Review #99 - 'Crimson' By Kingoffangdams!

Crimson is a game created by kingoffangdams

Introduction:

Hello, and welcome to my 99th review. Today, I will be reviewing Crimson, a classic shooter ship game by kingoffangdams. Kingoffangdams is well known for making some decent shooter games, nothing spectacular in my opinion, but he has picked up a few featured games from them before and I have had some fun playing some of his shooters in the past before. However, this shooter hasn't been featured and I'm afraid that it probably won't be. I can see why it hasn't been featured and I'd say that it is quite far off of those standards.

Review:

To put it simply, Crimson is pretty much a game that contains what you'd typically expect from a shooter game, but lagged way too much for me, gifted way too much health but all of that was pointless as this game is impossible due to a fault as this game obviously wasn't tested properly. I'd get to those points later. Anyway, this game is pretty much just your usual go around hitting switches, destroying spider keys to get crystals sort of game. I guess it is a little bit different in the sense that you do get multiple crystals and there is also a capture a flag mini game as well, but other than that, it is just your standard classic shooter. Kingoffangdams did attempt to make the boss battles a little more interesting by surrounding the spider keys with enemies, but this is all pointless as you can quite easily just kill all of the enemies before hitting the spider to make killing the spider key easy and your standard spider boss battle. I suppose the ice poly's do make it a little more interesting and there is a bit of room to destroy the keys rather than being cramped in one small space. In addition, the puzzles didn't make the game better for me. The puzzles are easy to cheat in as you can use your bombs to activate the one way doors as they are on pushers, rather than going down the obnoxious route of using mega mines on enemies or the standard, wing man routine. I also saw this sort puzzle about three or four times so it was pointless as everyone knows what to do and none of them worked as they should have done. Especially, what I presume is the last one, which anyone would get stuck on as it is impossible. I will touch on that more later.

Crimson has got the factors of an enjoyable game, being one full of action sequences with a variety of enemies and challenges. However, I didn't have a lot of fun playing this game, and lag played quite a large role. Now if this game doesn't lag for you, it'd probably be a slightly more fun game. Personally, I don't have too much fun playing this game with lag being a factor. In a game looking at the size of it that should take 5-10 minutes to complete, takes 20 minutes due to the lag. There are ways to stop the lag such as getting rid of pointless drone turrets. They didn't do anything but make the game lag as they just fired bots that hardly shoot the player. I basically don't see the point in them and they made the game worse. In addition, the less of the game there is, the less lag there will be of course. Cutting down on the pointless door way with bombs sort of puzzle to hit a switch to a total count of 0 would have been ideal and maybe have cut the lag down a bit. Also, there is a nice pretty bit of scenery, but I'd preference a game that is more fast flowing to a game that looks nice. This game is generally a slow pace one due to the lag and the constant stopping to solve these pointless puzzles that we all know to solve and to go through the rigmarole of solving certain puzzles properly by using enemies that have got the mega mines, as they would just seem to go anywhere but go down the pushers to hit the switch.

One thing that does make this game a bit different is that kingoffangdams did implement about three different styles into the game. The game starts off with just an action sort of game, then you go to a maze part of a game, then you go to an open world style sort of game. So I like those switches of styles as it varies the game a bit. What would have been ideal is if kingoffangdams wasn't to just use the same old puzzles, maybe use his own puzzles, or, seeing as I understand that is hard to find new ones these days, at least put a twist on them rather than simply just chucking bombs at them and the switch or one way door being activated sort of thing. And as I've mentioned before, this is pretty much just your usual going around getting keys and destroying enemies to get crystals type of game. When I play a game, I want to see something different and unique, but there isn't too much originality I could find in this game, apart from maybe those three different styles and a capture the flag mini game.

So now onto the impossibility of Crimson. This game is simply impossible as if you were to actually manage to hit a switch to get past a blocked path, you are forced to hit an orange switch that blocks the path again. At least I think this is impossible anyway, I am only going based on a screenshot in the comments as I didn't have the resources to pass the puzzle, but I don't see how it would be possible as there is an orange switch before the blocked path that makes it appear again so you can't get passed. And to do with me not having the resources, this is again just to do with lack of testing. You could either have used your wing man that somehow would have managed to have survived half of the game, which is unlikely. Or, you could go through the rigmarole of having to get the enemy with the mega mine down that pusher to hit the switch. By this point, the chances are you'd have either have destroyed the cruiser naturally and realise you can't use it, or you'd have used your mega mines already. Either way, chances are you won't have the resources to pass the puzzle, so I'd recommend that kingoffangdams did place new mega mines or a wing man in. Not that's it worth it because as I've already touched on, I'm pretty sure you can't pass it anyway. In addition, this game is way too easy, ignoring the fact that is most likely impossible, as there is way too much health. I don't know why kingoffangdams provided an overload of mega health's, because I was at full health for practically the entirety of the game. I suppose all the action sequences does make this game kind of challenging, but it wasn't really too difficult as I'd never get anywhere near running out of health. The only reason that stop you from winning are the stupid traps from puzzles or the probable impossibility factor, making all these action sequences pretty much pointless as you shouldn't die from them.

Ratings (Out of five):

Conclusion:

So 2's all around for an overall of 2/5 in a fairly disappointing game. Obviously, this game has had some effort put in to it, but it does need something more interesting to make it different, it needs to be faster paced and clearly it needs to be tested more to get rid of certain errors. This game does have the aspects to be a challenging and enjoyable game, as I have seen from kingoffangdams' games in the past, and with a few improvements, this game could be made in to that sort of games. However, this game has quite a few downsides to it and is a bit far off a feature in my opinion. With a few improvements to Crimson, this would probably be just a decent game at best. You may as well give this game a go, but I doubt you would beat it as I'm pretty sure it isn't possible and there is a reason I had clicked on this game to play it at times before I was requested to review it, just to click back out of it 2 minutes later before.