༼ つ ◕◡◕ ༽つ Dray2k 最近的评测

Difficulty: Extremely easy to somewhat slightly above average
Gameplay length: Between 28h to 50h - Depending whether or not you go for 100% completion, or chose to go into New Game+. Average "fast" playthrough should be about 29 hours. Theres a lot of see and a lot to unlock.
Age Rating: Kids to Adults. I think everyone can have a good time here.

Gameplay: 9/10 - The best japanese Racing game on the market despite some tiny flaws.
Graphics: 8/10 - The typical problems regarding the Unreal Engine aren't seen here. That alone should tell you that they wanted to keep the quality of the game as high as they could. They were able to not only recreate the look and feel of the PS2 game of yesteryear but they were able to up the ante and make the game look great even for modern times.
Sound: 6/10 - The game has a lot of interesting and nice songs, but they do show up way too late into the game. Expect listening to that one NPC fighting song for hours and hours on end
I pesonally rate it: 9/10 - Very high potential being GOTY, most likely the best racing game of 2025

This game draws a fine line between substance and style, its super cohesive in its presentation and it just feels and plays extremely well. Never in my close to 30 hours of playthrough did I not have fun and I usually don't play too many car racing games. Everything about the game is high quality and the game is made with love.

The more verbose review below, read it only if you're interested about some of the details.

Tokyo Xtreme Racer is, for all intents and purposes, a callback to that early 00s era of arcade racer. The best comparision I can give this game that it feels somewhat like a oldschool Ace Combat game mixed with Need for Speed: Underground. You begin with a humble car, and slowly tune it up so you can drive faster. The game features some 50 or so different cars, almost all of them can be changed in looks through bodykits and you're also able to add vinyls and whatever on it. You can even turn a Toyota into somehwat of a lowrider, which conveys the feeling of being really able to change the look of a what otherwise would be a plain looking car. I bought up Ace Combat, because it is the same type of arcadey as this game is. While you can focus a lot on the fine details of the tuning since you can change pretty much every important aspect of a car, the driving itself feels extremely arcade-y. They wanted to make sure the Player sees the results of the tuning in terms of car handling and speed. And in my opinion at least, they conveyed the sense of speed and the car handling perfectly. This game basically dethroned NFS: Underground 1 and 2 as the "tuner" arcade sim for me.

As you drive around the Shuto Expressway, you will fight against some 400+ (!) or so enemies. Beating an enemy team or a very strong opponent unlocks their vinyls that you can plaster on your own car.

For the weebs out there, there aren't many itasha (anime style vinyls) in this game but the game is seeing updates. Maybe theres gonna be DLC and what not. Theres also the ability to mod in your own things.

The models feel all very well made and it helps conveying the sense of speed, which is important for a game like this. So if your question is "does the sense of speed convey well here?" my answer is "Yes, they done it nicely". With that said, I often focused on speed over car handling myself and bonked quite a lot on the walls, still being able to beat most NPCs without too much trouble. That being said, a lot of love has been put into the progression of the game as well as the presentation. You talk to opponents in parking spots and they're all drawn in this monochrome silouette style where you can't really make out any of the facial features. If you're either not driving or talking to NPCs, you tune and change your car at your homebase.

Drifting is very well done here, but its sort of useless if you get a faster car. You can finetune your cars to drift better as well.

With this said, theres still so much variance, customizability and challenge that the game has been fun throughout the entiretly of my playthrough. Not only that but the game really felt to open up more and more even after I unlocked all the parts of the world just because you unlock so many options through the perk/level-up system. As you play you get more credits and points that makes you unlock and buy more fancy stuff.

The game itself is very well done graphically. The only real downside of it is that the graphics do become a little bit bland and boring as the night never really changes and the game world, faithfully remade to mimic its real world counterpart, doesn't have many points of interest. You can drive close to the NHK building and see the Tokyo Tower, with the Tokyo Skytree visible from afar. The other interesting place for carfans is the minato bay route with the bridge, a fantastic point to drag-race NPCs.

Besides the lack of points of interest, the game doen't have a way to move your mouse to control your camera, you're basically unable to see the vinyls you lovingly placed nor are you able to really appreciate the scenery from a slightly different perspective. Using your mouse would enhance the atmosphere to a greater degree, perhaps even raising the score. We will see what further updates bring to the table.

The best thing I can say about the graphics is that the usual "unreal problem" people talk about, the weird graphic pop-ins and strange attempts of optimization that results in weird pixelation and cheaper graphical fidelity while also being entirely unoptimized is not in this game. This game is very, very graphically well produced and just feels right. I thought it was a custom engine first before I checked myself. A very great feat from the development team I think.

Theres many different graphical effects, some of the more nuanced ones include your neon lights that you can place under your car bounces off light from metallic surfaces. Its tiny details like that where Tokyo Xtreme Racer really pop off.

Also those movies whenever you completed a chapter are goofy and cheezy. I love the oldschool vibes this game has.

Unfortunatly the sound is a little bit of a weaker part. But thats mostly because they wanted to adhere to their arcade roots. While the engine sounds do sound alright and nice, the music somewhat feels repetitive early to late game. Only before the final 15% of the game happen to have way more variety.

The game itself has some OST that resemble the classic Initial D soundtrack but theres also metal sounding music and songs sung by a female idol.

Too bad they don't utilize more music randomly, especially when you fight random NPCs. That would've raised the score by one point. Good music, but monotonous once you're deep in the game.

Despite its flaws, Tokyo Xtreme Racer is really damn fantastic. The cars handle extremely well, with the purpose to enhance the speed and control through finetuning as much as possible. And it goes without saying that most of the reviews don't really tell a different story.

The game is best put into the 9/10 - 10/10 mark. Theres a ton of roads to drive, lots of cars to explore and the customizeability of most of the cars is where the game truly shines. If Genki is able to enhance the experience with further updates than this game is truly becoming the best game of its kind.

Its a game with a very oldschool soul. If you need some arcade racing in your life, this game is probably the greatest game of its kind. I'd say get this game as soon as you can, even for its asking price.

Tofu with some custom chili sauce I made.

A Shawarma:

- Tastes good
- Is cheap
- Comes in many variations that all taste great, its DEI done right
- Comes with French Fries and Cocktailsauce for adding like 3 bucks extra
- Variations like Lamacun pleases all the vegans
- Optional salad
- Goes well with Pizza
- Costs 11 bucks and that includes with extra salad, french fries and a soda/alcohol.
- Comforts you even during the darkest times
- Can be eaten with friends, everyone has a good time together
- Doesn't need maintainance, if cold just heat it up again or if you like it cold put it in the fridge
- Tastes good with everything and thats a understatement
- All Shawarmers taste at least good, no bad Shawarmers exist.
- Doesn't care if you eat a taco next time you do.

A (good) wife:

- Is a human, not a Shawarma
- Nags you to have sex with her at random, even though you're playing online with the boys or you eat a Shawarma
- Asks for extra money all the time
- Didn't come with french fries and a soda (don't get me started about the salad)
- Blames you for everything, even though you give half your money to her
- Potential to have kids but they cost a lot, better spend your cash on french fries and a soda.
- Needs lots of maintainance
- Sharing her with friends sounds like a bad plan
- If you do one single mistake or annoy her she just leaves and takes the house
- Potential to even get a worse wife than that
- Hates you if you look at other woman

Why do you even ask? Get this game you silly

Difficulty: Extremely easy to close to impossible depending on how far you're in and what challenges to took
Gameplay length: Between 30h to 150h - Depending on what kind of gamemodes you play. Average should be around 45h until you've seen most the game has to offer. With an average around 30 minutes per game session until you either progressed a tier or lost. Lower tiers can be finished within 10 minutes, the final tiers can take as long as 45 minutes.
Age Rating: Kids to Teens but this game is mostly for everyone.

Gameplay: 10/10 - The best Vampire Survivors like on the market
Graphics: 7/10 - Looks pretty, but its unoptimized
Sound: 5/10 - Less production value than Vampire Survivors, but it has its good things about it
I pesonally rate it: 9.5/10 - High GOTY potential

It has to be noted that even though the Graphics and Sound are rated lowly. This game has more Substance than style.

A Vampire Survivors like, but with a twist.

For those who don't know, Rogue: Genesia is a Vampire Survivors is a game that is a easy to play action RPG. Think of a game like Diablo or Path of Exile without the complex skill building, only focused on getting strong weapons/skills by killing a lot of monsters.

Instead of leveling up while getting items with increased stats, you're getting a card system. Each level up gives you a set of cards you can choose from. Depending on what you choose, You either get cards that complement your choices with usually one choice of a card that goes against it. Lets say you pick a card that makes you hit faster, there usually will be cards that make you more powerful while some cards will tradeoff your speed while making you hit stronger. Choosing the right balances and knowing what to focus is key in winning in this game. Theres over 300 different card types to choose from. Ranging from "hit x% harder" to weapon types to evolutions and ascensions.

Usually, one card type has 3 to 7 level ups. Which means you have to choose the same card type several types each level up in order to max it out. There is something called "Tainted" cards, which I will explain later.

Rogue: Genesia works under a tiered system, you begin at Tier-F and with each successful win you raise towards the above tiers.

It has to be said that besides the extensive cards system, the game has phenomenal meta progression. After each win (or fail), you get a set of points you can spend to meta progression. From Faster Hitrates to crit damage, the game allows you to spend points in making your hero stronger.

For instance, later progression allows you to make these "Tainted" cards stronger. These are the usually weakest tier of cards there is (Think commom - Legendary item progression), with the meta progression you slowly raise the to become the highest tier, giving you big boosts in any of the stats you like to choose.

Until you realize theres dozens of different stats you can increase, including enabling entirely different things that add and change the game entirely. Raising the game from a Vampire Survivors-like to something that I've never seen before in a game like this.

At the start and the first few hours of the game, seeing damage numbers like 500 is fairly high. Let me just that late game, that number goes way above the billions in terms of damage, while the number of enemies on the screen exceeds into the close thousands.

And my god, this game is FULL of content. Not only does this game have around 30 different game modes, they call it Challenges in this game. The game features around 300 different skill cards.

You can expect the game getting nuts later on and honestly this is the biggest Strengh of Rogue: Genesia and its biggest selling point. If you love progession in these type of games stop reading and buy this game now at full price.

Graphic wise I'm a little bit torn. Don't get me wrong, the game itself is beautiful but it come with a larger performance costs. Later in the game the game begins to lag quite a lot. And not only that, the game itself does struggle, even during midgame, in keeping performance up.

It will turn your GTX 4090 into a jet engine, no questions asked. But considering how absolutely nuts this game is getting it comes to no suprise. Theres even achivements for this game that make fun of its own bad performance because the game does get insanely flashy later on, but its mostly a joke.

I'm sure the game will be optimized in further updates. In recent days and weeks I've seen the game progessively running a bit better, but its still ways to go.

You can see it already in the store images, the game is probably the most beautiful of its type.

Heres were the criticism comes in, its generic and has less production value as Vampire Survivors. The music itself is quite like afformentioned game, but overall the music lacks the quality and diversity that makes Vampire Survivors great.

However, one thing that I think Rogue: Genesia does amazingly is the XP pickup sound. The sound getting more high pitched as closer you get to the level up and it works amazingly with the atmosphere of this game. Such a small thing does add so much to the overall enjoyment to this game that its honestly undescribeable. You should try it out and see it for yourself.

Rogue: Genesia is everything I ever wanted from a game like this. Instead of replaying stages with different types of units that barely change. You basically play as one hero (with variants) and based on the approach of your build the game changes. The progression is the best of all the Vampire Survivor/Bullet Heaven likes there is. It has a deep card progression system and a simply phenomenal meta progression system.

And overall, I have to say that this one is not only setting itself apart from the other games of its type due to its phenomenal progression and balance which clearly makes Rogue: Genesia one of the best games of its type on the market right now.

Quite a lot, from Toast to a Taco Bell order, anything goes really

The Mountain takes its toll.

I raised several boners while playing this game.

I have no mind and I must flee

This review was based on version 1.3.

Gameplay Lengh: Around 30 minutes to 15 hours, depending on how big you want your score to be.

Required Skill Level: Very Low to Extremly High - The game itself has no true skill cieling. Play as much as your heart desires without the need to feel left out shouldn't you be good enough for this game.

Depiction of violence: Some comedic crashing and bumping into cars, but nothing too extreme, This game is easily recommendable for ages 12 and above.

Downtown Drift (from here on called DD) is a simple Arcade game which is very reminiscent of old games such as Pacman. The game itself is quickly explained. Drifting through the futuristic looking City ranks up points, your combo meter and your boost-meter. Using boost makes your car faster but less controlable. You do all of this while the police is trying to bump into you. Should your Health go to zero you lose and have to restart again.

Bumping into city walls and policecars brings your Combo-Meter to 1.00x again while losing health, depending on how fast you go. Pretty standard stuff, but its the overall finesse in handling your Car that stands out here.

Note that the layout of the city itself looks reminicent of a checkerboard grid so don't expect any sort of different ways to escape, its all up to how good you can drift and dodge the incoming policecars.

DD is extremly simple. The point of the game is simply to gain score so you can climb the online leaderbord.

There is a certain intricacy with its control. While using the WSAD keys to move your car forward, backward and steering is fine, using the handbreaks with space requires quite a lot of timing. There is also a boost that you can turn on while using the Shift key, which makes your Car go slightly faster but in turn you are not as much in control of your Car as without using it. Using your Boost while Drifting gives you slightly higher points. Using your drift key and your boost key at the right time, all while dodging the incoming police cars is key to climbing up the scoreladder.

If your HP reaches 0 you're hit with a GAME OVER screen in big letters, inviting you to start a new try.

The presentation is very good, at least for a game of this scale. Graphically the neon city lights stand out, though they sometimes make drifting a little bit irritating.

Lacking however is the sound and music. Besides You and the other Policecars motorsounds there is a six second soundtrack loop that indicates whereever a Policecar is nearby. It adds to its atmopshere at first but it gets annoying quite quick. If you're close enough to a Policecar you can also hear its Police Radio speaking in gibberish, which is a nice touch.

The best thing about the overall presentation is that the developer made a great job signifying the urgency to the player to not be too close to any Policecar, they actually sound a scary.

DD is a charming little game that you can waste quite some time in. Though not by any means perfect it still provides a lot of fun, especially for its asking price.

Gameplay: 8/10 - For what its worth, the car handling is excellent and DD certainly is the definition of a easy-to-learn-but-hard-to-master arcade game of old days.
Graphics: 6/10 - For a game its size it for sure has nice presentation, though nothing really seems truely outstanding. Sometimes the neonlights in the City are a little bit irritating.
Sound: 4/10 - Nice motorsounds but lacking in almost everything else. Since the "music" is getting annoying quickly I have to lower the score even further. A little bit more variety could be nice.
Overall: 7/10 - Rounded up because the great gameplay makes up for its simple lack of presentation, especially in its audio department.

Note: All scores ajusted considering its asking price.

Tofu, to be used as a snack right after hitting the GAME OVER screen.

Gameplay lengh: 14 - 28 Hours per regular Playthrough if you do not seek to speedrun
Required Skill Level: Low to Medium (New Game) to Very High (New Game+ mode)
This game is not suited for audiences 16 years or lower - some Blood and Gore, comic-esque physical and psychological crulity

Salt and Sanctuary is a rather unique game. You play a Hero of your choice, who got stranded on an strange isle seeking to find his/hers lost princess. However, as always, things do not seem to be the way they are.

Story wise, this game is rather cryptic, this doesn't make the appeal of the game less interesting. It is very important to read item descriptions sometimes, though you can easily finish this game without being too much into this games lore so you don't need to be bothered about it all the time. This game is also for those who just enjoy quick action as it is for those who enjoy a very thoughtful and deep gameplay experience alike. This works thanks to the excellent layout of the World the game happens to be in, which is structured like a Maze of sorts.

And This labyrinth like Gameworld is, in my opinion, the best thing about this game. Walking around, finding the right place to progress further is a ton of fun. This is partially because on how connected the Gameworld is, paths previously blocked by an obstacle open up to the player later via unique Traits, which you get by many of the interesting NPCs that roam the world. These Traits let you change, for instance, the gravity of the player character which enables you to walk on ceilings, though only at certain places. Imagine fighting enemies from the ceilings with a bow or with a big melee weapon. "Coolness" is certainly written big in this game.

After you've choosen the Gender, decided on a class to play and changed the looks on the Character, you will be thrown into the game world. Tutorials are there, but its only explaining the controls and which they do, the rest is up to the player to find out.

This game does have very fast paced Hack and Slash gameplay if you use smaller/weaker weaponry, or the slower and more thoughtful one if you carry Heavy Warhammers. Logically, the bigger the weapon, the stronger the impact. This game makes no exception of this.

Fighting itself is rather simple, as you only have a Strong and a Weak attack. However, depening on what attack you choose, you can make combos. Beside that you can also quick-switch weapons with the press of a button. Imagine throwing your enemy into the air with greatsword and then using a bow to kill your foe while its in the air. You can do that in this game and it is tons of fun.

Besides attacking, you can also use a Shield to block attacks or use a dodgeroll to roll past the enemies. As this is a 2d Platformer this seems a bit unusual at first, but the games Dodgeroll is balanced enough that it didn't bother me to dodgeroll through enemies. It also looks more aesthetically pleasing as you might think.

However, this game isn't exactly forgiving as I make it seem to be. Some parts are quite tough to beat and it required from me to attempt certain parts a few times before I mastered them. If difficult games are too stressful you should still consider to purchase this game regardless, since the difficulty in general is just rightly choosen, there aren't many points in this game where the game flow stagnates and frustration kicks in, all in all the entire game was a breeze to play through.

However, if certain enemies are too strong for you, you can upgrade your Weapons and Armor at a Blacksmith, where you can use your Salt as a currency to upgrade them. Besides your Salt, which you will also use to level up, you will also use "regular" currency to buy regular items, such as Torches. You will need those to traverse the dark caverns of this game, which there are a ton of. You get both Salt and Gold by defeating enemies. The usual video game logic applies, the stronger the enemy, the bigger the reward. Often enough, you will find yourself being a bit overwhelmed by the enemy, as you are not a Tough Hero and will die if a Strong enemy unsuspectingly attacks you a few times. So you often need to go to a Sanctuary to recover.

Sanctuaries, the other namedrop, are your Safe Spots, where noone can do you harm and those are the places where you can fill up your healing potions and where you can level up and assign Skill Points to your character. Most Sanctuaries are hidden and must be found and claimed by the player first, which adds a bit of an exploration aspect in this game.

As I already wrote, Sanctuaries are used to Level Up your Hero. What makes it interesting though is that leveling up is done in a similar way to Final Fantasy X but on a Spiderweb-like board, where you can access certain skills only if you have leveled up the connected points leading before it. Otherwise you have to choose other skills to reach the stuff you want. There are also items which let you remove your already placed skill points so you can replace them on another place if you believe that you made a mistake. Be careful with this though, sometimes you realize that the mistake your made was actually the right thing to do.

There are 12 different Weapon Classes, such as normal Swords, Staffs, Bows, Spears and Lances, Scyths (yay!), Crossbows and even Guns. Theres more than just these of course. All and all I say theres about 500 - 700 unique Items and Equipment you can get in this game. Theres also a lot of Magic skills you can use, such as making the ground on fire or cast Lightning, if you rather fancy this. This type of skilling leads to some interesting "what would happen, if..." type of scenarios if you decided what to skills you want to pick on next.

Multiplayer is also included with the game, but only be played out on a Local setting, so make sure you have a Friend to play with!

Graphically this game is very excellent, even though it is no cutting edge 3D game. The characters all look lovely and the Monsters are detailed very metriculously. You can be sure that even regular Monsters look all very destinctive and unique. Theres a little less then 100 different Monstertypes in this game, including about 25 unique bosses. The lightning is by far the best about the Graphics as they nail the Atmosphere about this game splendidly. The games grim setting and colorful lightning just synergizes very well with one another, as it is already evidential by the screenshots on this games Store page.

While everything about this game is to the very least great, including the sound effects, I found that the Music is pretty lackluster. Even if its very Atmospheric and fitting throughout the game, after you heared a certain theme like 30 times things can get a little bit boring.

The game also has some slight graphical errors, such as weirdly placed walls, which shift depending on where you stand, creating a weird uncanny valley optical illusion of walls that seem to move unreasonably in places and tiny open holes where you can look right through the void, even though there should be a room right behind it. These issues are barely noticeable but regardless they are there if you pay attention.

My, is this game lovely! Even if its just jumping on platforms, this games world makes it so there is always something interesting and challenging to see and do, with a ton of beasts to slay and a ton of loot to find.

And even regardless of those tiny issues previously mentioned, Salt and Sanctuary is, without any doubt, the best 2d Platformer and Action Adventure game I have ever played and a definite must buy for everyone who likes these type of games.

Chicken and Potatos with Chili Sauce, but Apple Juice instead of Mineral Water. No Alcoholic drinks this time.

Gameplay lengh: 3 - 20 Hours if you want to practice Speedrun, even more so if you want to raise to the top of the leaderbord ranking.
Required skill level: Medium to Very High - Experience can vary considering the creativity of the player
This game is for most audiences 12 years and up

DeadCore is at its core (heh) is an interesting mix of well-known genres takes a step further. Think of it as Portal, but with an emphasis on movement physics rather than focusing on spartial problem solving. Its a rather unique mix that can be best discribed as a Jump and Run semi-FPS Speedrun game. Developer Team 5BitsGames tried hard to create a game that uses its game physics to create a very frantic game where shooting isn't the only important thing to do. The result is a unique mix of the two popular games Quake 2 and Portal.

And in my opinion it is much better than the Portal games alone.

While you still get to shoot flying robots and entities that are formed like Cubes, the gameplay is more about moving yourself in ways you wouldn't even think of in other games. More specifically the largest factor you have to consider before buying this game is the focus on movement and a calm and smooth aim rather then twitch reflexes. Furthermore memorizing each level, up of the entire game is essential for finding new ways to complete your quest in climbing the tower-themed world once again if you choose to play through it for another time.

Or in other terms, DeadCore is the perfect learn how to Speedrun game. From the beginning to end I never reached a part that was overly frustrating. The entire game really opens up once you see that this game wants you to Speedrun it instead of merely playing through it once.

As an example, the first level, which serves as a tutorial took me about 40 minutes to finish when I played through it for the first time. The second playthrough however, after a bit of foreplanning and with the small-but-useful skills you unlock during your first playthrough, took about 6 minutes to complete. A Leaderbord is included so you can compare the time it took to beat any level and even the entire game with your friends or everyone else if you choose to.

A Story does exist but the devs made sure that it is not rubbing you in the face. Rather then progressing with the story, you unlock bits and pieces explaining the setting by finding hidden Data Cubes through your journey, which can be accessed via a built-in journal. The Devs certainly knew that games like these focus on the gameplay. Its because of this focus on gameplay that the story itself becomes entirely a optional or even a entirely seperate factor, but it is still interesting to read through the bits and pieces you will find if you want to explore past the obvious routes. Theres also different upgrades to be found, which aren't needed if you want to beat the game, but should be gathered anyway if you try to speedrun the game. Otherwise you're up to a even greater challenge.

And that uniqueness the strongest point this game can offer to you. What may seem like a 5 hour long game that can be beaten in less then 20 minutes if you put creativity and foresight into it. Not with knowing about the route you went before, but finding a better way through the game that wasn't obvious to you during the first time. This is very similar to oldschool jump and run games, or games Speedrunners already have lots of experiences with. Or in different words, DeadCore is a modern game but with an very oldschool Heart and Soul. It takes the FPS genre, completly subverts the way people usually play these games and creates something that is almost unique.

When it comes to the general artistic direction, this game does look very solid indeed. Mint colors and the familiar 80's Neon look define its artstyle, which is often inspired by the movie Tron and the game Tron 2.0 yet this game achieved to still have a unique soul on its own. Premodeled shapes like cubes and slopes are placed as part of this games world. Each levels has a slightly unique style which also comes with the different lightning and a truely excellent skybox to create a fascinating atmosphere.

While the artstyle is the most positive factor here when it comes to rating the visuals, with its corny-cyberspacy look and feel, the problem here is the quality of the models used to build the levels. Sometimes I noticed that it does look a bit cheaper than I would've anticipate by looking at the screenshots from the steamstore page. Considering how open this world is this is not a major issue but its still worth mentioning that the game isn't always this good looking.

The sound, at least for me, seems to be the worst part about this game. Don't get me wrong, I love EDM as a whole but for the music in this game seemed rather generic. The minor varity of it is still a plus regardless. It also doesn't add anything important to the good atmosphere of this game. Furthermore the sound effects also don't stand out in any way but like the music, still get the job done.

So while the Soundtrack and the sound effects are the worst part of the game, they're still good enough to not consider they're out of place. Its just that the game is excelling due to the phenomenal freeform-speedrun gameplay and overall great art design that any other factor pales in comparision.

While not perfect, its obvious that 5BitsGames really cared about making this game "just right" without overblowing it with features or making it too short. In terms of lengh, one playthrough is about 2 times as long as completing Portal 1. And like Portal 1 this game allows you to think outside the box without being too condecensing if you don't and as a result it becomes expecially rewarding to play it on your own device, without any guide. Seeing that you finished one level in just under an hour in your first playthrough yet only mere minutes after the second one feels extremly good.

This game is a great example on the beauty of choice and out-of-the-box thinking right here. And this is something similar puzzle games like Portal 1 and even 2 could ever give to you.

Mentos as a occasional snack or Peppermint Tea (I recommend Earl Grey, but tastes vary) if you prefer a drink instead

Gameplay lengh: 7 hours to finish the 120 main quests but otherwise as long as you want - It doesn't have a story, or even any purpose other than to rack up points during late game. It's much more of an arcade focused game akin to very early 90's arcade games of this kind.
Required skill level: medium
SPECIAL WARNING: As already shown in the screenshots on the storepage this game includes Spiders and a lot of them in various sizes and shapes and from there it even get worse. You should refrain from playing this game if you suffer from arachnophobia.

There we have it, the amazing game Crimsonland. I still remember this game as a Freeware title in 2001 before it turned into shareware. And wow, the game inproved massively over the course of 13 years. This game was inspired by the, back then, famous game "Phobia II" in 1998, which in turn is very similar to the game Threat in 1995 and Smash TV in 1990, but Crimsonland made this subgenre of frantic top down shooting popular and very well deserved so. Unfortunatly I forgot about it after 2007 and thought it would never see the light of day again. Until recently...

So what is it all about? It's really simple to explain. You are a Manly Space Marine with the important mission to kill various types of Aliens, Zombies and Bugs. It sounds like childish fun on paper and thats exactly what it is. It's called Crimsonland because you basically paint the ground blood-red from pulverizing anything that shows up on screen. That basically sums up everything you need to know.

The core gameplay for this game is very simple. You control a soldier from a very retro-esque top down perspective via the WASD layout and aim and shoot monsters for score. Sometimes, monsters drop power-ups, which you can choose to pick up, or not as you need to conserve them while they're on the ground in order to get the fullest potential out of any of them. Having a strategy on how to progress properly is essential in this game so besides blasting Aliens it requires some forsight and mental preperation of things to come. Often your chances of survival your way to the power-up itself so you can pick it up isn't even big as the ever coming monster waves keep you occupied otherwise.

Two of the basic main game modes are a Quest mode, which provides the Player with a set of "Missions" where the term only is used in the loosest of senses as the only thing you have to do in each mission is to kill a specific set of monsters until the bar of the upper side of the screen is filled out. It gets interesting however if you like to survive the round without taking a hit since the game at least acknowledges it so you can honor your skills with this game.

Being good at Crimsonland gets rewarded with a star and an achievement for survivng all normal missions and this game has some of the most difficult to get achievements I've seen yet, apart from Dustforce. As it requires a lot of partience to be rewarding, only the most hardcore of players may ever see one of the more difficult to get achievements. By completing missions you can unlock new Weapons, perks and Game Modes.

The other mode is something that gets unlocked during the first few missions and that is the Survival Mode. Survival mode is the Flesh and Bones of this entire game as this is the game mode where you can get level ups to attain the perks you previously unlocked in the Quest Mode. There is a very well structured On-Line Scoreboard so if you feel competitive you can always try to reach the Top 100.

To get straight to the point the graphics feel a little bit dated but I do believe that in this case it seem appropriate given the age of the game of it and how fluid the gameplay is. In terms of art direction I say that it all feels very pleasant to the eyes, as you can already tell from the pictures on the Steamstore for this game.

In terms of sound effects this game feels a little bit lackluster and is the worst thing this game has to offer regarding everything else Crimsonland as to offer. Shooting your guns doesn't feel as strong as it should in my opinion and even launching a nuke doesn't feel as good as it should be. However I believe that the Music is pretty spot on given the gameplay as shooting up monsters and Metal seem to go hand in hand with carnage-themed games since Doom 1.

I believe that this game is a fine example on how gameplay throughout the simplier ages of video game design (think about Smash TV or Robotron) can still be this refreshing. Sometimes you just want to shoot some monsters and rack up points with not much else. So if you believe that it's the game for you I hereby highly recommend that you should pick it up even if it isn't on a sale right now, as this is one of the genres finest.

The hottest Chili that you can find in order to fire yourself up for the madness that is this game.