Crimsonland

Game Info

I have been on a kick of Wii U indie titles for a few weeks now, so it was a nice change of pace to have a PlayStation 4 title fall on my lap.  10tons newest action title to hit the hot selling Sony system is called Crimsonland and like the title suggests, their will be blood on the ground.

There is no real story or narrative to Crimsonland.  There are “quest” levels which  will have you unlock different survival modes, perks and gun types to use.  There are six quest levels, each containing 10 different waves of enemies you will have to slaughter unmercifully with weapons such as a pistol, shotgun, rocket launcher, blow torch and more.  All the quests levels can be played through cooperatively with up to 4 players simultaneously.

The gameplay right away reminded me of the overhead levels of Contra III: The Alien Wars (Except without the mode 7, and better controls) and a sprinkle of Geometry Wars or Dead Nation sort of games.  You use the left stick to walk and the right stick to aim.  The R button then reigns bullets all of the maps.  Power-ups that you receive from annihilating the spiders, zombies and snake-like lizards  will be dispersed automatically as you walkover them.  Power-ups include Nukes (which takes out a circular blast radius), Medkits, shields, a circular fire blast and many more.  Guns are also dropped from fallen enemies as well.

In the Survival modes, you can change your perks that you unlocked in the quest mode accordingly to help survive the waves longer.  There are five different Survival modes: Survival, Rush, Weapon Picker, Nukefism, and Blitz.  Besides the actual Survival mode, the other modes make you last through the hordes with a single weapon or only with power-ups.  The real meat and lasting gameplay mode is classic Survival. The lack of online is disappointing but being able to fight through hordes of endless enemies with four friends is great fun.  You can even level-up and use perks to help run the gauntlet and try to achieve that high score.

Graphically, the game looks kind of bland, with the backdrops not really mixing it up well.  There is no slowdown though and I’ve seen easily over a hundred enemies on the screen at once, which is super impressive.  The soundtrack has a really good hard rock/metal feel, which helps pump up your adrenaline and testosterone for a bloody good time.

The Recommendation

As a really fun local co-op 4 player bloodbath shooter, Crimsonland is a riot. I would love to see some online multiplayer added or even some more creative backdrops, but there is still a great value to be had for under 8 bucks.  So call up your buddies, have them bring over their controllers and suit up to take on the endless waves of spiders, zombies and lizards in this gruesome yet entertaining title.