Crimson Alliance, recently released on XBLA, is available for download on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The latest dungeon crawler from Certain Affinity features wizards, assassins, and a big bad mercenary, as well as some interesting art on the cut scenes.
At first the game starts out with some storyline and then BOOM! right into some T&A action. (This game is rated T for Teen by the way) Anyways, back to the game. As the game starts you have to choose from three different characters, a wizard, an assassin, or a mercenary. From there you can change the buy cheap cialis color of the class and also use different combinations of weapons and other equipment. There are plenty of items to pick up along the way as you travel through the many dungeons in this game, and these items do give you a significant advantage over your enemies especially in single player.
One way you can take advantage of these items is to combine them to create a killing machine. You can do this by setting some bait in front of a turret or your strongest player, if you’re playing in a group. Either way you choose means bad news for the enemy. Another way to use items to your advantage is to save your throwing axes for stronger enemies.
There is a certain kind of ranking system to this game that shows you how many of the secret locations you have found and how long it has taken to complete the map. It reminded me of the old ‘Lord of the Rings’ movie games because they use a similar style in terms of the level progression. As you start to grow your character the game itself increases in difficulty and starts to become more challenging, especially in single player.
With the three different classes you have the assassin, wizard, and mercenary. The wizard was my favorite character to use, mostly because of the effectiveness of attacking multiple enemies at once with lightning bolts and freezing enemies as well. It’s really easy to build up a strategy of freezing and shocking the life out of your enemies.
Playing as the assassin and mercenary was fun as well. The mercenary is like a human wrecking ball running through opponents leaving a path of destruction. The assassin is very quick, and well, very assassin like, although fairly weak. All three characters work extremely well in a team situation, but in a single player match creates lots of challenge and repetitiveness.
One thing I would like to mention is the single player campaign is very boring. Sure, there is some witty dialogue and some T&A in the cutscenes, but that doesn’t change the fact that I felt bored and pretty much forced myself through the game. Multiplayer on the other hand, felt like I would be getting a different experience each time. The combination of different characters being used and the fact everyone has a different play style, whether its sit back and attack or charging the gates, you were able to play the way you wanted.
This is a great game to pick up and play with friends, so if you’re playing with a couple of people this game will be very fun. Teaming up to take on groups of orcs and other beasts leaves plenty of room for lots of team killing, but if you’re trying to enjoy a solid single player game you’re better off looking somewhere else. This game quickly goes from running combos to just button mashing and it turns into a hack and slash style game which isn’t just a little over done.
Gameplay – 3/5: Fun multiplayer to be had with this title, the game itself isn’t much more fun when you drop into the single player.
Graphics/Audio – 3/5: The artwork looks really cool, however the voice acting is pretty lame.
Value – 2.5/5: If you don’t have any intention of playing on Xbox Live, save your money as there isn’t much replay value on solo mode.
Overall – 2.7/5: This is a very simple game. If you like to kill stuff occasionally with friends then you’re getting your money’s worth, but if you happen to be looking for something more than an action dungeon crawler there are other options out there for you. The best part was the T&A.
