Crimson Dragon Makes its Return - Preview
by Karl Koebke , posted on 17 June 2013 / 3,229 Views
The demo I played for Crimson Dragon was a short little lava level right before the E3 showfloor closed up for the year. It felt right to fly around the screen on a dragon as I locked on to enemies before firing a fusillade of plasma rays. My only other available weapon was a short range electricity attack but it proved useful when bosses started to get too close.
My goal seemed to be to take out a white dragon who had escaped to the inside of a volcano. After a few minutes of dodging rock outcroppings and killing weaker enemies I came upon a long dragon-like creature that swam in and out of the lava and thus out of range of my attacks. The fireballs he shot were easily avoided, and when he got close my secondary weapon worked like a charm so it was pretty easily manageable.
As I traveled through the level I was able to collect jewels that increased my score but as far as I could tell they didn't serve any other purpose. My dragon's movement had quite a bit of momentum to it so these jewels were tough to maneuver for, but they were a fun distraction when no enemies happened to be on screen.
Finally I caught up to the white dragon that was my initial target. He had several orbs floating around him and seemed to fire the same type of projectiles that I did so I wonder if it's the same type of dragon. After a short fight my target started to fall to the lava but was swallowed by a massive dragon before he hit, and thus the demo ended.
It really is that classic Panzer Dragoon type gameplay that many people have been looking forward to for a while now, so I have to commend Microsoft for getting it on the Xbox One. This was also the only chance I got to play around with the controller and I liked the general feel of it even if it's a bit big for my hands. Even with all the other things surrounding Microsoft's next console it's hard to deny that it's got some great gaming coming. Look for more on Crimson Dragon as it gets closer to release, whenever that is.
