Great multi player games have been lacking for some time. Lord knows how long people have been playing GRAW, Call of Duty 2, and Battlefield 2 Modern Combat. Most people have agreed its time for something fresh and new. Well the time has come to put on some clothes, grab your wallet, and head to your local game store, as Chromehounds has hit the shelves.
Chromehounds was designed to set itself apart by being a mech simulation, while also throwing some arcade elements to spice up the game play. The game has a slower pace then other mech games on the consoles(eg. MechAssault). You won’t be moving at ramming speed, or flying around with jet packs. You move at speeds a giant robot would go at; slow.
Granted, you won’t be moving at a snails pace, unless of course you design your mech to move that slow. The great thing about Chromehounds, on top of the realism, is the mech creation and customization. Chromehounds allows you to create a mech entirely from scratch. All that you need to do is go into the garage and start to make it. Although, before you can start designing your own personalized war machine, you will need to complete some missions in the single player aspect of the game to be able to get parts.
The Lone Wolf
The mechs in Chromehounds are called “Hounds.” The back story behind Chromehounds is that instead of the Cold War subsiding like it did in our time, it in fact continued due to a few new factors thrown into history. At the end of World War 2, a military weapon corporation known as Rafzakael was created. They created various prototype weapons(such as experimental two legged tanks). Rafzakael supplied the prototypes to various groups throughout history for live action tests. Add some other elements into the mix, and this effectively changed history. These events eventually led to the creation of three new nations being formed known as Sal Kar, Tarakia, and Morskoj.
Right from the get go, when you select the single player option, you will be thrown into a very basic “Basic Training.” The training is pretty simple, as long as you listen to everything the instructor says. If you miss something, you are out of luck as he won’t say anything twice, so pay attention. If you do happen to miss something, hit the Y Button to bring up your map, and follow the colored markers in the numerical order and attempt to wing it from there. The instructor does make the training situation a pain, since if you didn’t read the review or anything about it some where else, you would not know about the map and the colored markers. Not knowing this can make the training a first bad taste to the game. Although once this short training scenario is over, you will be thrown into the single player menu.
The single player menu gives you a couple of options to choose from, including Story mode, where you play one of the games six story lines, and Free Play, where you play a mission you have already completed. There are six classes in the game, and each has its own story line, a training scenario to familiarize yourself with each of the classes, and six missions after that.
The classes are pretty varied, and well balanced. Soldier is the front line Hound which conducts attacks on the enemy. The Defender protects the other team members less capable of defending themselves. Sniper does what all snipers do, hit far away target with their rifles. Heavy Gunner is an artillery strike on legs, which is meant to attack long range targets with highly explosive rounds. Scout is a fast hound designed to give Intel on the enemy by going behind enemy lines and seeing what they are up too, while the Commander gives Intel on the enemy in your territory by using a radar dish that detects enemies. Once you choose a class to use in the single player, you will be put to work straight away.
During the single player you work for Rafzakael as a mercenary. The game takes place around the time the of the Neroimus War, which is the online aspect of the game. These missions can involve you attacking, defending, escorting, conducting recon and a few other types of objectives. While this all sounds great, the single player is horribly done.
First off, despite the name the game has very little story, if any. The story hardly ever comes into play except in about one or two missions. Its usually some drivel about how some guys are doing things and they should be stopped. Second, it is WAY too easy; enemies will go down in a few shots, while your hound can take several hundred to even get a scratch. Both of these combined make a very dull, and unexciting single player experience. Third, getting the highest ranking in a mission, which is “S”, is so easy one could cry. Players should be able to get S on a majority of the missions on a first play through a storyline.. Fourth, it is short. Really, really short.. Each mission takes about ten minutes, meaning the single player is over in around six to seven hours.
But why should you play the single player if its so bad? Well for one you get achievements for beating every one of the story campaigns, and another for getting perfect on all the missions. Also, by getting a good rank on a mission, you will unlock more parts. The higher the rank, the more parts unlocked, so it might be a good idea to go and replay some of the missions to get parts you may need.
Releasing the grease monkey within
If you subjected yourself to that thing they call a story mode, that means you have some spare parts. When you sign onto Xbox Live for the first time, Chromehounds will give you the option to choose a free Hound they are giving you, for free(did I mention its free?). They will also give you a roll of cash to spend at your hearts content. Also, when signing on live, the game gives you the option to transfer your single player parts onto live, meaning you will have extra parts right from the get-go.
When you get into the garage, you will be presented with your mech and some options, such as add, remove, change parts, add decals, shop, and a few other options. You can keep the hound the game gave you, or completely strip it down and start up new. It is really up to you to how you want your hound.
To build your hound, you will just need to add some parts. Start by adding the chassis, which are legs, treads, wheels, and other movement devices. After you have a chassis, you need to add a cockpit and a generator. After those three are on, you will need to put some weapons on that hunk of walking metal. You can also add optional support parts such as extra armor, night vision, thermal vision, and flares, Just to name a few.
Although you need to be weary of what you choose, as slapping together a hound in five seconds is a recipe for disaster. The chassis defines your speed, and how well you handle kickback and recoil. You can’t have heavy cannon on a two legged, lightweight hound, as it just won’t be able to effectively shoot. Having a really light cockpit can be good, for a hound that desires speed. Giving up weight, usually means giving up armor, which leads to you dying faster. Heavy guns means more firepower, but if you can’t handle the weight for an effective amount of guns, your going to be useless as you won’t be able to dish out any damage on minimal firearms. These situations will all come into questions when designing a new hound. You want a perfect balance of survivability, power, and speed for your hound.
Once your Hound is all done, you can further customize your hound by choosing its color and applying emblems. The game has a couple of camouflage types you can choose from. Once you select a camouflage, you can change the color of it. Do you want to blend in with the environment, just have a solid color, or do you want some Polka Dots? You can also design and slap an emblem on it. They can be pretty basic, ranging from your nations flag, to the medals you have achieved, to a user created emblem. The emblem creation system is not as detailed as the Hound garage, but it gets the job done if you want a simple, nice looking symbol to put on your hound.
The hound creation is great, as it makes what you made actually feel like it is yours. By creating a hound, you can play the game exactly how you want to. If you want to be a front lines soldier, a sniper, a heavy gunner, or anything else, you can slap it together and just play with it. This single aspect just makes the game so much more enjoyable, especially the online portion of the game. There is almost no limitation to what you can make as long as it is a sane concept.
Hunting as Pack of Hounds
Wheres the single player lacked, the multi player picks up the slack. The best part about the multi player aspect is the Neroimus War. The three countries of Sal Kar, Tarakia, and Morskoj, have all engaged in war, and you are a soldier for one of the countries. Your actions will help decide the outcome of the war. Everything you do, such as winning a battle in a region, donating money, or voting for a presidential leader all add up into making an impact on what happens during the war.
When you sign online you are flashed with all the current event news. This will range from battle updates, to suggestions for where to attack, if enemy’s are leaving a region, to any news blurps about new weapons and parts arriving. While this is great to know, there is absolutely no way to skip them, causing you to sit through about a minute of news snipits that you may not even care about.
Although, the Neroimus war is persistent and ever changing, so one day you could go to sleep as the dominant nation, and wake up and find your nation defeated and in ruins. Its really cool to see the battlefield change while you are not even there.
Now to take part in the Neroimus war, you have to make a squad, which is basically a clan. Clan options involve being able to trade parts with your clan members, making a squad emblem and camouflage, and the ability to talk to anyone that isn’t in a game at the moment. This is great because you can be customizing your hound and have the ability to talk to your entire clan at once. This will allow you to be more organized in getting games set up, and it is an amazing feature for game organization.
Once you are in a squad, you can now take part in the war. To play, all you have to do is have some one launch a game on a selected area, and everyone else taps a button titled Squad Rendezvous and you will instantly be brought to your squads game. When you are in the game lobby, you will be presented with a map of the battlefield, and you will only be able to talk with your team. Your team leader can place down colored, numerical way points. These way points will also show up on the map once you actually enter the game, allowing all strategies planned in the lobby to be easily referenced in game. It usually will not take more then a few minutes to get a game going against people. When the enemy team is ready to play, a light will blink saying they are waiting for your team, and vice versa. If no one joins and you get tired of waiting, you squad can fight a couple of computer controlled Hounds.
There are a lot of maps to choose from(over a hundred different battlefields), and range from mountain terrain, to snowy battlefields, forests, deserts, and other places. The battlefields are quiet varied in terms of layout, but some times it can feel your playing the same map over and over again.
There are multiple ways to win a match in the Neroimus War. You can either destroy all the enemy Hounds, which is the easiest route to go. The second way to win is destroying the enemy base, which is a lot harder then it sounds, mainly because most people set up a good defense. The third way is having the most COMBASes when the time runs out.
Now COMBASes are giant, capturable radio towers that are very important for the game play. When a COMBAS is captured, it gives off a field which you and your teammates are able to communicate with each other while in range. This makes it important to capture COMBASes in the multiplayer aspect, and even more important to tell your team if your going out of radio range or not. Also, if you have a commander on your team, he can make a radio range himself, and also detect enemy positions inside his radio range, and any emitted by your teams COMBASes. This can make capturing COMBASes not only essential for communication, but for defensive purposes as well.
If your not interested in the war and supporting your country, you can always play some “Free Games”. These come in unranked, and ranked forms. Unfortunately, there are only eleven of the hundred plus maps available to play on, and no bot matches. Although you get the ability to play many other game types including: Standard(Neroimus War game type), Capture the Flag(Grab enemy flag and bring it to your base), Deathmatch(Limited and unlimited ammo versions), Survival(one life death match), Keep the Flag(Capture a single flag and hold it), COMBAS Keeper(capture the most COMBASes and hold them), and Break All(destroy objects on the map for points.). All these game types can be pretty intense when played with skilled players. There are also team variants of each game type mentioned above.
Now the actual combat in the game is utterly fantastic. Action in this game can be either simple machine gun battles, where its just one team against another in a massive battle of bullets and smoke, or advanced tactical situations, which end up being some of the best games a player can be in. A possible (simple)tactical situation can be:; your on top of a hill, scanning the horizon for enemy movement, when all of a sudden your teammate call out for help as he was just hit with sniper fire. You can go straight into the fight and try and get there as fast as you can, or you can try and hit them from a flank, while taking more time, can be a lethal tactic. Players will be faced with questions like this, and many more throughout the multi player game. While the movement is slow, it is a great thing as it will allow players to become more immersed in team play of the game.
One flaw about the multi player game is that there is no spectator mode. Instead, if you die in a match with no respawns, you will appear as a mere infantry soldier. During Standard games, you will appear at your base, and this can be helpful to your team as you can tell them if there is any activity at HQ. Although, in survival games, the game has a habit of sticking you outside of radio range, so you won’t be able to talk to anyone unless you run back in range on foot. This is one one of the worse spectating modes available in any game to date, as you really don’t get to spectate anything, except a little man around some big, big hills.
Another flaw is while the game says its 12 player multiplayer, the game tends to crash if you attempt to go with more then 8 people in a room. This really sucks because having a six on six match is more effort then it is worth, so some people may find themselves playing three on threes, or four on fours most of the time.
It’s coming to a close.
Many people should be pleased with Chromehounds if they are looking for a multiplayer game. It is a great, squad based shooter with fun game play. While the single player is horrible, it can give some pleasure to a very small amount of players. If your idea of fun is Quake 4 death match, then this game is probably not for you.
