Imagine a world where the automobile is less favoured than wacky, gun-bristling aeroplanes. Welcome to Microsoft's Crimson Skies...
Andy Smith

Not another Microsoft flight simulator?
Yes, but not just another Microsoft flight simulator. Unlike the flight sims you'd normally associate with Microsoft, this one's not about getting your take-off clearance from ground control and then spending the next six hours flying from one civil airport to another.

But you didn't have to do that in Combat Flight Simulator either!
Oh yeah. But we still associate Microsoft with the Flight Sim range, the latest of which has just been released in standard and pro versions. This one's more like CFS.

WWII planes dogfighting it out?
Not quite. This game's actually based on a popular board game and it's set in an alternate reality America of the '30s

Eh? You've completely lost me now.
Okay, here's the scenario. The year's 1937 and America is fractured into small nation states that are constantly squabbling with each other. This state of affairs has come about because of the Great Depression and because of the introduction of prohibition, which wasn't supported by all of the member states. This led to armed conflict between states that did and didn't support prohibition because of the huge amounts of money that could be made through bootlegging. Things were uneasy but relatively stable for a while, but during the late '20s a killer flu swept the country and the various states became even more isolationist. This caused a swing from the automobile to the aeroplane as the preferred method of transport for both cargo and passengers between friendly States, since going by car or train was an expensive and logistic nightmare.