"A nice alternative to most lightgun games"

First of all, let me tell you Im no lightgun expert (I've played HOTD2 and Virtua Cop 2 on the DreamCast,only) and Im judging this game for what it is, not for its release date or anything else.
And finally, english IS NOT my native language, so I apologize for the possible orthographic and grammatical errors.
Now,onto the review.

Introduction
Tired of blasting zombies in HOTD? Or terrorists in virtua cop 2 and confidential mission?
Then,you may want to take a look at this game.

Story
Well, story its not very important for a lightgun game, I dont know much about it, you control a guy (well, he looks like a girl but SOUNDS like a guy) named Kou Yanami and a girl named Yuri (I forgot her last name), you're supposed to possess a powerful legendary gun called ''Crimson''. There's this guy named Admiral Zaza (who looks kinda like a bad guy from Power Rangers) who kidnaps Yuri's mother, and obviously, you have to save her, but Zaza has a whole army of subliminers (keep reading) to make things harder for you, of course, you're ready to blast them all using your crimson :)
Not so interesting... even so, it has some jap touch in it, like the whole game.

GamePlay
DeathCrimson OX is a lightgun game like no other.
Theres a bunch of diferent enemies, unlike the repetitive zombies and terrorist from HOTD, Virtua Cop 2 and Confidential Mission.

Your enemies (the subliminers) consist mostly of cool hand-cannon, sword and scythe wielding robots (or at least they LOOK like robots). There are other enemies with a more humanoid look, they attack you with guns, claws and throwing knives.
In some stages you'll face some zombies, but they're not very common, and they look different from those in HOTD, these zombies look like bald drunks O_o rather than rotten corpses.
Passing onto the odd enemies, you'll also face skeletons that attack you using kung-fu like kicks O_o
As well as floating energy spheres that attack you using thunderbolts
And finally, there are this weird arabian like assasins that wield arab swords to attack you.

Sooo ok, the enemies are kinda weird, but the robot and humanoid enemies look cool, and they're your most common type of enemy. The rest of enemies, well, you can have a fun time laughing at them, specially the kung-fu kicking skeletons.

There are a total of six stages, this range from a city to a cave or a warehouse. Each stage is full of enemies, you'll find yourself shooting constantly most of the time.

While playing trough stages, you'll constantly see some cut scenes, like of HOTD, the difference is that your character is visible, and there are no voices, just dialogue. The dialogue speed is very fast, but anyhow, I dont think you'll bother reading it.

Altough you'll find ''hostages'' in some stages of the game, unlike other lightgun games, its not neccesary to save them, as they wont give you any powerups or extrapoints for saving them. Instead, ocasionally during the stages, groups of small enemies (butterflies and racoons) will appear for a brief time, during this time, there wont be any other enemies on screen, so you must concentrate on taking down most of these small enemies before they escape, if you do so, you get a extralife.
Also, each time you shoot enemies you get Exp Points, you can see how much you have in a bar located on the top right part of the screen, when the barr gets full, you get a extra-life bonus.

There's only one power-up I know off, the machine-gun, take it and then hold down the trigger and release it for a machine-gun effect. The machine gun items are accumulable, even if you pass to another stage, altough, if you die, say good bye to your machine gun.

Most enemies (besides bosses) dont have weak points, so forget about head-shots.

Finally you begin the game with 8 bullets instead of the 5 bullets of HOTD.

Overall, the gameplay in Death Crimson OX is one to shoot a lot and think less, and theres a lot of variety in enemies.

Graphics
I dont know why people complain about the graphics, I mean, they arent impressive, but they're not that bad.
The enemies look fine, as well as the bosses.
The stages are diverse and look good to.
I dont find anything wrong here.

Music and Sound
I dont know too much about music, but most of the BGMs are good enough for a fast-paced lightgun game like this.
The sound is very good too. Ranging from the metallic sound of your bullets hitting the armored subliminers, to the ''bang'' of your bullets and some cries of the enemies when they attack you or you kill them.
The only thing I find annoying about the sound is Kou's annoying ''kono re'' scream everytime he gets hit. Fortunately, this can be solved by switching your gun to port 2 so you play as Yuri, her screams arent as annoying or noticeable as Kou's

Replay Value
Well...
There are 6 different game-modes :
Story mode, where you go across the 6 stages to beat the game.
Mission mode, where you can choose freely any of the 6 stages to play it directly.
And Bullet Mode, where you can choose freely any of the 6 stages.... BUT, you must watch your bullets, because you have a certain limit.

Story Mode and Mission Mode are fine, and you may want to play again trough them at harder dificulties to test your skills or just for fun, but dont expect to unlock new modes, because there arent any.

Bullet Mode is challenging, but again, dont expect to unlock anything.

Overall, if you like it, you may replay it a few times just for fun or to take a rest from other lightgun games.

Rent or buy?
Overall, Death Crimson OX is a DIFFERENT lightgun game, you may want to borrow it from a friend or rent it (if you can find it) to make sure you would like it. Another reason to borrow or rent it first would be to test your lightgun, yes, because thats one of the biggest flaws in DeathCrimson OX, it seems like the game doesnt support some lightguns properly. I have a MadCatz lightgun and generally, I have to reset and change ports one or two times to get the gun to work properly, also, auto-charge and rapid fire modes wont work, just the normal mode. Pretty weird.
Anyhow, if you find this game at a cheap price, you may want to buy it, after all, there are very few lightgun games on dreamcast, right? So why dont give Death Crimson a chance?

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/19/03, Updated 01/19/03