Rebel FM
Rebel FM Game Club - Crimson Skies: HRTR - Episode 1
Greetings and welcome to the first episode of our Game Club series on Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge! This week we have a shorter episode dedicated to our initial impressions of the game's mechanics and style and the first 5 chapters of the game. Aerial penis!
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Party! - Hello and welcome to party. We're both on party podcast, where we talk about the parties we went to. (laughing) - I never get invited to party. - The game club, the first part of the Crimson Skies part, where you should have played up through chapter five, which is where you would leave Skyhaven and head to Arizona. - You leave, you see him as always. - I have whatever, he makes cars on. It's all the same in this world. - Pretty much. - And usually the parties are at you guys' place. - Well, they used to be until people stole shit. - Yeah, it's true. - Oh. - So. So let's just go over our first impressions of this year game. - It's a video game. (laughing) - That's Ryan. - You know what? - Oh yeah, actually, let's go over introduction first. I may think I go with me as Arthur Geese. - Hello. - Tyler Barber. - Hey, what's up, fellas? - And area fives, Ryan Adonel. - Hi. - A mesh engineer. - What's up? - I don't want to exclude the ladies. - Hello, fellas and ladies. - So, I had actually played Crimson Skies back in the day for a little bit, but I don't think I ever got very far because I was already seeing new areas just after we left Sea Haven. - I beat the shit out of it, so. - It's cool, I love the arcadey nature of the flying and I found the special moves to be particularly enjoyable to pull off. Like the, you know, if you pull the sticks in different directions and you press in on one of the thumb sticks, then you can do, you know, a straight up climb, which I found to be far more useful than I thought it was going to be. - Yes, definitely. - And the one which seems like it would be useful, where the one where you're flying straight on and you just loop around, but the camera stays in the same position. Isn't useful at all. It's not. They just stay right behind you anyways. - Yeah. - Yeah, but you can't get hit. - I mean, it's meant to, you know, maybe through dodging like a missile coming behind you and it'll dodge those, you know, it'll dodge the machine then fire, but they'll stay behind you. They'll need to do further maneuvers. - Yeah, but I also like right away, I remember think of the world concept was pretty cool, but playing it again this time, I'm like, man, this is an awesome, alternate history United States. I wish somebody else could do something in this one too. - And they avoid the easy alternate history thing, which everyone else seems to go for, which is Nazis. - Right, yeah, exactly. - No, this one is like-- - There are still Nazis though. - They're not Nazis. - They might as well be Nazis. - They pretty much are Nazis. - I mean, the guy has like a walk in-- - What are they, if they're not Nazis? - They're going a big fucking blimp and they're about gray and red. (laughing) - No, it's clearly meant to evoke that time period, but I just like the concept of this particular alternate history and where everybody flies and the Navajo nation has their own particular kind of planes and stuff like that, it's cool. - The end of the game definitely gets like more crazy as someone who's played it all. And so when I think back on this game-- - You mean crazy like out there? - Crazy, no, crazy in terms of like awesome locations and cool enemies to fight and it's really exciting and that's when I think that alternate history really starts to like get supremely interesting. But I think it also does a good job right at the beat. So when I started playing again this time, I was like, oh man, I can't wait 'til the end 'cause it gets so sweet. (laughing) - Through the part we played at so far, I'm totally not into this game. - Oh, you don't get it? - No. - You don't get it. - I like Jedi Starfighter and stuff too, so I do like arcade flying games, but this one I'm just-- See, that's the thing is I'm not that-- This is not usually like really a my alley. I'm not typically a flying sort of guy. I mean, I've played a lot of those games, like I've played Star Fox and I've played some of the tie fighters and that sort of thing on PC back in the day, but I think and this gets set up pretty early. What I like about it is the way that they dull out the missions in most of the kind of like wide open stages where it was sort of kind of novel for there to be kind of GTA like locations where you go up and grab a mission. - It's like there's many open worlds. - Right. And there's something like, it doesn't seem like it should be that cool or interesting, but I have a great time running around and finding the upgrade tokens. - Yeah, I do the same thing, although they're really sadistic with the placement on some of those fucking things. - Yeah, especially when you can get killed by some of them, like the volcano ones and then like, if you didn't save your progression, like, you know, like, you know, okay, I grabbed six others, but now I'm dead. - Yeah. - You go get those six other ones again. - It's weird to play this game now because, you know, I'm playing it on 360 and my TV upscales things really nicely and in addition to the 360 doing quite a job of it as well. And so, you know, things like your playing look really, really good visually. And then even the environments in the water look relatively good. I mean, you can tell definitely, okay, yes, this game is a generation behind what we're playing now, but it's more the kind of general game bureaucracy and conventions that are really, have really taken a step up in these last few years, like, things like checkpoints after every mission and auto-saving everything that you do. And, you know, things like the upgrade tokens, the collectibles, not being linked to your account profile, but rather being linked to your game save, which is just like something that you know, you have to remember, oh, yeah. I should have gone back. After I grabbed all those upgrade tokens, I should have gone back to my home base and just had the game save itself right there or done like a race mission instead so that the game would save. - And games now are much more free about the upgrades that they hand out. Like, whereas this you really have to put a lot into something to actually get anything out of it. Like it takes, I think the first level has maybe 10 or 11 upgrade tokens in it and takes 14 to upgrade your playing. - And there's lots of things that it doesn't tell you. Like, every time you see a kind of landing strip on the ground or the icon that shows you a plane, you need to go over and grab it and put it into your inventory and not skip it, which is something that you, you know, might do 'cause you, I don't know. - Well, I also know going back. - Yeah, there's no going back. I found myself moving on from Sea Haven before I felt that I'd thoroughly explored for it. 'Cause I thought like there would be a clear like, you know, you're moving on to your next story mission, I was like, oh, wait, I was like, shit, I bet I would be like half a dozen upgrade tokens back. - Before we leave, are you ready to leave? - Yeah, right, no, there's none of that holding. - This game is like, it's more than just streamlined. It's, I don't know what adjective would be appropriate, but it really does just move from one thing to the next with no options. - It's really cool that this kind of game with short attention spans in a lot of ways. I mean, it's very much the mech assault approach applied to this genre of games like for the PC in particular. - Yeah, this is the contorted version, as people would say. - Why do you, so, so I mean, I'm curious, like, is there any particular reason that you can put a finger on as to why you're not digging it so far? - I don't know, I don't think that the world so far has been that interesting so far, 'cause when you only see Sea Haven, it's like, and out then like, yeah, I'm not saying that the game will be cool later on. And so far the characters, I'm kind of just like, if the characters are totally done, throw away like, you know, oh, I'm a, I'm a played sky pirate. - Chipmunk, Nathan Drake. - Yeah, that's what I'm gonna say, he's Nathan Drake and I'm playing. - I don't know, I feel like I don't, I'd like at least some of the characters, although really it only seems to care about making you give a shit about the main character, because it just sort of, it does this cursory sort of character bit for each character, it's like, Doc is being chased by dudes in his helicopter. - Robert Einstein is still being sought after, after working on the nuclear project. - Apparently. - This world was just a big fan, so. - No, I mean, even the intro, you know, it's again, it reminds me how much things have changed. Like the intro little narrative movie where Nathan is in bed with some lady that, you know, he has to run out on because he's getting attacked and someone's stealing his plane. You know, it's kind of cheesy and kind of throw away and feels much more video gamey and less cinematic than something that would come out now, kind of dates itself, but there's still like, every once in a while, there's like a good line of dialogue delivered where you're like, okay, well, they did really good for this time period. Like, it says, what does he say? Something like, I still don't have your zippin' or something like that. Like it's your jumping guy, the cage dude. - Yeah, it's just like, I don't know, every once in a while, I'm like, it's good, it's just that the voice actors weren't quite as professional back then or something. - They weren't, it's just not quite the same level. - Even the way he talks is like, so full of bravado, like Nathan Drake does that, but he has enough sass and enough believable guy. Like, that guy that does that voice actor wears, like this guy, this Nathan, he's very much the guy that talks like this all the time. - Well, I mean, even in one of the early missions, you're, I don't know, killing a bunch of enemies that are, oh no, no, you're shooting a bunch of oil tanks and then there are a bunch of enemies around at the same time, and after you shoot every one of the like eight oil tanks on the stage, he has a one-liner after every single one. - And then after he shoots every plane, he has a one-liner, I do, I think it's, this is a T-rated game, right? - Yeah, so. - Like, I think it's interesting that the way they get a T-rating is that everyone parachutes out. - It's a T-rated zone, yeah. - Yeah, it's very G-I-J-O in the approach. - Which it also like, in a way, is kind of charming to the world that it's, you know, created in, I don't know, makes you don't, you know. - It feels like one of the serialized, pulp sort of sci-fi things in the third, like it draws inspiration from the same thing that Star Wars and Indiana Jones. - So I was saying it does that, but I just don't feel like it's done enough at this point. - When you play Star Wars game, for instance, the reason that I think I enjoyed those more is because the universe is already so established in my head that they could be like really not good at telling a story, but it was just enough there that I already understood what was going on from my extensive knowledge of it. Whereas this, it's like, I don't have anything going into it, and so the world isn't as engaging right off the bat. - A mistake it makes is that when you finish the last section of Skyhaven, it shows you a map showing you that you're going to New Mexico or Arizona or whatever, and that's the first chance you really get to see how different this world is, and the one that we know, like how California is like the nation of Hollywood or whatever, and it's got like the country of Texas with the protectorate of Oklahoma and that kind of shit, and that's like, oh, that's really weird. Why didn't you tell me that before? - Why isn't that the title screen of the game? - Yeah, it's sort of, well, the opening cinematic gives you some of that, you know, but yeah, you're right. Like, it's not really established that you are in this alternate reality until you've moved on from the first area. - Well, it's like, you think, well, alternate technology, right, so culture is a little different. You don't realize that, like, the United States is not the United States. - Right. - Like, it is like a collection of countries that are sort of at war with one another. - In Hollywood is one of the countries, huh? - Yeah, I love it. - Yeah, like, right in the beginning, you're trying to fend off the Hollywood militia. - As the game goes on, I mean, maybe that's why it appealed to me so much the first time was that, you know, every screenshot I'd seen and every video I'd seen, leaning up to the release of this game seemed like it was all from this sort of Skyhaven area and much of the kind of, all look desert-y and vary, all these mesas and you're fighting a bunch of planes, but as the game goes on, it's much more than that and the things that you fight are much more interesting, like, much more interesting as the game goes on. - And I mean, you sort of get an idea of that at the very, well, the very last fight in this section is the Zeppelin that goes all to transformer slash Wild Wild West on your ass, right? - Yeah, I mean, things like that are cool. Those are totally, like, cool boss fights with multiple stages and... - Yeah, no, it gets way crazier than that. - But so far, like, the plane combat, I just kind of find, like, plane on plane. I always kind of find it. - What plane are you using? - The starting one is what I was using and then I used the Cajun one, that's the one with the bent wings. That one is just like, I find it kind of unwieldy to, like, really get behind guys and do a lot of dog fighting. - Are you using the lock-on button? Yeah, most people would have, well, forget about it and not even know that it exists. - I know. - You hit the LB button, you hold it down and it's a camera lock and you get that one. - You get the RB, actually. - No, it is RB switches around and shows, like, the enemy view or something like that. - No, no, it is, it's RB. - It turns the camera to the enemy closest to you. - Exactly. So it's helpful, but it's also unwieldy. So the way that it works is that it'll lock you onto an enemy and what sucks about it is it locks onto the enemy that it thinks is close, I guess it's probably distance, like, whichever one's closest to you, but it's not always the one that you're looking at. - Still, though, that would probably make it a lot better for me than it has been, because I haven't locked on so I'm always chasing the little arrow and it's like-- - The other thing is upgrade as soon as you can and choose the plane that works best for you. Like, the first-- - You're not like the bulldog, for example. - I mean, for me-- - The shotgun wheels-- - It just became the planes were so unwieldy that every chance I got, I would land my plane and jump in a turret instead. Is that almost in there? - Wow, okay, yeah, see, for me, I definitely, when I started again this time, I was like, wow, I'm clearly not as good at this as I remember, you know, 'cause I remember being like an ace pilot by the time I finished the game the last time. And when I hopped in this time, I was like, man, how do I even hit anything? This is really hard. And I remember getting the dolphin, which is the cation plane that you get pretty early on, which has like, I don't know, I always find that I enjoy the weapons and games that are like kind of long range, like single bios, yeah, one shot. - Like the hyper-accurate. - Yeah, exactly. And so I upgraded that plane immediately and then kind of took that through the first, and I played a little bit farther than me supposed to, but I played through the first couple stages and then upgraded the bulldog, which in the stage that I just completed was such a help, because at that point, upgraded shotgun is just like really, really killer. - And it's so maneuverable. - Yeah, it is, and it's really, yeah, and it's a really fast plane too. And it's like, and it has to be fast because your primary weapon is, or your secondary weapon is so short range. I actually, the bulldog was the first one that I upgraded to, and I actually, I had a lot of fun chasing down planes. It would be really far away from me, and I just hit Y and catch right up to them and just shotgun blast them right from behind and destroy the ship in one shotgun blast, or line it up as much as possible so we're on a collision course so I can kill it like right before it hits me. And then the other planes are totally different styles. You have to play them totally differently 'cause they have totally different weapons. It's like the different quality of guns that you have in an FPS translated into an arcade flyer. - So I think I played one stage further than I thought we were supposed to play, which is kind of a curse because it's actually when the game starts to feel a little bit better, I think. I mean-- - Where the tutorial is over? - Essentially, yeah, it's the first time that you, I mean, definitely in Skyhaven, you spend a little bit of time there doing a bunch of different missions, but this one, you go back to the same mission location two or three times to grab missions over and over again from the same people that are all have variations and they introduce a new vehicle, which is like a tiny helicopter that-- - Jarrusco, Jarrusco, Jarrusco, Jarrusco. - Which, all of you sons of bitches played past. - Well, I looked at a fact that you said that we were playing to Chapter Five and didn't name it, and I went to a fact and Chapter Five was labeled as this one that I played through. - Oh, really? - Yeah, I'm sorry, guys. - And you told me we were playing through Skyhaven. - Sky-- - The first level is sea heaven, and I'm sitting here playing through the game, like, where the fuck is Skyhaven? (laughing) - Yeah, I mean-- - No, it's all good, because then I had a really good-- - Yeah, I was having a fun time, I didn't even really want to stop. - You know what, Anthony, like one thing, I'd have to say, if maneuverability is an issue you're running into, you should be using the maneuvers to like, come at enemies, head on. - Oh, yeah, that's the only way. - That is the only way that I kill the boys. - And also head on, almost always. - Really? - Are you using the break? - I always use the break, man. - That's it, I'm constantly on the break. - I mean, I feel like there's not really much to say other than lead the enemies a bit, and it just comes-- - That's the other thing, you know. - It comes to you as time goes. - Other console games have learned from that, in a sense, like I played all, you know, like, ILT, Sturmavic, the console one, and that's one that when you're playing it on arcade, it does show you like the bead spot where you should be shooting when they're in arc and stuff like that, because that can't be kind of difficult to assess for a while. - Once you start using the lock on button, it'll, I think it starts to click at that point because of the way that it works. It kind of makes the fight slightly more less fulfilling because I feel like when you're not using the lock on, they feel like real dog fights, you know, you turn left and your camera swoops left and it's like pretty intense and a guy can rush by you really fast. - Someone goes above you and you're sort of stuck looking for them and you can't find them, so you zoom away and try to spin around and come back. - I feel like-- - Whereas this, like, when you're locked on, it's like, it's like, it stabilizes everything because all you see is like them, your plane in the middle of the screen is like, upside down and vertical and they're like right there, locked on your screen, just like perfectly centered and you have, the way it works is that you turn your plane around until your crosshair finally appears on the screen and you line it up and then at that point, you realize, okay, I'm not leading enough, I'm not leading enough. Okay, there is this-- - Right, that wouldn't be so hard for me to use too 'cause IL2 does the exact same thing and it has a lock on thing and so your computer's at weird angles and you're like thinking, oh, they're in the dead center, I can shoot, but know your plane's like facing vertical and shooting vertical and stuff, see, like that. - Flazing Angels has a similar mechanic as well. - I tried that lock on mechanic and when it did that and my plane was all facing the wrong way and everything, I'm like, I don't like this and I just stopped using it. - Yeah, I don't use it at all. - I don't use it at all and I still find, I find the dog fights fun because I have to lead enemies and I mean, the turrets in a way are also fun because it's like, oh, well, it's not just the stupid why fire directly at them and they die, like I do have to lead them or create like a field of fire that they're flying into, like I presume I would have to even though this is an assimilation. - And I find myself switching back and forth from the planes to the turrets more than I thought that I would. - I like, later, I mean, I think this is also in the area that was one path the one we were supposed to play through but you switch between turrets really fast, it's like move to the next one, move to the next one. And so it's like a channel of turret bays that are all throughout this space and you kind of are quickly like, you know, moving through as the plane, the planes are moving through. But anyways, go back. - Some cells are different too. Like there's different grades like the cannons and there's the machine guns. - Yeah, like at some point, you know, you hop back up to your blimp and your blimp has a rocket turret on the front and like a cannon turret on the back and so you have all these different options. - And there's the guided rocket, which is kind of, I mean, I've only used that once against a Zeppelin but is there a point where you really need to use that against planes? Because I imagine it would be really frustrating. - Guided rocket, where's this? - Yeah, it's the mission where you're supposed to, it's after you leave Seahaven and then come back. Like there's a mission where you're supposed to escort the boat or you're supposed to take out the Hollywood Knights base. So you fly in, then you fly out, then you're supposed to take out the Zeppelin and the boat has a new weapon. - That's right. - You can use. - Right, you can use that with me either. - Yeah, you launch it and it's like a really fast flying kamikaze plane is basically how it controls. - Yeah, right. - So you're controlling the rocket. - And one thing that really bothers me when you're switching to turrets is like another thing that I've seen in a recent game that does like shooting and flying is they stick, they switch the aiming from the sticks that really bothers me. - That's the whole point is that when I played the game I immediately, I didn't invert the stick. I just kept a default, which is not inverted. Where up is up, down is down, even in a plane. - I can't play that. - I thought it defaulted the opposite way. I think it defaults to down is an opposite way. - I had to switch it to invert it. - I didn't change any controls. Yeah, when you start and then I think at some point it says like switch to inverted and I was like, "Yeah, I switched to inverted for flying." And like, but when I get into the turret it's still inverted. - Yeah, that's what I mean. That's the problem. - That's the problem. - What I'm saying specifically, whereas your aiming is, you know, I'm used to a first person shooter. My aiming is on the right stick, right? When you're getting to the turret you aim with the left. - Oh, right. - That's weird for me. - The thing that bothers me is that I'm a non-inverted guy, but when I'm in a plane, like I'm totally down to where it's inverted, right? You know, that's just the way I've always learned. - It's physics. - And so winning, hey, and I played inverted FPS like for a long, long time and then like weaned myself on it. - I got a fucking clue. - Yeah, exactly. (laughing) But yeah, so when I move into a turret I'm all of a sudden not flying a plane anymore. And at that point, like, I'm like, oh fuck on backwards. Yeah, so it's a little annoying. - Yeah, I just had to train myself to when I go into a turret to think like I'm still flying. - Yeah, exactly. But not to jump back here, but I don't play with the lock on all the time. It's like every once in a while I'm in a battle. - Yeah, I understand. I have to do it sometimes to find someone. - Yeah, exactly. - Like, aren't I finding you, you click it on. Yeah. - I just, I wish that the way that the lock on button would work is like, I could tap it or something and then the person on my, the guy on my screen would have the arrow attached to him. Instead of having the arrow always attached to my objective. Because then I have this yellow arrow around the corner of my screen, telling me, no, no, no, go this way. And I'm like, but this is the guy I wanted. - Right, I know, being able to designate a target, specific target and stay on him would be really nice and have that as a separate arrow. That's actually something I'm surprised, isn't there? - Something that strikes me about playing this is that this feels like this game was made right before the era of developers realizing that no one read instruction booklets anymore. So there are still things that you're not quite sure you don't realize that you can do or that there are strategies that you're supposed to take. Because you did, it says it in the instruction. - I mean, maybe it's also just that it was like so much of these people trying to take something that was a fairly hardcore PC game and find all these ways to make it as user friendly as possible. I don't know. - Maybe, I mean, I think Arthur's onto it here where this is just at right in the era of gaming where FPS hasn't been done very well on consoles for all that long and it's before all game designers started learning from every other game that it came before it and really iterating on everyone's ideas and not just your own to where control schemes are standardized in specific genres and, you know, you know that, like you said, that instead of holding down the lock on button 'cause that seemed like, hey, this is good for our game. Like, no, people are just gonna wanna tap it and have it like lock onto the screen because that's how it works in every other game and people just want it to work the way they want it to work. There's a lot more, whoops. There's a lot more kind of, it feels, you know, it's like, it doesn't tell you everything and-- - I know a lot of people wore it. - I mean, I totally expect a lot of people to listen to this and complain that we're all just coddled. You know what I mean? - Yeah, I just think. - But there are something-- - I think it's an interesting thing to go back and look at. I mean, I don't think it's good or bad. It's just the way it was. - I mean, I don't think it's necessarily good or bad either. It's just that, I mean, it's good to learn from these things. I mean, obviously, doesn't necessarily make it a bad game just like wanna go back and play a super Nintendo game and it does a lot of things that are fucked up. I don't think it's a terrible game. I just understand it's the game at the time, but if a game came out new that had some of these things, that would be the best. - Well, and I was playing this game though, and I was thinking to myself, I was also noticing the things that were very modern for the time, like the checkpoints, except for in regards to the upgrade tokens, are really good. - Yeah. - It's like the auto saves everywhere I would expect it to, yeah. And like when I fail a mission, you go right back into the mission. I don't even have to pick up the mission again. It's just like you just start the mission over again. GTA could actually learn something about it. - Sometimes you do. - Sometimes you do? - Yeah, you do, you have to restart them. It depends on, so that's the other thing, is that the structure is different. You know, there's some GTA-like spaces, and then there are other, you know, the next chapter might be just like, essentially one battle with a boss battle at the end. - Yeah, and you see like where you're journeying from one place to another. You have like an escort mission that goes along with that, and it's not like a free flying mission. You just have to fight a bunch of things while you're on your way to it. - And I think that's what-- - I like the free-frying missions. - Yeah. - We just got extremely racist there for a second. - No. - And I think that's another reason this game surprised me, is that the structure did change as it went through. So I kind of like, as I was getting used to something, all of a sudden it would like change it up on me, and I'd be doing something completely different than what I'd been doing before. And just when I started getting used to the desert environment, like all of a sudden bam, I'm out. Like just when I got used to fighting planes and dog fighting with things, you know, they give you the helicopter, and then after that, you know, it's just getting boring again, and then all of a sudden you're fighting these giant dirigibles with, you know, God knows what on-- - So, Anthony, I mean, did you like Mecha Salt? - I didn't play that much Mecha Salt. - Yeah, I mean, this came out after Mecha Salt, but there were two, when Microsoft was launching live, like they had FAFSA and they were still new to the console. - But I have played some Mecha Salt, and I like Mecha Salt better, yeah. But again, I think that was another world that I understood and knew more about in some way. - And much simpler than this game. - Like I think, and I think the end, I think just even little things made Mecha Salt. - Not Mecha Salt too, but Mecha Salt one was. - Mecha Salt too. - 'Cause you're not always moving the way you are on a plane in Mecha Salt even. I don't know, there's just little things about it that make it much more feel like a, almost like a standard like third person shooter, rather than like a crazy combat sim of a specific type or something. But that being said, yeah, I don't know. I also knew Mecha Salt a lot for some reason. - What's weird for me, like Karen, you say that is, you know, I recently played a flight game of Next Gin. And man, I don't know, the feeling of Crimson Skies, immediately when I got into it, I was like, wow, this is how like a fire shooter should feel. - Funny, I was thinking, this other game ripped this game off, like fucking crazy. - Yes. One thing I really like about Crimson Skies is that when you do collide into a wall, it's not this giant punishment. It takes off barely any of your health. Like you got hit by a couple of machine gun shots, which is awesome. I mean, you need that in an action game where you're expected to do like a lot of tight turns, a lot of like chasing dudes in and out of caverns. - Or even like going into the, you know, a rock butthole to get an upgrade, don't you? - Yeah, except there are times when I hit a wall and then all of a sudden to be like, oh, now I'm gonna hit another, now I'm gonna hit another, now I'm gonna hit another. - Yeah, you can start bouncing around and die that way. - Yeah, I would go in with green health and come out with like fire rolling off of the back of my plane. But that brings up another thing that I like about it that's something, that's kind of GTA like where, you know, as long as you got $200 on you, which you always will, as long as you can get back to a repair center, you can repair your plane. So like there are times when I'll take them, I'll bring the battle back to the upgrade point, or back to the repair shop, if I can, just so, you know, if it's tough battle, I've died once or twice. I'm like, all right, fuck it. I'm gonna try to fight it over here so that I can keep getting back and repairing my shit. - And the, and you go through the repair area and it upgrades all your secondary ammo too, or upgrades, refills is what I meant. - True, which is, which encourages you to try to figure out the nuances of the secondary weapons. And so far there aren't many. - On me, recently it did not fill up my secondary ammo. - Oh, it totally did for me. - Yeah, I know. - But there was also a time where I hit B to skip the cutscene where it goes in, and it didn't repair me. - Oh really? - Yeah, so apparently you can cancel the repair right before it starts. Like I flew in on fire and flew out on fire. (laughing) I was like, wait a second. - And that's one thing that being on fire reminds you, when I first saw this game, I was really impressed by the explosion effects and the smoke and everything, and I'm still impressed by it. I think about the time period when this game came out. And the, when you, especially when you destroy a Zeppelin, it looks super cool. - And like, even the one that is in the boss battle where you're trying to save Doc's lab, and the, you know, you get to watch the Zeppelin go down, and it's already really impressive, and then the nose cone starts to twitch and turn and kind of stand itself up. - It's like a Terminator moment coming out of Zeppelin. - Yeah, and you're like, oh shit, this game is doing something that I totally didn't expect right here. And I already, and maybe I should have seen that there's a giant dirigible with a fucking electro-core that looks all awesome and badass, and it shouldn't fly anyway. I should have expected a spider to come out of the nose cone, but I surely didn't, and that's just like one of the many surprises that happens as you make your way through this game. - Yeah, I don't feel like any of the missions we did were this time around, except for that, towards the final, were like particular ones worth talking about it at length. I mean, like the only two that you're not right now. Yeah, I was gonna say, or like the one where you take out the base, it's kind of cool. - It's pretty cool. - And then-- - It's inside a cave. - It is cool that you fly inside a cave. - And then inside a cave. - That helps them. - And now, which reminds me of something else, is that you're flying in that cave, so you're flying really low to the water, and it has that rain effect. - Yeah, how it kicks up water and coats the camera lens. - Yeah. - I quote it with water beads. It really starts to overdo that at some point. - Yeah, there's a rain mission that you start off in. It's like a night, and it's just like, Jesus, I can't see you shit. - Yeah, so just to briefly go through the story levels, there's, you wake up in bed with a girl. - Yay. - To have the Cajun, whose name escapes me, stealing your plane and your Zeppelin. You race out of bed after saying something pivy and amusing to her about being good the night before. - And sexist. - Yes, very sexist. You catch him, you jack him out of your plane, then you go to get your Zeppelin back. - Yep. - You realize that you don't have anyone who's qualified to fly your Zeppelin after crashing it into the side of a mountain. Terence and shit off of it. - Yeah, then you go to Seahaven to find your pilot, and you come across a dock being harassed. And you save dock, you find your pilot. - I'll take you to the room. - I mean, there's really not much to the story. Like, it seems like it's setting up dock to be this occurring character and then kills him. - And then they kill him, yeah. (laughing) - Yeah, the dock's pretty much only an instrument to set up why these guys are gonna try and hurt you for the rest of the game. - Yeah. - I'm gonna try to hurt them. - Right. It definitely all, that entire section, aside from maybe that one Zeppelin battle and fighting the Spider, no something, kinda feels pretty tutorial-ish. - Yeah, giant tutorial. - When, especially when you consider the next mission, which is the one that I've been kind of referring to, that one really feels like, okay, now when you get there, it almost feels like, okay, they're gonna leave me here for a while, and this is gonna be like the next major part of the game. And I guess in some cases it is, but you kind of blast your way through it if you're marathoning it like we are. And then the game moves on. And from that point forward, there's just like a bunch of really interesting, cool stuff that happens. And so it's kind of a shame that we didn't play through one more stage, which is- - I did right. Yeah, 'cause there are some surprising mission types when you get over there. But like one thing I think that might be just a, it might just be, you know, the nature of flight games, there's always gonna be a ton of escort missions, just the way flight works. And I don't know how I feel about that. - So far, I don't feel like they're too bad because everything is sporting has a ton of health. - Yeah, if you had died easier, it'd be a way bigger pain than ants. - Yeah, I agree. - But I don't know, man, escort missions just in general. Like, I don't know, just that like babysitting field that I don't want to experience in a game. - So far? - If anything, like I want to know about my, I don't know. - It does seem like it's except in the escort missions in Seahaven, it seems like the escort missions that you're on not only do they have a ton of health, but they also have guns on them. And they defend themselves. Then they don't for defend themselves very well. But, you know, if you've damaged a plane really significantly and it flies in their field of fire, they'll blow up a plane, you know? - Yeah, I mean, there's only so many things they can do to try and break up the pacing in a flight game. It's usually like, go blow this shit up, kill everything or escort. And that's like every mission, pretty mission. - Right, yeah, 'cause you're in a plane. - Yeah, there isn't a whole lot of interactivity that you can have with the rest of the world other than through your guns. - The other thing is that Seahaven is like real life. Seahaven is relatively, you know, small. It's not, I mean, it's not, but it is, you know? - It's a cool design. - It has a lot of little nooks and crannies. - It certainly does. But I mean-- - Lots of blempt skeletons. - I think, you know, it kind of sets the tone for what you think the scale of the stages is gonna be from then on out. And that is not necessarily true. They get bigger than that by quite a little bit. And then at that point-- - Like quite a lot of it. - Yeah, exploration is a lot more fun. And, you know, then at that point, flying into every little nook and cranny to find all the upgrade tokens and that sort of thing. And like thinking that you've explored it all and then getting a mission where someone's like, hey, go over here, you're like, over here? I didn't even know there was over here. Holy shit, okay, it's really cool. - And I'm definitely gonna feel, I feel compelled to do that now because I actually restarted. I finished most of the first part and then realized that I couldn't go back. - So you missed the-- - So yeah, I missed the bulldog. Like I didn't even get it. I remember seeing a plane icon and thinking, oh, come back to that later. I'm gonna go over and do this-- - It's the bulldog, the one that has like real high speed and no-- - Yeah, it's the fastest armor. - Yeah, it's like that one I got automatically. I never got in the bulldog. It's just-- - Really? - It just added it to my-- I just went and now I have the bulldog, the Cajun one. And I never got in the bulldog ever. - Wow, weird. I don't know. I just had to get in the plane. - Yeah, that's all the icon and jumped in. - I just figured that it added it to my thing after I left the area. Maybe it does. - I always thought I knew you had to get it. You have to get it on. Once you find a runway that has the plane on it, you get in it and it even tells you like, you have this plane and you can upgrade it for 13 tokens in your Pandora, which is the-- - The blimp. - Blimp is that plane. - So yeah, that's interesting. But that's the thing is it seems like we're having a lot of these kind of like, I definitely remember repair stations filling my secondary ammo. And I was in a particularly hardcore battle where I really needed my secondary ammo and I went to get repaired and I didn't get any. - Maybe it was a bug. - Fuck. - Yeah, so it could have very well been a bug. But yeah, I don't know. Maybe that was a bug too. - Yeah, so far I like the way that some of the planes are engineered in the way they look. But I don't feel like, I feel like in some ways-- - You don't like backwards planes? - No. - I, to be honest, it doesn't really make very much sense to have the propeller in the back only 'cause when you get shot most of the time, it's from behind. So why would you want the main source of your locomotion like in behind, like your propellers get shot at? There's a reason they're on the front. - It frees up the field of fire for your guns and the ability to do crazy acrobatic pirate shit. - But you never even had to worry about that because they developed the technology early on to fire guns through your propeller, through like timing. - I haven't seen one to do cool and sweet jumps off the nose of your plane through the propeller that the technology doesn't exist. - I don't know. It would be cool to see more planes like, seems to me that you would wanna plane like if the world was arrest, like this whole idea of the whole world is that planes are just everywhere. That's how you use everything. I don't know. I'm waiting to see if they're way crazier planes 'cause it seems like people would have thought of way. I mean, even during the late Nazi period, they were working on ways to do vertical takeoff or to do hovering or-- - Like I say, in the next stage that you play, you're gonna get a helicopter that controls totally differently. - Yeah, it's pretty rad. And there's another plane that is much more like a traditional plane that you get, like the live plane. - I just like, they are doing some weird stuff. I just wanna see a weirder shit. - It gets, it gets weirder and just cooler as the game goes on. - I mean, the Hollywood Knights planes are flying wings. So, I mean, there's already like a fair variety of planes that we've seen so far. - Definitely, but I mean, that's the, like I say, the whole, I guess the game surprised me the first time because I didn't expect it to go as many places as it goes. But on this playthrough, what I'm really hoping or what I'm really reminded of is like, there's a lot of good stuff here. There's a lot of good source material that could be expanded upon. And you could take all these little kind of weird eccentricities that maybe make for not as enjoyable play right now after all these years of getting better at game design and make something really, really incredible. - I mean, I know the PC franchise is like super loved. I mean, for that-- - But it's just one game. - Is it, I thought I had a-- - I think it's based on like a board game or a pen and paper RPG. - I mean, that wouldn't surprise me. - I believe you're right, but as far as I know, and I should know, I didn't, I have-- - There's only, it's just the one game and it's relatively, I mean, the narrative is similar, but I think the gameplay itself is largely different. - It is largely-- - That it's a PC game? - Yeah, it's, I mean, a PC one is much more like, you know, the MechWarrior, Mechasalt kind of software. It's like MechWarrior, you could sit there and choose which guns you wanted to fire when. In Mechasalt, you just switched to different guns. Like, you know, you had to manage your coolant levels. Like, they just took, they just remove a lot of that, obviously, 'cause they only have a controller and not a keyboard, you know, for obvious, good reasons. - Right. - But yeah, I mean, I know that that's why, when people saw that we picked it even, they would complain that, you know, they could-- - Why did you blame the original? - Yeah, they just couldn't believe 'cause this one was such, you know, like an abortion of what the game was supposed to be. - I guess if you're a hardcore PC player, that's how you felt. I, as a guy who doesn't really play flying games or I guess, PC flying-- - Well, my specialist, it is-- - It's such a different feeling game. - Right, well, that's just it, it's not, it's not a flight simulator game. You know, it plays a lot more like a space combat, an arcade space combat game than it does play like a flight game. - Right, I mean, it's like playing, sorry, it's like playing X-Wing and Starfighter. You know what I mean? I used to play the X-Wing or TIE Fighter games. Those are like hardcore, like, or not, well, pretty hardcore flight sims where you had to manage your shields and shit like that. But when you play Starfighter, it's not like that at all. It's still the arcade one, it's still fun in its own way. - Playing this makes me just really wish someone would do another Colony Wars game, but that could just be me. - Colony Wars is cool. - Colony Wars 1 and 2 were awesome. - So anyway, I feel like there isn't a whole lot more to talk about this opening area. You know, like, we already spent half this podcast talking about areas that people haven't played to yet. So, yeah. - So one thing I want to ask you guys is that we might want to try to organize a multiplayer session. - I was gonna bring up. - Since it does, like, this was one of the big, the thing that this game is most known for is it's live play. So. - It's funny 'cause I never played that. - I was gonna mention like the only thing I remember about Crimson Skies was hearing that it's a great multiplayer game. You're not playing Halo. - Yeah. I mean, we can definitely arrange that. - Sure. - If you guys follow us on our Twitter's rule, post something about a night, we can hook that up. - We'll see if we can organize like a specific night where we're playing together. - 'Cause it only does. - Eight player matches, right? - I think so. - Yeah, so. - I mean, maybe we could break into two groups or something. - Nice. - So for next time around, you're playing two. - Chapter, we'll just say chapter 10, which I think is the end of the next-- - Five more levels. - Five more levels. - Don't know. - More or less. - How many chapters are there total? - 19 or 20. - There's 20. - There's like the 20-- - There's a chapter 19 in an epilogue. - Epilogue. - Okay, so we're playing, yeah, you can plan to be five chapters per game club. - And it's good that it's kind of fast to go through because there are about eight million games coming out in the next four weeks. - It's true, but I don't want to play. - I will say, as a guy who thought he was pretty close to being done with what we needed to play and then playing the next part, which I guess was further than I was supposed to play, that next part took a lot longer than any of the players. - It does, yeah. - So you're at the point when the game starts to get real. - No more tutorials. - Yep. - Okay, so along with listening to our podcast, you should listen to our other Hammer Suit Partners podcast, which includes the Geekbox@geekbox.net, the mobcast@bitmob.com, as well as Rebel FM, which is at eat-sleep-game.com. And then you should, most importantly, above all else, go to area5.tv and watch co-op. - I guess. - As well as, you can find it also at revision3.net/co-op. Yeah. - Is it revision3.com/co-op? - Version3.com/co-op. - Oh, .com/co-op. You guys should also donate to them, because they're-- - It is.net or not, legitimate websites, everyone knows this. - But yeah, thanks for listening. - Thank you. - We'll see you next week. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)