Crimson Tears

Written by Chris Reiter  on August 12, 2004

Full Review: Sometimes the rest of your body cries too.

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Beat 'em up. BEAT 'EM UP! Beat who up? 'EM! Short for "them," the sprawling, brawling, beat-'em-up genre has a focused task for kicking ass. No matter the enemy, no matter who or what your character is, it's you and 'em, and then just you and you alone. From popular classics Double Dragons and Battle Toads, to today's slew of unimpressively forgettable titles (namely in the Batman and all-new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games), the type of content beat-'em-ups offer has apparently grown stale over the years. They were once a big thing for arcade-goers. Arcades today just aren't the same anymore. 3D iterations of these once side-scrolling greats assemble minor percentages of popularity few and far between the more respectable games available today. Let's face it: the button mashing process isn't as inspiring as it once was long ago. Despite this notion, it doesn't keep some companies from trying to dress and impress.

There is a disturbance in the force. A mystery clouding the evidence to what's caused the city of Tokyo in the year 2049 to become one of shambles, clues in a team of three humanoids, or Mutanoids (super humans born of science), to traverse the dimensional gates inside of A.R.M.A. where the trio was created. Harmful biological weapons, however, are now running amok within these walls. It'll be your task as Amber, Kadie, and Tokio to dig deeper into the facility and to put a stop to whoever's causing this unwanted mess.

Renovation of innovation isn't something seen in Crimson Tears' space. Rather, this is a knockaround guys game that establishes standard concepts in an engine that does what it can to be fairly enjoyable. Basic and simple, Capcom throws at you three different characters in a futuristic city. The city is a hub of sorts that utilizes as your preparation window for facing the real gameplay. Within this city location is a garage where your team is staffed. And in this garage comes three rooms: one for choosing team members, another for storing extra items (you can only carry 24 in your gameplay menu at a time, which regulates dissapointment in that you'll end up dropping many items during the course of missions), and the last is where you'll be able to save your game, upgrade skills, and begin operations by stepping onto the glowing vortex in the center of the room. Of the three characters in the game there's Tokio the tough muscle man of the team, Amber the strongly willed and flexible vixen, and Kadie the fun and energetic blonde. Each of these three humanoids is playable from the outset. Although it doesn't really matter much which of the three you'll have your choice of before you set out to complete a level, there are differences between them. These differences being related mainly to the weapon brands pertaining to all three. Most of the weapons you'll either purchase or pick up along the way is enabled to equip for Tokio, Amber, and Kadie. As a gun expert, only Tokio can wield certain guns, and only Kadie can use claws and the buster sword for instance.

In playing Crimson Tears though, you have the hub and then you have a maze of linked rooms and corridors spread across dividing floors. On each of these levels, the goal is to find a specific enemy who carries the access card to the singular teleporter you'll also have to track down throughout these dungeon walls. Your one and only selectable character per use will encounter multiple assailants that'll beat you up along the way -- unless you learn to become a better beater than they'll ever be. With Crimson Tears' particular combat style, performing two button combos are essentially all you've got. Against cyber ninjas, guards with guns, bullet pumping robots, large tiger creatures, and plenty more, you can engage the enemy by pressing the melee attack buttons (square and X) for upper and lower fighting positions (and circle for distance tactics), or the attack buttons simultaneously to create offensive combinations. This can be done all by hand...or with various tools you'll no doubt acquire as you'll build up character strengths. Knives, blades, swords, claws, guns, gloves, and grenades will find their way into your characters' pockets by defeating the opposition (sometimes, where most of the time they'll drop standard items; money, health and coolant pickups, and upgrade parts) or by purchasing them from the shopkeepers located right inside the town's central district. To reiterate: inviting weapons into battle accentuate the characters' attributes because not only is Crimson Tears a brawler with weapons, it's also one with RPG statistics.

When you're not outside the enemy chambers, you're inside of them sparring off against evil. Eliminating foes gets you experience every time one is defeated. Ranking up more points spruces your character's levels higher for boss battles (waiting at the end of every round of levels) and also for weapons too. The stronger the weapons become, the stronger your attacks will be. Other than just leveling up, it's also possible to manually broaden the abilities in items and your characters' stats. Obtaining combo and special move pieces will allow for you to upgrade these personable aspects inside the garage's computer station. Sucking up an assemblage of parts from fallen enemies can also give you the chance to reenter the town later on and visit the knife vendor where the owner is able to combine specialty parts through tacking them into any available weapon's properties. Attacks can be risen, but so can each device's abilities. Fire, water, electricity, and other such elements can be written into the DNA code of the weapons you own -- so long as you have the parts needed. Inside this town also exists a gun and item shop, where you can fill up on necessities. There are guns and ammo at the gunner's store and stuff like health, coolant, and statistical refreshments for you to use. Coolant is actually a cooling agent that settles the MT gauge's power pressures when their kettle boils too high. The more your inhuman humanoid attacks, the more their body will steam -- ultimately leading to the point where they'll dash around quickly, attack fiercely, but their health will soon decrease to a dangerous level. You don't want an enemy confronting you then.

Let it be known that Crimson Tears isn't an easy game or a hard one. It's smack dab in the middle where it ought to be. Rising higher in each stage you'll encounter, the difficulty climbs up a notch past opposers and perils. These pitfalls fitted into each individual dungeon consist of booby traps like falling ceiling pieces and bombs laid around the ground. Detecting and disabling them can be easy or hard, depending upon whether you can maneuver around the enemies that stand around them and if you're able to notice them beforehand with the game's trapping camera positions. Crimson's camera will pan with you wherever you go, but it's awkward in that it'll zoom in on your character whenever he or she may be squeezed into a tight corridor or whenever an enemy or group of enemies is approached. This is also a fixed camera, which cannot be manually adjusted wherever you want it. Specifically, when the camera is placed on you, it hides much of the remaining parts you're navigating. Thus, a hidden trap or enemy may be in waiting, and you might not notice either until some life is wasted away.

Most gamers have learned to enjoy the artsy cel-shading technique that's become a useful method in many of today's games. It seems that nowadays cel-shading's style is almost as common an upgrade as 3D was to 2D. However, not enough games have proven it's the right direction to head into just yet. Capcom's newest attempt in cel-shadng is painted into Crimson Tears, in an effort that actually alters the usual standard. Instead of throwing all the game through a 3D cel-shaded window, the idea for Crimson Tears is to design the moving bodies of the game in cel while the pre-rendered levels remain inside a regular 3D engine that is without the additional cartoon layers. Crimson does retain a nice apparatus overall, but the flat qualities in those non-cel-shaded backgrounds diminish the attention of Crimson's finer points. Different levels have different themes, and these themes are extremely confined to spreading. Basically, you'll enter into a heated plant zone in one maze to find that there are only but a few types of rooms available -- some with giant blocks in the center of the room, and others with small computer objects lined up against the wall, and also gigantic rooms with lots of emptiness and a circular platform in the center of it all. Go up, down, left, or right in any level, and you'll notice plainly detailed interiors with all similar backdrops that don't extend on the imagination of what the future holds.

It is in the characters of the game where its eye candy tastes less drab. With a pleasnt anime coating, Amber, Kadie, and Tokio look kind of like they were ripped out of a cartoon. But alas, not all is well. Where the main three are what'll grab your gaze, all others don't. At least not as much. Enemies are good to the eyes; they'll vary more the farther you progress in both color patterns and identities. The townsfolk on the outside of skirmishes aren't as effective, on the other end. They're more washed out. Though this isn't too big a concern since you'll be seeing lots more of your foes. Besides architectural blueprints, the performances in your characters' animated selves hold up to speed as well. Jabbing, slicing, rolling, blocking, and twisting sorts of movements create some tasty flavor for when watching those who oppose doze off into deadness. Moments when bullets fly and ricochet off your sword, or grenades explode as they're tossed toward enemy groupings have closer relations to the backgrounds unfortunately, in aiming for petite and bland fabrications.

You know how some games have those awesome introduction movies with musical scores that perfectly fit the action happening on the screen, and just sound fantastic? Crimson Tears is one of them. It sucks though that the rest of the game's sound database doesn't match this catchy rhtym. Where the foremost song stays a model for beauty in an orchestrated techno beat, the in-game music is played in techno albeit doesn't reach a climax in that same level of perfection. Instead it's just filler material for which may go along with the game, yet won't have your attention drawn for long. Adequately sub par, the sound system for effects stretches across likened lines near the musical stuffing. When swinging your swords, or blasting your guns, or getting thrashed by the enemy, the pitch of everything is very arcade-like. This frame of reference continues into Crimson's voiced portions. Oddly, enemy guards will continue to repeat outdated phrases like, "There they are!" and "Don't let them get away!" when there is but one person playing. Kadie, Amber, and Tokio have a few backlashed speaking lines during the game (though nothing special or memorable), but mostly talk during the game's FMV sequences. The acting's okay, and the game's story plays out like watching a real anime -- which is pretty neat.