Nation Red

 
Developer: DiezelPower
Steam Release: Aug 2009
Hours Played: 4.9
Similar To: Crimsonland / Critical Annihilation / It Came From Outer Space... / Tesla Vs Lovecraft
Rating: 3/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY

Like winning titles Assault Android Cactus and Crimsonland, Nation Red is an arena-style top-down shooter that surrounds you with enemies and demands you shoot your way out of trouble. Unlike those two greats, you have just one enemy type here; yep...  it's zombies! Taking the role of one of four types of soldier from the military, your job is simple and straightforward - kill as many of the little buggers as possible before they inevitably swamp and overwhelm you in sheer numbers. Unless you elect to play one of the 18 missions, you're going to be in a last-as-long-as-you-can survival mode where amassing the greatest score (or time) is the order of the day. In the same mould as Crimsonland you can equip only one weapon but have infinite ammo and a regular slew of weapons that lie on the ground waiting to be picked up. 

BALANCE & PACE

Additional power-ups such as mines, health packs, sentry turrets, explosives and rage-boosts as well as grenades for later use are also strewn about the place. With perks to choose from as you ding through levels your wollow in the bloodbath is all the more satisfying. There are four modes: Free Play, Barricade, Survival and Missions, along with five difficulties. Free Play gives you the choice of four arenas but they're essentially four skins of the same battleground. Barricade gives eight different locations that play out slightly differently and throw in the added extra of sentries or guards to help you out. Survival has the same location but gives you the choice of starting weapon and records best-time rather than score. All play out in a similar vein except the Mission mode which are levels that end after x amount of zombies have been killed.  

PRESENTATION & DESIGN

Although the gameplay may not be quite as rich and varied, you could say Nation Red's graphics is an upgrade or one step up in quality from Crimsonland (not that this in any way makes it a better game). More of a steep isometric view than top-down, character models are well fleshed out and the environments are clear and crisp. Your own character is well animated and blood splatters everywhere and fills the ground nicely as more and more zombies hit the deck. The HUD in-game is both unobtrusive and stylishly designed with the numbers displayed in clearly visible fonts while the user-interface at the menu screens are likewise very well presented. DezielPower definitely deserves much praise in this area.
 

PROGRESS SYSTEM

Although Nation Red's progress system is slightly complicated at first, and a tad flawed, it makes sense once you've got a handle on it and actually packs in a lot of content to keep the nerds happy. First off, you can head to the leaderboards to view your high-score and world rank in each of the disciplines of Free Play, Barricade and Survival. This is all well and good until you realise that despite having eight locations to fight in, Barricade mode only displays one high-score and rank for all. Why a high-score for each isn't included is hard to understand. Nevertheless, DezielPower makes up for this by throwing in 145 achievements that you can view in-game, along with an achievement ranking system so you can see how you compare with others worldwide. You get a Total Kills rank as well. (I'm in 94285th place!)    

CONCLUSION

With useful stats shown at the end of each battle there's nothing to stop real geeks writing records down but an extra feature that such individuals will appreciate is the practice mode found under the Free Play option. Here, customization is limitless. As well as tweaking settings such as enemy strength, numbers, damage and speed, the primary purpose of practice mode is to try out any one of the 24 available weapons. So you could have a quick session blasting away at 250 enemies with an AK47 and then see how it compares to fighting with an uzi, glock, beretta, an AA-12 or even a crowbar! But why anyone would pick a melee weapon over a gun in battle is beyond me. Still, a bit of customization can counterbalance the slightly repetitive nature of the gameplay and there's always fun to be had here, if for only a short blast!