Crimsonland is a 2D top-down arcade shooter with three modes of game play, fifty levels, numerous weapons, many power-ups and tons of monsters. Crimsonland is developed by 10tons Entertainment out of Finland and published by Reflexive Entertainment. Crimsonland is rated "M" for all the violence and blood associated with it. It is enough to say, that you kill a lot spiders, lizards and a host of other mobs in Crimsonland. There is a parental lock though, that turns down the blood, but you still have to kill a lot to get to the end.
At the game startup screen your more significant options are "Manual", the above mentioned "Parental Lock" and "Graphic Settings" for your video card as well as some texture and terrain detail settings. The manual is quite extensive and not a bad read. All the weapons (man what a lot of weapons), perks and power-ups are listed there and a nice GUI explanation graphic.
Beyond the startup screen, you are offered more options, including controls, graphics and sound details as well as a statistics section where you can upload your high scores to the internet as well as a "check for updates" button.
Game action for Crimsonland is fast, this is definitely a reflex oriented game. Game play is straight forward. You shoot weapons; grab power ups, use occasional personal perks, and avoid getting munched on by the bad mobs that just keep coming. If the mobs, get to you they take a bite and you lose health. The mobs are solid objects, so you are not able move through them. This is important knowledge in that you always want to keep an escape path open when the mobs increase in numbers.
The layout of the land is what you see on the screen, open space with a little up and down scrolling ability. The mobs come at you from all directions with an increase in frequency as the game plays.
There are three modes of game play; quest, survival and rush. Beyond the three modes of game play offered there is also a tutorial for those of you who feel game tutorials are always useful and don't just jump right in without looking.
Quest mode has 50 levels. Each level you complete allows you to attempt the next level. Every so often a new weapon is opened up to you and will start appearing in game play. The levels are tweaked appropriately, as progress is made through the levels; the difficulty definitely gets a little harder each time.
Rush mode gives you an assault rifle on a single level where the mobs do not stop coming and the goal is to kill as many as you can for as long as you can. See how long you can stand. Rush mode is the one you want to play to see how bad you are compared to all the trigger fingers out on the net.
Survival mode is similar to rush mode, but you have power-ups, perks and additional weapons to pick up from downed mobs. Survival mode is definitely the most bloody of all modes. A tip from the wise, finish all 50 levels in quest mode to unlock all weapons, power-ups and perks, before attempting Survival mode.
In survival and quest mode, you have the ability to pick up power-ups that drop from killed mobs as well as select "perks" from a pick list as you gain experience. Both the power-ups and perks stack so when they are available select and use them as you can.
Typical power-ups on the ground are; increased speed, increased weapon speed, increased weapon power, etc. The power-ups are identified by a symbol that denotes its benefit. As an example, the power-up with a flame on it allows you to fire flaming bullets for a short time. The power-up with the "ice cubes" on it freezes all the mobs making them easier to hit and kill. Power-ups are obtained randomly when you kill a mob. To activate a power up you run across it.
Perks as opposed to power-ups become available as you gain experience. Perks are selected by hitting the right mouse button, in turn pauses the game and brings up a selection screen of available perks. The benefits of the perks are much more wide ranging than the power-ups and include regeneration, laser sights for weapons, dodge ability, etc.
The variety of weapons is staggering. Weapons include pistol, submachine gun, assault rifle, gauss rifle, flame thrower, ion rifles, missiles, pulse guns etc. Like the power-ups, weapons are obtained from killing mobs allowing you to change weapons as the game progresses.
My favorite weapon, although it is not necessarily the most effective, is the gauss rifle. The gauss rifle is named after Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, a German 19th century mathematician. A gauss weapon uses a magnetic linear accelerator to shoot out a projectile at incredibly high speeds allowing the projectile to easily penetrate heavy armor or penetrate through multiple mobs. This type of weapon has shown up in Tribes 2 and other popular games. Because of the top down look and the shear number of mobs on the playing field when you fire the gauss rifle, you are apt to blow through a number of mobs, leaving a trail of blood on the ground. After some time on the field, the blood trails from the gauss rifle start to look pretty cool.
The mob AI within the game is well done. Each type of mob appears to have a different targeting/movement/pathing scripting functionality. This is readily apparent on the levels where only on type of mob is present and they all seem to follow a dance across the screen. On the levels with a single type of mob you are able adapt your style to the movement of the mobs. For levels that have multiple types of mobs, life becomes a bit more hairy, not only due to the increased number of mobs, but also because they are using different tactics to bring you down.
Overall Crimsonland is a well produced game with lots of playability. Kudos goes out to 10tons for this game.
Graphics
Graphics are good. On par with Starcraft.
Sound
The sound is head-banging metal which is very appropriate to the amount of carnage you spread around the game fields. Each of the weapons as well as some of the perks and the power-ups have unique sounds attributable to them.
Game Play
Shoot, gather power ups, run-away, repeat. Pure and simple and lots of it.
Options
Not a whole lot of options associated with Crimsonland other than the variety of power-ups, perks, weapons, and mobs.
Concept 8
Yea there a lot of action shooters out there, but 10tons has taken a simple game and by adding variety made it very worthy.
Fun 9
Fun because it is a shooter and there is a lot of fire power to expend.
Overall 8
Crimsonland is professionally done; I could see 10tons evolving Crimsonland into a second more involved game. There is definitely potential there.
People who downloaded Crimsonland have also downloaded:
Broken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon, Enigma: Rising Tide, Etherlords 2, Crunchling Adventure, Counter-Strike: Source, Halo: Combat Evolved, Crime Killer, Freedom Fighters
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