Crimsonland is port of a ten year old PC game that originally started as a student project and can be held aloft by the crowd who despise indie titles and shout “this is not the type of game I spent £400 on a next gen console for.”
This time round, however, they may just have a point because Crimsonland still looks and plays like a student project from 2004.
Graphically, well, let’s be kind and say it’s minimalist. The game is viewed from above and the play area is just a blank space with no obstacles or terrain apart from the odd patch of road. The animation is basic, the three types of enemies – zombies, spiders and lizards – simply walk towards you and it’s your job to kill them before they can touch your character and drain your health.
To prevent the generic unnamed commando becoming monster lunch, you have an arsenal of 30 weapons but can only hold a single gun at a time and usually start a level with a underpowered single shot pistol. Killing enemies releases new weapons and power ups including smart bombs, fire wheels and slow downs, none of which are particularly inventive or spectacular. And that’s it; there is nothing more to the game than surviving wave upon wave of monsters, zombies and spiders.
The Quest mode has you battle through sixty levels which feature different combinations of enemies and monsters and by doing so you unlock perks for the other game modes. These include a Survival mode which as you might expect, asks you to last as long as possible, and four varitions on that theme, Rush, Blitz, Weapon Picker and Nukefism. Each of the survival modes has online leader boards for both single player and co-op of which you can have four players.
My main problem with the game is that at the start of each level your commando moves at the speed of a dead cat. I was expecting to be able to zip about the screen and doge the enemies but unless the game decides to furnish you with you with a speed up it’s like walking in sludge. All you can do is move backwards and fire at the enemies, trying to dodge your way through them just doesn’t work and you will be surrounded in seconds. In later levels some of the enemies can move faster than your character and this caused all sorts of swear words to be uttered at the screen.
It appears that power ups are selected at random, rather than the game using logic and giving something you need, which means you may have to replay a Quest level over and over until you get a weapon good enough to complete the sequence, and hopefully a speed up or two. However, the game may decided to throw you a blow torch, a weapon only seems to exists to annoy players rather than add to the fun as it fires a tiny burst of flame in front of your character, utterly useless when the bullet spitting spiders are two screens away.
It looks terrible, it sounds worse, the gameplay is horrendously unbalanced and it costs £7.99 which is ridiculous when you can get The Last of Us Remastered, another old game that has been souped up for PS4, for £30.
However despite all of this the game is, in short bursts, a lot of fun. But only in short bursts mind you, especially the Quest mode which will bore you senseless for the first ten missions ten enrage you in an equal amount for the remaining fifty.
The Survival modes are much better and there is some satisfaction to be had from chaining nukes, freeze bombs and fire bursts to wipe out waves of enemies in one go. However without any co-op buddies the game will only entertain for a short while before becoming frustrating, there is no variation between one game and the next. Shoot enemies, more appear, shoot them, more appear, repeat till dead. Crimsonland wasn’t particularly acclaimed ten years ago and it has aged very badly, it’s just not up to the standards we expect for console games.
What’s Good:
- Fun in very short bursts.
- Local co-op.
What’s Bad:
- Repetitive.
- Horribly dated.
- Perks don’t seem to do much.
- Massively overpriced.
In its current state the game should have been a £1.99 PlayStation Mobile title, not a £7.99 PlayStation 4 game. The title is coming to PS Vita this week and will be cross-buy but not cross save, and is certainly more suited to short bursts of gaming on a bus.
Youles
Fuck me it looks dreadful.
Forrest_01
Yep, I thought as much when I first heard about it/saw it;
http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2014/07/01/crimsonland-will-be-painting-your-screen-red-from-july-15th-on-ps4/#comment-564049
Tony Cawley
This is not the type of game I spent £400 on a next gen console for!
psychobudgie
This is not the game I spent £100 on a last gen console for!
double-o-dave
This is not the type of game I spent 10 seconds typing out a comment for!
ron_mcphatty
These are not the droids you’re looking for!
wonkey-willy
time to sharpen the pitchforks,set fire to the torches and head over to PlayStation towers and demand that they stop this shit right now…
My £400 power horse deserves more than this.
a ten year old spectrum game..please who are they kidding.
what with the flurry of indie games I’m beginning to think my ps4 was a waste of cash.
Amphlett
Glad it’s not just me. I was thinking back in January/February that the number indie games was too high, and now we’re just saturated with the stuff.
The above said, Diablo3 dropped through my letterbox today and it’s already looking as though it will soak up all my gaming time and more.
Tuffcub
Look, its better than nothing which is what the PS3 had at the start. Come October you will have more games than you can shake a very, very big stick at.
double-o-dave
Haven’t Sony got some kind of game approval department or quality standards scale?
There’s Indie games, and then theres utter crap. To be fair I haven’t seen this in action, but then again I don’t want to either.
It does seem somewhat annoying when you spend £350 + on a games console and someone releases a turd like this and then thinks you may even pay for it to grace your PS4.
Forrest_01
If you would like to see it in action (& I don’t really know why you would), click the link I popped in my post above & it will take you to the initial reveal article where there’s a video.
It doesn’t look any better in motion than it does still IMO.
Amphlett
This looks to be so bad that I’m reading rumours across the magical interwebs that it’s going to be September’s PS4 PS+ game of the month.
double-o-dave
Sounds about right.
Tuffcub
No it won’t be, they don’t give away games that a few weeks old that piss off everyone who bought it.
double-o-dave
But surely that would only equate to 1 person, possible 2 if they’re lucky.
Or if they’ve got a mega promotions team… 3.
NotSmartEnough
It’s crap.
Thankfully there is a demo for those who need proof. I played it and couldn’t believe that it had made it onto the store.
Smallville2106
Oh dear. Wouldn’t even bother with this on my iPad.
Lieutenant Fatman
Woooah, wasn’t expecting it to be that bad!