Tetsuo_Shima
In Cryo Sleep
Well here it is, the review you havent been waiting for at all whatsoever! It's Chromehounds 8)
A little bit of background information as always. It has been developed by FROM Software/FROM Networks, who are the people who previously released Armoured Core. The game is published by Sega and is available at all good videogame stores
But anyway...
Chromehounds is a game about mechs, mechs and mechs. So if you dont like mechs, you wont like Chromehounds. Me being new-ish to the whole mech genre, I cant really compare it to games like MechAssault or MechWarrior. Ill try my best to give a nice independent opinion.
Ok, the background of the story is (in that age-old Japanese apocalyptic anti-western superpower mould) that in the 1980s, instead of the earth being bombarded by synthi-pop music, it is in fact bombarded by violent solar flares which have made flight impossible and have somehow warranted the creation of ground-based theatrical mechanical monsters called Chromehounds. Chromehounds are basically just customiseable mechs that are extremely powerful and a lot of fun to control. The Chromehounds are squared off against each other by three opposing factions. Tarakia, Morskoj and Sal-Kar. Tarakia being a European-American alliance, Morskoj being a seperatist state from the Soviet Union and Sal-Kar being a Middle-Eastern coalition somewhat. All that is pretty irrelevant since the Chromehounds and tanks you face are basically all the same anyway.
Gameplay, single player. Basically, its all samey. The maps are all identical, the enemies are all the same no matter who you face, it takes ages to cross the map, the missions are short, the Hound classes dont actually seem to be individual to each mission. But I loved it. Dont ask me why, I just do.
Everyone on every other board and review site thinks SP is cack, even the ones that like the game. Me? I cant get enough. Nothing beats blowing up oil refinerys in a big spectacular flame, or pumping a salvo of rockets into a civilian town. Spraying lines of enemy tanks with minigun fire, or ramming a cannon shell into a Hounds broadside holds some kind of manical, power hungry violent joy that can only be experienced in this game. Ill put up my hands right now and admit the badly-translated (or written) story holds no relevance whatsoever, and all the in game characters are wooden. But once you get into the combat and spray your leaden goodness in all directions, the fun takes over.
Ok, now Ill actually explain the single player You get 6 classes of Hounds. These consist of Soldier (frontline soldier with shotguns and rockets), Sniper (hide behind buildings and pop you with sniper cannon fire), Scout (recon-type job with low armour and 'high' speed), Defender (slow moving, heavily armoured hulks for protecting stuff, but not assaulting), Heavy Gunner (artillery-esque role with massive cannons and big nasty explosions) and finally Tactics Commander (looks at an overview map and communicates enemy positions to friendly units in radar range). These six classes are each allocated ~6 missions (cant remember specifically right now) including one training mission. The training missions are all in the same desert and in the same format but showing you each type of hound. The gameplay missions take place in the battle between each of the three warring factions. Each mission will probably take you two or three tries, and each one lasts for only about fifteen minutes each (if that), but I find it quite a good experience actually. It means plenty of variety and satisfaction.
The missions themselves try to be specific to the role-type that you are playing (e.g. Sniping missions ask you to take out faraway enemy units, or defending a base from an elevated position) but Ive discovered that most of them you could complete with any of the hounds. For example, one scout mission requires you to rush into a base, destroy it, and then run. That's all well and good for the fast-paced scout, but you can easily do it by pummeling the base with Heavy Gunner artillery fire. In some ways that's more fun because you have that 'I just got one over on the developers' feeling, but a bit more differentiation for the campaign wouldnt have gone amiss.
After completeing the missions, you can try and attain an 'S' rank on each, which is really quite easy (Ive done it myself already). Apart from a gamerpoint boost, it also provides you with more gear to plonk on your Hound, so its a fairly rewarding conquest. After collecting all the various bits of junk you can crack on your Hound, its time to take it to the REAL battlefield ... online! Sadly, I havent been abke to connect yet (they are doing some kinf of maintenance on the server) but from what Ive heard, its supposed to be a great experience.
The most integral mode is participation in the 'Neroimus Wars'. This is basically a large-scale conflict where you pick a side and try and defeat the others entirely. Kind of like the CnC world domination campaign, but a bit more in depth. This time, your faction is viewed as a whole, and there is a lot of internal interaction. For example, when you earn credits, they arent rewarded to yourself explicitly, they are forwarded to a 'faction bank' of sorts that the faction commander (elected by all members of the faction) can dish out to his troops. Quite a neat idea. Obviously, the more money you get the more parts you can buy and the better the chance of winning, so teamplay is important.
There is also quite a focus on the commanding aspect in multiplayer, where a team commander is an almost necessary asset in each battle. He can pinpoint enemy locations and communicate orders to each of your squad to try and tactically overcome the opposition. It also pays to have various different types of Hound in your squad, because if you try and launch a 'Defender' all-out power offensive the enemy ill just snipe you off. So, theres much scope for tactical play as well as going crazy with a rocket launcher.
Just realised I forgot to mention graphics and sound The graphics are fairly basic for the 360, but on the plus side it runs quite smoothly. There are a few neat touches, like the weapon cam going static-y when you get attacked with rockets, and the smoke and fire effects when you blow up other hounds. The maps are pretty good, with plenty of trees and buildings to blow up. The weather effects are quite good as well, with the rain and snow landing on your weapon cam and all that. The sound is quite good, especially in gun battles, or when large explosions go off. I wish it had a bit more of a bass kick though.
Overall, Id give the game 7.5/10. Fairly fun (albeit short) single player and great multiplayer combine to give a pretty decent tactical game. I would say that the game will probably only properly appeal to a niche of gamers (i.e. Japanese mech freaks), but give it a chance and its good fun. I saw one post on a board the other day that kind of sums it all up for me. It was one retarded 15-year old twat posting amongst a midst of complicated and intellectual gamers, but the retarded post somehow held the most meaning for me, and was most relevant to the game experience: 'This game is so awesome its like a sim but I can put guns on my guns!!'
A little bit of background information as always. It has been developed by FROM Software/FROM Networks, who are the people who previously released Armoured Core. The game is published by Sega and is available at all good videogame stores
But anyway...Chromehounds is a game about mechs, mechs and mechs. So if you dont like mechs, you wont like Chromehounds. Me being new-ish to the whole mech genre, I cant really compare it to games like MechAssault or MechWarrior. Ill try my best to give a nice independent opinion.
Ok, the background of the story is (in that age-old Japanese apocalyptic anti-western superpower mould) that in the 1980s, instead of the earth being bombarded by synthi-pop music, it is in fact bombarded by violent solar flares which have made flight impossible and have somehow warranted the creation of ground-based theatrical mechanical monsters called Chromehounds. Chromehounds are basically just customiseable mechs that are extremely powerful and a lot of fun to control. The Chromehounds are squared off against each other by three opposing factions. Tarakia, Morskoj and Sal-Kar. Tarakia being a European-American alliance, Morskoj being a seperatist state from the Soviet Union and Sal-Kar being a Middle-Eastern coalition somewhat. All that is pretty irrelevant since the Chromehounds and tanks you face are basically all the same anyway.
Gameplay, single player. Basically, its all samey. The maps are all identical, the enemies are all the same no matter who you face, it takes ages to cross the map, the missions are short, the Hound classes dont actually seem to be individual to each mission. But I loved it. Dont ask me why, I just do.
Everyone on every other board and review site thinks SP is cack, even the ones that like the game. Me? I cant get enough. Nothing beats blowing up oil refinerys in a big spectacular flame, or pumping a salvo of rockets into a civilian town. Spraying lines of enemy tanks with minigun fire, or ramming a cannon shell into a Hounds broadside holds some kind of manical, power hungry violent joy that can only be experienced in this game. Ill put up my hands right now and admit the badly-translated (or written) story holds no relevance whatsoever, and all the in game characters are wooden. But once you get into the combat and spray your leaden goodness in all directions, the fun takes over.
Ok, now Ill actually explain the single player
You get 6 classes of Hounds. These consist of Soldier (frontline soldier with shotguns and rockets), Sniper (hide behind buildings and pop you with sniper cannon fire), Scout (recon-type job with low armour and 'high' speed), Defender (slow moving, heavily armoured hulks for protecting stuff, but not assaulting), Heavy Gunner (artillery-esque role with massive cannons and big nasty explosions) and finally Tactics Commander (looks at an overview map and communicates enemy positions to friendly units in radar range). These six classes are each allocated ~6 missions (cant remember specifically right now) including one training mission. The training missions are all in the same desert and in the same format but showing you each type of hound. The gameplay missions take place in the battle between each of the three warring factions. Each mission will probably take you two or three tries, and each one lasts for only about fifteen minutes each (if that), but I find it quite a good experience actually. It means plenty of variety and satisfaction.The missions themselves try to be specific to the role-type that you are playing (e.g. Sniping missions ask you to take out faraway enemy units, or defending a base from an elevated position) but Ive discovered that most of them you could complete with any of the hounds. For example, one scout mission requires you to rush into a base, destroy it, and then run. That's all well and good for the fast-paced scout, but you can easily do it by pummeling the base with Heavy Gunner artillery fire. In some ways that's more fun because you have that 'I just got one over on the developers' feeling, but a bit more differentiation for the campaign wouldnt have gone amiss.
After completeing the missions, you can try and attain an 'S' rank on each, which is really quite easy (Ive done it myself already). Apart from a gamerpoint boost, it also provides you with more gear to plonk on your Hound, so its a fairly rewarding conquest. After collecting all the various bits of junk you can crack on your Hound, its time to take it to the REAL battlefield ... online! Sadly, I havent been abke to connect yet (they are doing some kinf of maintenance on the server) but from what Ive heard, its supposed to be a great experience.
The most integral mode is participation in the 'Neroimus Wars'. This is basically a large-scale conflict where you pick a side and try and defeat the others entirely. Kind of like the CnC world domination campaign, but a bit more in depth. This time, your faction is viewed as a whole, and there is a lot of internal interaction. For example, when you earn credits, they arent rewarded to yourself explicitly, they are forwarded to a 'faction bank' of sorts that the faction commander (elected by all members of the faction) can dish out to his troops. Quite a neat idea. Obviously, the more money you get the more parts you can buy and the better the chance of winning, so teamplay is important.
There is also quite a focus on the commanding aspect in multiplayer, where a team commander is an almost necessary asset in each battle. He can pinpoint enemy locations and communicate orders to each of your squad to try and tactically overcome the opposition. It also pays to have various different types of Hound in your squad, because if you try and launch a 'Defender' all-out power offensive the enemy ill just snipe you off. So, theres much scope for tactical play as well as going crazy with a rocket launcher.
Just realised I forgot to mention graphics and sound
The graphics are fairly basic for the 360, but on the plus side it runs quite smoothly. There are a few neat touches, like the weapon cam going static-y when you get attacked with rockets, and the smoke and fire effects when you blow up other hounds. The maps are pretty good, with plenty of trees and buildings to blow up. The weather effects are quite good as well, with the rain and snow landing on your weapon cam and all that. The sound is quite good, especially in gun battles, or when large explosions go off. I wish it had a bit more of a bass kick though.Overall, Id give the game 7.5/10. Fairly fun (albeit short) single player and great multiplayer combine to give a pretty decent tactical game. I would say that the game will probably only properly appeal to a niche of gamers (i.e. Japanese mech freaks), but give it a chance and its good fun. I saw one post on a board the other day that kind of sums it all up for me. It was one retarded 15-year old twat posting amongst a midst of complicated and intellectual gamers, but the retarded post somehow held the most meaning for me, and was most relevant to the game experience: 'This game is so awesome its like a sim but I can put guns on my guns!!'
