gullet of something, you know, like when you're attacking things externally. I mean, when it- when they were focusing on this being a creative- a creative world where planes are the thing, it's where the game was at its strongest, but when they went all wild, wild west on you, I think is when it really started to break down. It seems like they tried to do too much with what they had in place, like, oh, let's activate switches, let's do puzzles with flying planes, stuff like that. It doesn't- it feels very forced to- It was kind of open world GTA-ish in parts in the way that most games weren't at the time, like, going to grab missions from specific locations on maps and that sort of thing, like, obviously that's just kind of general in something you do in a lot of games now, but back then, I don't think you did it in quite as many games and so the fact that it was in a flying game made it stand out, it felt like it was something a little bit different. So, uh, so now a lot of the guys that worked on this in Macquarie are working on airtight games, who is doing Dark Void for Capcom, which is out next month, and so if you liked Crimson Skies, then Dark Void might perhaps be worth checking out. Well, overall I would have to say that I do like Crimson Skies, I mean, it's- it's a- it is a very- it's a very flawed game in a lot of ways, which I know we see in a lot of games that we play- I mean that's game- I mean, that's like a game club given, but- Floc Club? Floc Club, yeah, but I- but I feel like Crimson Skies had so many unique and cool ideas in it that, uh, it kind of bums me out that other people haven't picked up on them since then. I mean, why hasn't anybody else made a really great, you know, adventure flying game since then? I mean, Ubisoft tried with Blazing Angels, but didn't do very well. Yeah. Um. I never played Blazing Angels. I guess the thing I like about it was the- the- the setting and the characters at the time, that was kind of appealing and fun and different and, uh, you know, even though there was a Crimson Skies on PC that I didn't play, um, I still ended up- it seemed like something that wouldn't appeal to me and then I started playing it and I was like, "Yeah, this is- this is cool." I- and I really got into it at the time. Going back, like, I don't like the characters at all. I think it seems really fucking cartoony and, like, there's almost no character development and by the time you reach the end of the game, it's like, "Yeah, what did- why are we going back to Chicago? Who cares?" You know, whatever. He can fucking have it. Yeah. Exactly. But, uh, so yeah, I still like it, but I just don't like it as much as I did four weeks ago before we started playing it again. Yeah, the- the first- I would have to say that the first two-thirds of this game are the part that I would actually really encourage people to go and play. And the last third of the game, just give it- Once you get to the- once you know, Chicago, you can just stop. See, I don't even know if I'd, like, hardly encourage people to go back and play. It's like the type of thing where, if it's up your alley, you probably know, you know? Yeah, and I have to say, if you want to play some adventure game or something, play, like, one of the Rogue Squadron games or something, like, they're, like, way better flight adventures. I don't feel like any of those games were particularly free with allowing you to go into this world. Oh, they weren't missions and stuff. No, it was level-based. But I'm just saying that it's- it's great air combat. The- the Jedi- the Starfighter and Jedi Starfighter games were- were more like this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those were fantastic games with cool characters. And I'm not- I'm just not really a big, like, flight-sim guy. I didn't really play many PC flights. I played some of the Rogue Squadron games and that sort of thing, but yeah, this did stand out because it was more open and, uh, I don't know what I'd recommend to put- you- you should play instead of this, like, you get- to me, I get all the good stuff out of- all the good stuff that I like from this game, I get out of open-world games now, whether- Just playing Mechasalt. And Mechasalt was pretty good, too, like, that was pretty similar to- And that's dumb about them. It's like a salt one, Mechasalt two, you could get out of the Mech and do stuff. Yeah, probably one wolf. You're gonna play one. Yeah. That's what I said. Just, uh, or a guy in new game. Wait till Dark Void comes up or something. I would like- I would like another- I would like to play more games that- that involve flight. You know, and not- not just, you know, space flight is great and that, too, but I mean, I'm talking about atmospheric flight and- Great. And, you know, and- arcadey flight. You know, I like that this game is- is- it's arcadey. It's not flight-sim. You should play some isle too, Stromavic, Birds of Prey on arcade mode. Awesome. Right on. I- I would like to see- I don't know. I guess- I guess if I were gonna say what I'd like to see, it would be Dark Void in theory, but I haven't played that game yet and, uh, so I just don't know if it's actually good or not, but, uh, a lot of what I would hope to see in a- in the next version of this game is kind of what- what is happening in Dark Void, so I guess I'll just wait and play that one. I mean, I know that- There have been concerns in preview coverage about certain aspects of Dark Void that sort of ring familiar to some of our concerns/compliance about Crimson Skies, but that was a while back, so. Yeah. Who knows what they've done since then? So- So, what's our next game? Our next game's the thing, as most everyone who follows it knows, and you should all leave comments and the thread that I will make for it, uh, because I really wanna use user comments on this one because I feel like this next game will be a lot more conducive to discussion and everyone will have funny little stories to tell. Yeah, the- the- the way that stuff branches out and the crazy shit that can happen, like there's no predictability whatsoever. Yeah, like everyone thinks someone could kill themselves and when they don't kill themselves in my game, et cetera. You really do never know who the thing is. So, the thing is our next game you're gonna play through Level 3, which ends when you finish going through the Norwegian hospital building and you go into a weather station. That's the start of Level 4 and you don't wanna play that. So, if you want some pre-game play stuff, you should watch the thing. John Carpenter's the thing 'cause the game picks up like 24 hours after the movie ends. No, it's- it's more than that. Oh, it's- it's pretty close. No, because they get a distress call and they come out and the- the body's still burning, like it's still smoking. Well, you'll know when you see the game, like it- it covers it pretty well and also the thing is still awesome and disgusting. Yeah. Yeah, if you got a sensitive stomach it might not be for you, but yeah, the thing, the game also very gory and I vary PS2 generations sort of way, of course not, but they do a lot with blood and stuff, so. Looking forward to it. It's gonna be fun. I haven't played the game, we're seeing the movie, so- Ryan, will you be joining us, I will. I will. I played through the thing twice, so I will be our thing, I will be our thing expert. Nice. Tyler- Tyler will also be joining us. Tyler was not here because Tyler is on deadline for some of the freelance stuff that he does. Yeah. Well, that's right. He went through this whole thing without saying- Tyler- to tell you that he loves you and he misses you. Aw. Um. Not you. Aw, the audience. So remember to listen to our partners podcast, the mobcast at bitmub.com and the geekbox@geekbox.net as well as checking out our buddies show, which is co-op, which you can find at area5.tv or you can find at revision3.com/co-op or you can find if you go to the home page at the iTunes store and look at the year of 2009 because you guys were named one of this year's best video podcast. Show up, really? Where are we? Totally. On the very front page of their awards. You're fucking kidding. I didn't know that. Yeah. I didn't know that either. Yeah. There's like the old bit- there's like the shows that have been going on for longer in 2009, which is things like- Right. Dignation? Dignation. Oh. And stuff, but then have new shows for 2009. You guys are on the list of the top. Wow. Awesome. So. Thanks. I had it. Yeah. Thank you. You're waiters? Yeah. You're waiters. You ever reach around? Dig the shows. You want to subscribe to us. We'll see you next week. Yep. You can't make it too much. Noise on that? Yeah. You can't make it too much noise on that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.