August 10, 2006

Chromehounds (360)
Sega/From Software, 2006

The 360 tries to replicate the giddy mech-smashery of early original XBOX star Mech Assault with Chromehounds, a slow, plodding homage to everything Mech Assault wasn’t.

Namely, Mech Assault, didn’t put you into the cockpit of the world’s most badass giant robot tortise. But Chromehounds foot-binds (or treadbinds or wheelbinds) the behemoth future tanks as if they were unfortunate gargantuan robot geisha. As if the megaton war machines might scamper off to a fun game. Shuffle ever so ponderously through a war-torn futurescape where three factions have decided to, slowly, pound each other into dust. See there were these sunspots and they totally destroyed the atmosphere or something and blah blah blah ... no you won’t be flying around in future jet fighters, no you won’t have satellite weaponry or communications. What you do is send your slightly less than geriatric scout mech out to find a comm station and than reconvene in a half hour when the rest of your squad of lumbering mega-tanks finally arrives. Aim, unload an orgy of missle, cannon and various projectile fire upon your foes and rejoice. Rinse, repeat.

The hook is that doing this online in the team-based multi-player, and doing it well, as Chromehounds does require a tactical mind, earns you points for your chosen faction. This allows you to further upgrade your mech and generally make havoc betterer. There are special bits and parts that can only be won through lotteries or by earning faction points.

It’s kind of like Pokemon but with guns instead of cute animal-things.

Chromehounds admirably aims for realism in its warfare. Unfortunately there is nothing real at all about mutli-story robot warfare and thus Chromehounds is condemed to nerdy statistical fiction in its modeling. So why not just make it fun? Why slave under the yoke of brutal physics and shackle these impressive digital warbots so? Why are the robots so detailed and the environments so empty? Why do I disconnect more than half the time I join a battle (o.k. maybe that is my wiring job)? Why is a game with giant robots shooting other giant robots with giant cannons and giant missles so boring? Please, for heaven’s sake don’t make any ninja-, pirate- or dinosaur- based games From Software; Chromehounds has shown that you can’t get the classics right. D

— Glenn Given