Both these games are free through Xbox One Games with Gold until August 31st.
These are the first games I'm ryviewing for the Xbox One. It's pretty exciting.
However, I have to say I wasn't too impressed by either of these titles. As usual, it's free, so there's really no reason to not download them just in case you want to try them out at a later date. But these are definitely games that you don't want to keep to clog up your hard drive unless you're enjoying them.
Strike Suit Zero is a space combat game that I've actually played on the PC before. With a joystick, the game had some merits but I found it a little unwieldy to control. For the Xbox One, the controls are completely unmanageable. There are only a few settings, and they don't do a whole lot to switch buttons around, it mostly switching control sticks. 3 of the 4 schemes were unplayable for me, and the other one was barely passable.
As for the game itself, I enjoy flight sim games, especially combat based ones, so this really excited me a first. But the tedious battles and level structure do nothing to keep the player engaged. Now, I didn't get very deep into the game because the controls were causing me to throw my controller down (onto a cushioned couch, but it's the gesture that matters). But the portion I could stand to play was bland and boring. Each fight lasted far longer than I wanted it to, and the limited arsenal variety didn't help.
The transforming function was a nice touch, but it didn't fix my control problems. The game was still basically just me yelling at my television while angrily switching between control schemes to find one I liked (spoiler: I didn't find one that I liked). This is precisely why I want a system on Xbox games like PC games, where you have full mapping support for the controller. It would make something like this largely unavoidable, and it would mean I wouldn't necessarily accidentally accelerate every time I mean to nose down or fire a blaster.
Okay, now what's the "DO" button?
Crimson Dragon has altogether different control problems. It's a rail shooter (making me wish I could have had the opportunity to play it on the Wii U) where you're flying a dragon along a fixed course while firing at bad guys. The actual firing and aiming controls were fine, that worked well and you could easily hit things when they were in your field of vision.
However, the system through which you find enemies was intensely frustrating. Since you're on a track, you're not controlling your own movement, but you have limited looking and moving capabilities along that track, so you're expected to look around and behind you to find enemies, but frequently when I tried to do this I'd turn in an unexpected direction and completely move away from the enemies I thought were about to enter my range of fire. And not only that, but there are obstacles to avoid and pickups to collect, but since you don't know where the dragon is flying, you don't really know which direction to press to collect or dodge anything. It's the stupidest mechanic I've seen in a long time.
The dragon looks so good the player won't even care about the level design!
Plus, the levels were all very repetitive. Crimson Dragon did not force me to stop playing because of its poor controls like Strike Suit Zero did, but I still couldn't get through much of the game because each level felt like a carbon copy of the last one with a new skin. The out of level content was confusing and uninspiring. the leveling mechanic seemed to have no bearing on my dragon or his skill in gameplay, and the actually shooting did little to make me coming back long enough to level up any meaningful amount.
Both games are pretty, and both games are obviously still free, but in my opinion, they're more headache than they're worth. Do yourself a favor, and stick to your 360 this month.
And under no circumstances do I recommend paying for these games.
Scorecards:
Strike Suit Zero
Category
|
Score
|
Time Value
|
2
|
Money Value
|
10
|
Originality
|
8
|
Ryplayability
|
1
|
Fulfillment
|
3
|
Final Score
|
4.8
|
Crimson Dragon
Category
|
Score
|
Time Value
|
3
|
Money Value
|
10
|
Originality
|
6
|
Ryplayability
|
3
|
Fulfillment
|
4
|
Final Score
|
5.2
|
Let me know what you think of Strike Suit Zero and Crimson Dragon!
Until next time,
Ryan
Images courtesy of Wikipedia unless otherwise noted
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