In 2003, FASA Studios (creators of BattleTech) unleashed Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge for the original Xbox, an action-oriented flight game that was one of the few things that would make us put down Halo for more than a moment (that and Unreal Tournament.  Halo was so good we played it every Saturday for a year and a half straight.  That’s quite a strong complement for the other two games indeed).  The controls were relatively simple to pick up, unless you were me and have always had a problem with the “up is down and down is up” notion of flight simulators, and the emphasis was on action and not direct  flight simulation, creating a wonderful game where you and your team flew around and shot down enemy planes and had a fun time doing it; not wasting your whole night asking questions like “my gauges are telling me fuel pressure is low in engine two…how do I adjust from my reserve?” and “which button allows me to adjust altitude and lift the nose on my runway approach?”  The multiplayer modes were robust for the time and the game was fun; pure, unmitigated fun and never really took off, which is a shame. The good folks at Smart Bomb Interactive must have also loved Crimson Skies and it would not surprise me one bit to find out that members of this development team were also working at FASA in 2002/3 on that very title because it wasn’t two minutes into playing the superbly entertaining Snoopy Flying Ace that I said aloud, “This is Crimson Skies.”  I kept saying it, too, in the couple hours it took to wing through the missions co-op with Paul Adragna, over and over like a mantra: “This is Crimson Skies.”  “I bet these guys did Crimson Skies.”  “Man, this is just like Crimson Skies.”  Now imagine that Paul Adragna, much like yourselves, has never even heard of, much less played, Crimson Skies and see how annoying that gets.  Yet I can think of no other way that best describes the joy I felt zipping around in my Gnat, gunning down other planes and unleashing deadly barrages of missiles on opponents that barely know I’m there…  Ahem. Excuse me.  Anyhow, Snoopy Flying Ace is the exact same kind of arcade action game where the emphasis is on fun rather than an exercise in how to actually fly a plane.  The setting is World War I, The Red Baron is up to his old tricks and has even signed up some of the Peanuts gang (Lucy, Linus and Pigpen are the biggies) to aid in his nefarious schemes and it is up to you, pilot Snoopy, to put a stop to it by blowing those cads out of the air!  The story mode has, as I mentioned, a couple hours worth of action with a variety of modes; from the simple “shoot them down” or “guard our blimp” missions to manning a turret, flying through fields of magnetic mines to save Woodstock and his pals, ring races, “follow that prick Charlie Brown as he loops and zig-zags all over the place while staying in the green smoke” missions, all culminating in “Zeppelingeddons” where you have to fight off waves of enemies until the Baron’s Zeppelin’s shields fail, then Hindenburg that mother!!  Quite a bit of action there but only two or so of each mission so as they unlock it’s like you go from Normal difficulty to Slightly More Normal difficulty.  It’s definitely fun, especially co-op, but it’s not hinging everything on the single-player mode, nosir.  This is the era of multiplayer. So count yourself in for some Xbox Live functionality, my friends, and, surprisingly, co-op against bots as well.  This should be applauded as I myself play a lot of co-op because someone is always here and to do the modes with a buddy and not be left out to an extent is great but playing against people is something else entirely.  The Multiplayer features the standard Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch functions, which are truly chaotic messes and tremendous fun, and adds Capture the Flag, Dogpile (a “catch the guy with the ball” scenario where the winner holds the item longest) and the absolutely brilliant Pigskin which is a game of football…in WWI vintage planes.  A ball appears in the middle of the course and there are two goal posts at either end.  If your team has the ball, fly it through the enemy uprights.  If you don’t have the ball, make sure that doesn’t happen.  In Planes.  Just as fun as it sounds and will suck up some hours, that’s for sure, online or off. It’s not all roses; besides being short, I kept bumping the right stick every time I wanted to look around, which is bad, because the right stick controls your plane’s special moves.  If you hold left or right, he barrel-rolls that direction, up causes you to loop around behind a pursuing enemy and down is a full turn around so imagine you’ve just gunned down somebody and you catch a glimpse of the Red Baron just off to the right so you naturally bump the right stick to look (because in every game besides flight sims that’s the way you look) and wham!  You’re upside down the other direction.  WTF, right?  The setting is great and the iconic characters in WWI duds is brilliant but the only interaction you get is in painted cut-scenes that explain the next mission in brief.  Otherwise they are just names in planes.  Some type of animation wouldn’t have been out of line, even if I generally skip that stuff.   A couple of different modes of multiplayer a’la Pigskin where it’s a different twist on the same old play-styles would be nice, though to their credit, the developers have released two new maps for 80 points ($1) which is just the deal you want.  Other than these minor quibbles (and a few others but they’re so insignificant compared to the whole that why bother mentioning them?), this is a rock-solid game totaly worth the 800 points ($10). Snoopy Flying Ace is more fun than most $60 games clogging the shelves at your local game retailer and for the fraction of the cost to boot.  It delivers a couple of solid hours of gameplay for you and maybe a pal also as well as adding a robust multiplayer experience, both online and off, which extends the gameplay immensely.  It features full Avatar support as well so if that’s important to you it’s included as well as a host of achievements to acquire.  When you finish the game, you even unlock a sweet Charlie Brown shirt for your Avatar.  Pay attention for little things, like taunts from enemy Peanuts and how gleefully Snoopy laughs when he shoots down a plane.  This little game is a success from top to bottom and rumors of a new one have surfaced, with words like “Hide and Seek Race” and “30 New Missions” attached to the articles so there’s more awesome on the way.  Do yourself the favor and get Snoopy Flying Ace before this thing explodes and you’re the last person on the planet to get your hands on it.