Chromehounds Review - Xbox 360

A brief peek into mankind’s dystopian, not-too-distant future reveals crushing, explosions, trampling, giant metal robots laden with all manner of destructive ordinance, war and, of course, lots and lots of hurt feelings. Also, there will likely be the drone of bad voice actors and the general sense that piloting a mechanized behemoth, using it to lay waste to everything and anything somehow should really be, you know, more fun.

Sega let the dogs out, and the first- and third-person mech combat game Chromehounds brings the mechanical marvels to Xbox 360 complete with a host of robot creation items, online play, and environmental effects such as smoke, fire, and dust that hammer home what happens when giant robots slug it out. Yet there’s more bark than bite here.

Rings like silver …

As a mercenary in a series of squabbles pitting European nations against one another, players will get to pilot six different mech types: soldier, scout, heavy gunner, sniper, tactics commander, and defender. Each brand of killer robot has its own function on the battlefield and set of peculiarities, Heavy gunners are more or less a bristling set of cannons on legs. Scouts are speedy, underpowered, and fragile creatures.

These mechs can be created, customized, and altered to suit a player’s whims. New parts, weapons, and improvements are won after the successful completion of missions. There’s a great wealth of parts and items that can be used to cobble together a mech, and the game holds a dedicated garage for that very purpose. In the garage, players get to run free in an extended version of a Lego-building session. After selecting a base for their creation, it’s possible to place a cockpit, power generator, series of space modules, light- and heavy armaments, sniper weapons, bomb dispensers, etc. The game tracks how close to one of the established Hound types the new creation is, so players can properly gauge how well they’re doing at, say, putting together a sniper. Further, the game also charts a mech’s performance in terms of power output and ability to carry weight, and pity the behemoth that comes in underpowered or overweight.

You ain’t nothing but …

Developer From Software, known for its Armored Core series for PlayStation and PlayStation 2, excels at letting players put a personal stamp on its games. Sadly, the general trend has always been that From’s mech-making options are more fun than its games’ play, and Chromehounds does little to buck the trend.

In the game’s single-player adventure, the action is dampened by a near-overwhelming series of displays and readouts, and pilots are often called up to navigate to waypoints on a map. This map, when called up with a push of the Xbox 360 controller’s “Y” button, takes up a good chunk of real estate on screen. There will be instances, many more than is acceptable, where players will have to navigate, acquire targets, and blast foes with only 30 or 40 percent of the gameplay screen not obscured by junk. Players have two choices in terms of customizing the displays, too, those being take it or leave it.

In single-player missions, players will often have to go it alone, despite having a series of artificial intelligence-controlled allies. Sometimes, this is subtly managed, as in the mission where players must venture forth alone to destroy an enemy base in order to relieve pressure on their allies stuck at home defending their headquarters. Other times, though, the game simply doesn’t bother: “You must single-handedly destroy the enemy,” one mission briefing reads. “That is all.”

The reason why players must act as an army of one is simple: their allies are gimps and geeks. They’ll sure as hell lose battles, but will never win any. In the aforementioned base-destruction mission, it’s necessary not only to rush to wreck the enemy installation but also ensure the defenders don’t get overwhelmed. Chromehounds salts the wound by adding in a bleating series of voice commands from the player’s female handler. Hurry, she’ll say in a horrible French accent. Save us, she’ll implore. Are you done yet? she’ll whine. Being chastised by this woman while trying to simultaneously destroy the base and prevent friendly forces from being wasted produces an entirely new substance altogether: antifun.

Chromehounds also slips in forgetting the first rule of war games: no one wants to play as the stretcher-bearer. Certain of the mech types, such as the underpowered and, surprisingly, oftentimes sluggish-moving scouts are simply less fun to play than others. In the game’s more palatable online modes, which encourage cooperative play and emphasize massed battles, scouts are really an afterthought, and an easily wrecked one at that.

War is peace

Online play serves as Chromehounds’ best feature. The persistent-world Neroimus War allows players to form teams of 20 and venture forth into combat in 6-man squads. Here, freed from bad voice acting and the need to win the war all by their lonesome, players can truly have fun. The game also allows for capture-the-flag competitions, as well as survival- and death matches, and each of these modes bears testament to the fact that you can, thankfully, teach a surly old dog—even if it is 30 feet tall and metallic—some new tricks.

Article by: Greg Orlando
Video Produced by: Ross Beeley