Crimson Alliance Previews, Footage and Interview

We’ve had the first change to take a look at Certain Affinity’s XBLA hack’n’slash, Crimson Alliance, at the latest E3, and for all of you who are interested in the title, we have some more coverage to report on.

First, Game-Insider has some hands-on impressions to share:

Featuring 3 player co-op, Crimson Alliance offers a cool feature called cooperative combos. These lend a stronger sense of team tactics than many other co-op RPG’s. These let players use individual attacks in tandem with another class to perform a combined attack that is stronger than either of the individual ones. In our demo the wizard had a cool freeze attack at which point I used a bash attack of mine that usually just knocked opponents backwards. Because the enemies were frozen when I hit them, the ice caused them to go sliding across the screen and shatter once they hit a wall.

Another little caveat that keeps the game feeling distinguished from other downloadable action RPG’s is exploding barrels. No, they aren’t new to games at all, but there are more in Crimson Alliance than in most hack and slash games, and with good reason. They act more as environmental dynamite in this game. When you slice or blast them the fuses ignite. From there players can implore two strategies to use them most effectively stand near the barrel and block until enemies swarm around you, light it and use your dash/dodge move to get the hell out of dodge before the big (KABLOOWIE!) or you can light them, pick them up and throw them into a crowd or boss for maximum damage from a safe distance. There are poison dispensing barrels as well. users beware (I nearly killed myself a number of times with these during the demo).

Then OMGN:

Playing as a mercenary, the fighting was pretty solid. There were a variety of moves available to me from vertical and horizontal strikes, as well as special moves for those “oh shit!” moments when you’re not sure if you can survive the pressing horde. Gold was shared between my partner and me, thus allowing us the luxury of not having to compete against each other for resources. There are also hidden power ups for each class within the levels, granting us enhanced abilities to make the trek that much easier.

Finally, Neoseeker offers a video developer walkthrough, and RPGamer offers a video interview with Certain Affinity’s producer Tom Potter.