One Survival mode offers nothing more than a simple assault rifle (good luck, by the way), while another severely limits your ammunition capacity (good luck again). I always find myself coming back to the standard “endless” mode, as I tend to have the most fun when 30 different weapons are at my disposal. Survival is where you’ll spend most of your time, and there’s a decent variety in the given game modes that help dull the sting of repetition. Hell, you can even make a deal with the devil and unlock three additional perks if you’re willing to play with 99% of your health pool missing! There’s over 50 (!!!) to unlock over the course of Quest mode, and since all of them carry over to Survival it’s probably best to muscle through the campaign with your friends before stomping your boots on its blood-caked floor. My favorite pairing was Lucky, which randomly spawned power-ups near my location, and Telekinesis, which pulled them to me automatically. Killing stuff rewards XP and leveling up allows the player to choose from a randomized list of perks, like firing off uranium filled bullets (it’s like a deadly Twinkie), taking less damage in exchange for a smaller health pool, or a Death Clock that provides 30 seconds of scoring multipliers at the cost of your life. Quests mode consist of a handful of stages, each with 10 waves of enemies to shred through. It’s a well paced drip-feed reward system that respects your personal time by unlocking new content on a regular basis, rather than hiding the fun elements behind ridiculous grinds or soul crushing difficulty requirements.
Story is non-existent, controls are minimalist, but playing through the Quests mode alone or with some pals unlocks a satisfying plethora of new weapons (even terrible trollish ones!) and perks that can be used in the game’s other modes. “Imagine your friends running around like headless chickens, screaming as if they’ve been stung by every bee in existence…”Ĭrimsonland is clearly inspired by other gory shooters (even the above image and soundtrack is an homage to Doom) and is at its best when joined up with friends on the couch, collectively mowing down hordes of baddies through its variety of game modes.
Originally released for PC in 2003, Crimsonland was a cult classic that graced many a gaming magazine and their accompanied promo discs. It proved to be quite popular and was recently given the remaster treatment so you and your friends could paint the floor red on your console of choice. It’s such a far departure from developer 10tons’ previous Xbox One release, the colorful marble puzzler Sparkle Unleashed, but it’s a damn fine twin-stick co-op shooter with just the right dose of RPG elements that kept me coming back for more.Ĭhronologically speaking, it’s actually the developer’s first game ever. There’s leaderboards, frantic top-down arcade action, loads of guns, and more blood on display than the legendary lawnmower scene in Peter Jackson’s horror classic Dead Alive. If Smash TV and Doom had a love child, it would be Crimsonland.