I got my hands on an upcoming Xbox Live Arcade release today for about half an hour before zipping off to the next game here at the Penny Arcade Expo. Crimson Alliance is the game you'll get for free if you purchased all five of the Summer of Arcade titles. Priced at $15, that's not too bad a deal, especially considering the fact that Crimson Alliance is well worth the price.
After clearing a level in 2-player co-op and a challenge map with six waves of increasing number of enemies with three players, I felt like I just gotten done with a certain other rapid-fire multiplayer game. The developer noted that each map only took us roughly 6 minutes. I remarked that it seemed like the brevity and pacing of a Call of Duty multiplayer match. There's a reason for that.
Developer Certain Affinity has done work on a number of multiplayer maps for the biggest multiplayer shooters on the market. Their handiwork includes Halo: Reach, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and the upcoming Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. That's quite the pedigree! Crimson Alliance is an Action RPG with a heavy emphasis on action, and the same brevity and pace in those juggernauts of online mutliplayer is present in the game's co-operative hacking and slashing.
Look out for GameRevolution's full preview of Crimson Alliance and our review as we near the game's XBLA release.
