Never before have I played a so called bullet hell shoot em up. All I knew from shoot em ups are the ones like 1942 and co from the 80s. I bought Crimzon Clover because of the many good and very good reviews of the game and I really don't regret it. Being a newbie to the genre I first tried the lowest level of the game and after a short while I really thought that the devs (and prople who play such games) must be crazy because I could not really see the screen anymore - two much bullets and explosions. Then I realized that the dangerous bullets have a brighter colour and are pretty slow and all those explosions and stars around me are a sort of distraction. So I started to focus and started to use my second and third fire button and slowly I gout used to the game . Yes, the game has a normal firemode and two special fire modes: one for locking on targets and another one which can only be used if you have collected enough stars to fill a special bar. Depending on how high this bar is filled you can either drop a sort of smart bomb, get super fire or even crazy mega super fire (at that momet I though the whole screen exploded at once). The game is pure fun, crazy like hell and the soundtrack is great. The game also gives the possibility to use your widescreen Monitor turned 90degrees so you really can fly vertical. I tried it and it felt like ... well - it's hard to describe. But this game has more to offer than pure fun. Of course the main goal in such a game would not be to finish it but to get highscores. In order to learn from your mistakes or just because you want it you have the possibility to record your gameplay AND save it. After that you can play or fast forward it in two steps. Since there is so much going on on the screen this could be the only way for you to see what it was that you blasted in 1000 pieces ;) There is however a big downside to this game. Once you have startet it's a time killer and it's really addictive. Buy it right now.
I really love this game. Its mechanism (you can magnetize objects pos. or neg. shown in different colours) is quite easy but the puzzles sometimes are very hard especially at the end of the game. It takes some time to manage it and to complete the game but it is very much fun because you'll try so many different things and you will probably fail repeatedly. So it is quite an achievement if you finally manage one of the harder puzzles and realizes how simple the solution really is. My thinking often was TOO complicated and the things I tried were quite extreme but the fun in the game is that you CAN try them. Sometimes there are multiple solutions to a riddle which makes the game even more fun. People often compare this to Portal or Portal 2 and a little bit it feels the same way. Magnetism however is a thing we all know from reality and Portals are not - so there was a difference in the feel of the game for me. The story of the game however is set in the far future and changes later in the game quite a bit so it gets more and more unrealistic and I have to say that the story is not good and not well written at all. It feels like bits and pieces put together. Because of the fact that there are dangers involved later in the game (and you only have you non deadly mag gun) influences the puzzles in the game. There are now time specific action sequences in which you can die - I really hated those and they did not really fit into the game so far. Controls are easy to use and rebindable but remember that you have to edit a ini file if you want to rebind your mouse buttons. If you want to play a really good puzzle game with an easy to use mechanic but with different (but always logical) puzzles and a quite unusual setting then this is your game. Please don't buy this game because you are so interested in the story because this is the weakest part of the game. It is a great puzzler and the devs were really good in using the mechanics to create quite challenging puzzles.
