Crimsonland Review PS4 & PS Vita Updated Opinions

What we have here is a top down arena style shooter

Initially to me it looked like it might play in the style of the classic Robotron, but after a while I felt it ended up feeling much more like playing Gauntlet without the walls.

So you start out with a pistol and enemies come towards you and you shoot them.

Every so often a kill will drop a different weapon, some of which are great and others are terrible (flamethrower I am looking at you, you worthless sack of badger droppings, I would be better of with a box of matches).

Other kills will drop off power ups and these do really help

The range of types of guns and power ups increases as you unlock them as you proceed through the rather large amount of levels

Some levels have a witty style with a rather tough one based on asteroids being the stand out. In this level the enemies which seem to be some form of spider in this case, split in two each time you kill them and keep splitting and getting smaller in a nice homage to the classic rock blaster

The arena itself is just a bare patch of land which gets redder and redder as you lay down your trail of kills, hence I guess the name Crimsonland

As you play through you unlock different types of gameplay such as Survival where you try and kill as many waves as you can and at the end of each wave you can select a perk (power up) to add to your firepower

Then there is Rush where you just have a machine gun and you try and muller as much as you can until you get swamped and die

A couple of other variants such as only having the bullets in a weapon and having to get a new gun each time and a type where you only have the power ups to kill everything pad out the survival modes

So its a very basic game and has a very basic approach with a few neat power ups and longevity being provided more by quantity than quality

But it suffers from some major problems for me.

I like top down shooters and I like them a lot. I was initially bored of this game after 20 mins. I played Geometry Wars for close to 200 days, I still play Robotron 30 years later and I am always up for Gauntlet. This Crimsonland was initially very dull and very difficult and I was close to packing it in. The scenery is dull the graphics are poor and the worst bit is that they have used a point and fire with trigger rather than adopting the classic twin sticks approach of letting the right stick also fire the weapon.
Every so often the weapon also fails to reload which is a glitch and a pita.
The recticle to indicate where you are firing ends up being so large that it looks like your player and ruins your control. The default speed of your character is just slightly too slow and seems initially to ruin the gameplay. The randomness of the weapon drops affects whether you beat a level more than it should. The sound effects are nothing spectacular

I mentioned all of these things because they are what hit you in the face on the first few play throughs. You go through the 60 levels of the Quests and each one just seems to grind and drag and frustrate. Its very tough and the paucity of trophys hardly makes you want to continue.

But having been on the verge of ditching it and moving on I rather surprisingly started to get in the groove.
I stopped wondering why the devs had not done this or altered that and focussed on beating the goal targets in Survival. I found myself playing the game over and over and over night after night just to try and get this pesky bronze medal. I swore at the screen more times than even I think is appropriate and I am Mr Gutter and if it was not for the expense of the AV kit I have, my tv would have now had a controller lodged in its front.
I would stomp down when yet again I was pipped just near the 250K target. I looked slack jawed when I saw I was closest to the trophy without getting it in the entire world, and I would start the game just one more time to try and get to the goal.

This went on for night after night.

Then I went and played through the quests on hardcore and this increased my potty mouth twenty fold.

And after beating that and last night climbing to 50th of all time in survival I realised I had gotten this all wrong. Its a game you have to play!
I am a retro fanatic but the original of this passed me by. When I played it at first I could see the potential for a staggeringly good twin stick Geo Wars Robotron Dead Nation Gauntlet beater. But in wanting it to be that I was overlooking the joy of that 'ridiculously difficult but surely one more go will beat it' game that I was hooked on 30 years ago.

Yes I wish the issues of the recticle were gone, but the crack like addictive nature of this title once you are hooked is something that comes along only very rarely.

Its only 7 quid or something silly like that and you all should try it.

I hope that one day a version with all the things I really wanted is made as that would be GOTY for me, but to miss out on the hidden intricacies on this remix of the original would be wrong.

So apologies for my initial views on this title which will be exactly what you think when you first play it. But give it 4 or 5 nights of your time. Beat all the quests to unlock most of the weapons and perks and then try and get to 250K on survival. Once you have you will be happy you did.

Play it for just a day and you will wonder why anyone would make such a title. Play it for a week and you will praise the gaming Gods they did.


8/10

Good review mate, I used to love top down shooters alien breed and the chaos engine were brilliant shame this one doesn't match up

Ouch, sounds like a miss.

Nice one mate.

Straight to the point and having been playing through this myself I would have to say I agree.

There is a power up to make you run quicker but I guess they wanted to add more challenge by making you slower.
I am guessing if we were quicker with shooting done just on the right stick it might have been too easy.
But surely they could of just added faster or more enemies to balance it.

Hope they do patch it as I honestly see potential here.

well I finished the whole set of levels yesterday and it sort of gets a bit better the more you play it but not much

The aiming recticle is the biggest bugbear for me
Trying to move (far too slowly) through a hoard of enemies and then ending up staring at something that is not your player but thinking it is drives me crazy

And I also found that even though you play every level you do not unlock every perk or weapon so that's two more trophies I wont be getting

Blitz mode which is unlocked by finishing the game is probably the most fun you can have on it but the difficulty level posed by the two glaring faults means that you are very unlikely to get the trophy score

Its funny but looking at the global high scores for all the survival games show about 3 people in the world having gotten enough points

As I said a patch could make this better. When you get a speed power up and a fire power up together it becomes fun for the brief time they are active

Come on 10 tons get this sorted

Been getting drawn in to trying to beat the trophy scores on the Survival games and after 3 days I am still empty!

Must admit that when you play it for a long while it does grow on you a bit and I reckon I might be 1 point low on my score.

At least now I have proof that I am the worlds unluckiest gamer. You need 250,000 for a trophy in basic survival. I scored 249900 and am the closest to the trophy without actually getting it in the world!

Reminds me of the time I tried scoring 1 million on Geo Wars with 1 man. I hit three scores in the 990Ks before doing it


This game is still very frustrating but I have to admit that its a grower

I messaged you about this game again mate with some tips from Jaakko

yes his feedback is good

The more I play it the more I am swayed towards liking it tbh

The recticle thing is a pita but the game is actually far better the longer you stay with it

I will get this 250k though if I have to go through 3 control pads lol

This and the other game sparkle 2 they recently did, do show 10 tons to be one to watch

Beaten this on hardcore now

Managed another high 240K score too

Its going to be beaten if it takes me all year lol

Dude, you are playing this way too much for it to be only a 5

A lesson to all of us, don't jump too soon.

I have now battered the 250K target, and am starting the game on GRIM (its fucking mental at the difficulty btw)

I have completely revised my thoughts on this

As I am always happy to admit when I am wrong I have updated and changed my original review.

Please re read it and then go and buy this, then a day later have a go at me as you will think I was right when I hated it then carry on playing and then a week later stop having a go at me and thank me for getting you to buy it!

Kent please let 10 Tons know I have reviewed it again

Cheers all

Cool will send this to Jaakko right away!   

Nice re review lol

beat it on grim

the last level on grim is one of the single most difficult levels I have ever played!

surprised you lot could not hear the cheer I let out when after 500 attempts I beat the fucker!

Enjoyable as ever mate. Good work.

Never played this but i know it had quite a big following on PC in its original form back in the day. It probably plays differently with a mouse though. I wonder if its more suited to mouse controls??

cant imagine it would be more difficult lol....its already as rock as rock with some extra rock thrown in

found out what I need to do to get the final perk too

you have to enter a code on credits screen then play a mini game which unsurprisingly is also rock hard

2 hours of trying it last night and still nowhere near beating it

still beating it on grim has netted me the most ultra rare trophy I have so its my new badge of honour

Good work. You certainly seem to be able to put the effort in to bag these completions. I keep getting bloody sidetracked!

stopping buying anything has helped

but as I work 24/7 lots of days I am not getting the time to deplete the unplayed pile at all

if anything the free gwg and ps+ stuff is still more than I have time for

I need to win the pools or get made redundant lol

great work mate I do like a top down shooter but I aint the best at them maybe one for me to pass on! stella review though dude and I like the way you have re reviewed the more you have played

cheers stubbs

two weeks later and I am still obsessed with maxxing this title

beat the hidden trophy gembine game last night

just 4 trophies to go


toughest game ever lol