The official description:

Crimson Skies®: High Road to Revenge™ combines thrilling aerial combat with the swashbuckling style of a Hollywood action-adventure movie. Set in an alternate 1930s world of gunship diplomacy and sinister intrigue, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge lets you pilot powerful aircraft against nefarious air pirates and behemoth war zeppelins.

And a trailer:

Why we chose it: Look at the trailer! Crimson Skies is a sleeper hit from the time when Xbox Live was just starting, and is frequently cited as under-appreciated gem. It’s also extremely easy to get a hold of, as you can find it on Xbox Live as an Xbox Original for 1200 points. You can also find it used for less, if you’re tenacious. For the first episode, play through Sea Haven, the first act, by Monday afternoon, and leave your comments and stories here. Sorry for the slightly late notice, but hopefully the easy availability helps somewhat. So get downloading. We’ll see you Monday.

Here’s a link to Half-life 2 for those of you who don’t have the Orange Box yet (with a convenient link that also supports us).

Thanks!

PS. There are some graphical issues with the PC version of Republic Commando; if you have questions or solutions, post them here. Currently, the fix for most people that have problems running the game starts with setting bump-mapping to “low” in the graphics settings.

After a day of quite a lot of voting (over 1200 people in about 24 hours), you listeners have spoken, choosing Hitman: Blood Money as our next Game Club selection (if you chose Heavenly Sword, don’t worry; we still want to play it, and it very well might be our pick in the near future). For the first episode, you’ll want to play through Mission 3, Flatline (it’s the rehab clinic). I’ll update this post once we huddle together and decide when we’ll be recording our first episode, but in the meantime, I thought I’d give you all a little input as to why we chose it in the first place.

Hitman: Blood Money places you in the role of Agent 47, the result of a shadowy group’s failed experiments in creating genetically superior soldiers and agents with the DNA of the world’s most powerful and dangerous men. As the fourth Hitman game (and third game narratively, as Hitman: Contracts is a sort of anthology of side stories), the story in Blood Money doesn’t deal much with 47′s origins, instead detailing one former military official’s obsession with hunting down and capturing him by whatever means necessary.

Each mission in Blood Money is an assignment. You’re tasked by your handler with targets, and occasionally someone to protect, either directly or otherwise. How you handle that mission is generally up to you, though you’ll be given hints in your mission briefing regarding how you might best be able to accomplish your assignment. Successfully completed assignments pay, and this can be spent on weapons and upgrades between missions. You can also spend money on intelligence during a mission, which will give you additional clues as to how you might be able to accomplish your tasks the most efficiently.

There are a lot of additions to this installment from previous games. The most important are a much more robust set of context sensitive actions for the environment and people in the game world, and the Notoriety system. Essentially, the sloppier you are, the more public your actions become. At the end of each mission, a newspaper detailing the hit in question appears, which details your exploits and how obvious or stealthy you were. If you create a mess, you can pay to have your crimes covered up, whether through buying off witnesses, bribing police, or other means.

While there are quite a few weapons in the game and sheer mayhem and violence can work (and at times, even for the stealthiest players may seem like an inevitability), it’s best to view Blood Money as an action puzzle title. In every mission, there are means to accomplish your task without firing a shot, and without killing civilians. Finding them is half the fun, and exploring each stage will often reveal surprises and Easter eggs. Or you can go in with an automatic shotgun and flak vest and see what happens (which absolutely can work).

Hitman: Blood Money can be found on almost every platform, save for Wii. There are also collector’s boxes available of the game for PC and PS2 that come with every Hitman title save for the original, and every version can be found quite cheaply. I believe it may also be on Gametap, though I can’t confirm that right now. Acquire it however you like, though we always appreciate it when you buy through our links, which I’ve provided below. Good hunting.

Hitman Blood Money for Xbox 360

Hitman Trilogy (Includes Blood Money, Silent Assassins, and Contracts) For PC

Hitman Trilogy (Includes Blood Money, Silent Assassins, and Contracts) For PS2

-Arthur

-Arthur