gamelog

The aesthetic of the game is nice and it does a nice job of maintaining a connection to the feel of the movie, but the gameplay is really lackluster. The weapons are ok(ish) on their own, but the game doesn't present enough opportunities to engage in decent combat. When traversing tight corridors something like the suffusion (aka shotgun) is good enough, but in open rooms the long range gun (inexplicably called the LOL, to capitalize on those early 2000s memes I guess) is pretty frustrating without a zoom function. Meanwhile the energy (your ammo) runs out quickly, leaving you with your disc, which is another "just ok" weapon, and never seems to do as much damage as the discs from the enemies. In short, the combat never feels like it gets into anything fast-paced, so you're constantly ducking behind things rather than any run-and-gun being possible. For games with more strategic combat this might work, but this just feels slow without any payoff. Overall the story is engaging, and the way emails that you find throughout that advance the plot is a nice touch, but plowing your way through the levels feels more like a slog than having fun.

Crimsonland is a passable twin stick shooter that suffers from very few frills and a system based more on luck than skill. In the majority of the levels, your character moves at the same speed or slower than the enemies. Consequently, the only way to keep the hordes at bay is to mow them down, but how quickly you can accomplish this depends very much on what type of gun you're using. The first enemy you kill on each level drops a gun, but these range from useless to beneficial, so often you can determine whether it's worth trying to beat a higher-difficulty level from your first kill. The perk system (what skills you can acquire on leveling) follows this formula as well, so if the choices you get for your first level up are poor, your success rate for the board drops dramatically. Combine this random system with bland terrain (a rectangle with no obstacles) and a vaguely nebulous hitbox, and you've pretty much seen the entire game. There's a fair variety of enemy types which somewhat keeps things interesting, and you have a range of guns and powerups as well. But once you've put a couple hours into the game you learn what's useful to acquire and prioritize that over variety. Also, in addition to level progression (quest mode) there are several types of endless challenge mode. But everything ends up feeling pretty similar after not too long. To sum up, it's fun to play for a bit, but after a couple hours you'll probably get bored. Pick it up if you like twin stick shooters and can find it on sale for a buck or two, but otherwise you're not missing much.

Lost my account access from a former email, so I'm reposting this review: This game could have been very decent, but it suffers from a mountain of gameplay issues that all add up to a frustrating experience. Moving freely is inhibiting, as you easily get caught on corners of objects that are often in the dark, not to mention that your movement speed can be charitably described as trundling at best. You can sprint, but you have to hold down a button, and your limit (which isn't represented by any sort of stamina bar) is far too short. The camera issues are no better, as every time your mouse touches the edge of the screen your perspective rotates, making navigating and gunplay supremely dissatisfying. You're zoomed in too far on your character, which means you can't see what's going on around you, even in the same room. And even if the mechanics of battle worked well, shooting the aliens gives little feedback to the player. Bullets travel over the aliens' heads until they seemingly die randomly of heart attacks. All in all, this game could have been much better, but pretty much every programming decision that went into creating it ended up failing. For a much better example of the top-down alien shooter genre see the game Shadowgrounds.

Lost my email access from my former account, so I'm reposting this review from Sep 15, 2017: It's refreshing to see a team create a new core mechanic for a game, and this one (physics-based gameplay involving swinging a weight on a chain around a central point in order to smash that weight into enemies) is engaging enough. Unfortunately the mechanic is never given a chance to shine as the rest of the game is bogged down with annoyances. The limited space on the screen (there is no menu option to increase resolution) is often taken up with unnecessary distractions that obscure your view. These range from small frustrations such as flames and smoke to large sections being blocked by your health meter or characters faces talking to you. With a competently coded camera focus these could possibly be overlooked, but enemies often fly off the screen, only to come screaming back into view in the middle of attacking you. This often gives you no time to avoid attacks, which is especially egregious when they use faster weapons like guns and missiles. All of these flaws make the game an exercise in frustration more than fun. It hearkens back to the days of "Nintendo hard", where games were characterized by cheap deaths. It's unfortunate, because the if the game could have just gotten out of its own way and let its mechanic shine it could have been a lot of fun.