Review: Crimsonland

Title: Crimsonland
Platform: Android, iOS, PC, PS3, PS4, PS Vita, PS TV, Xbox One (reviewed)
Developer: 10tons Entertainment
Publisher: 10tons Entertainment
Release date: Out Now
Price: $13,99 / Â£ 10.59
tl;dr: Can’t sleep at night? Play this!
Family Focus: Click here for more information.

Crimsonland is a top-down twin stick shooter reminiscent of the classic Smash T.V. game. As players are in the middle of the screen, enemies will make their way towards the protagonist. You will have to use all the firepower at your disposal to dispatch enemies and survive to the next level. As enemies keel over and die, you’ll gain XP, which leads to getting a new character level. Each level gain rewards players with new perks such as faster reload times, faster-shooting speed, faster movement to name just to name a few.

Additionally, clearing levels will unlock new and stronger weapons to use. As players begin a level, they’ll start things off with a simple pistol. Killed enemies will drop new, and recently unlocked, weapons to make it easier to clear the progressively increasing number of enemies. While the game ensures the player is armed to the teeth, dead enemies also drop debuffs in order to give players a chance to get out of a bind. Temporary debuffs such as freezing enemies, slowing down time (not as impressive as in Max Payne, though) and increased firepower will allow you to clear a larger amount of enemies in a short amount of time.

As players successfully clear levels, they’ll be rewarded with new weapons and progressively more difficult levels. It’s really a principle of rinse and repeat. Thankfully, completionists will have a lot to chew on as the game features a plethora of new weapons to hunt down and levels to unlock.

The only problem? I can’t play this game more for more than 20 minutes at a time.

Once players have cleared out the game’s plethora of quests, they can tackle Survival mode. There aren’t many big differences here as – as you might expect – all you have to do is survive as long as you can. Same thing as the game’s campaign, except there’s nothing new to unlock.

As a top-down shooter, don’t expect much when it comes to visuals, as this genre allows developers to get away with a minimalistic style. The character looks like a black spot spewing bullets and Â game’s generic hard rock score is easily drowned out by the protagonist’s weapons and sounds of flesh and brain being splatted across the grey-colored ground.

The more I played Crimsonland, the more I wanted to go online and hunt down a copy of Smash T.V. for Super NES/Super Famicom which is a much better and varied top-down shooter. If you decide to pick up Crimsonland, you may need to entice friends to buy it as well or look for players online. Solo this, and it may ges boring very quickly. At least with friends, there’s camaraderie and fun to be had while making their way through the game’s repetitive levels.