Chromehounds

"Something Mech junkies have been waiting for"

Chromehounds is a mech simulation set in the country of Neroimus, where global conflict has been evolved from simple faction arguements.In this long awaited title the player will take on a role of a soldier fighting for either Tarakia,Morskoj, or Sal Kar, or in the single-player mode the player will be a Rafzakael Mercenary.

The gameplay of Chromehounds is entirely built around the hounds, the hounds are slow moving giant mechs with enough firepower to destroy a single handedly destroy a town, the player can build his own mech from scratch using parts bought from various countrys the player is alligned with or from getting high ranks in the single player mode, hounds consist of a type of moving equipment (From inverted to hovercrafts), the cockpit,generators,support equipment and weapons, there is a wide selection of each type of equipment to customize your hound from, depending on what kind of parts you have choosen the game will select your role type for you, when you finished your hound you can finally step into the cockpit of it.

The way you actually play your hound is up to you and your roletype, if your a Tactics commander you'll nautrally want to stay out of combat and relay enemy positions to your teammates, if you're a Heavy gunner you'll want to bombard the enemy from a distance,soldiers would prefer to get in enemies faces with close ranged weapons and rip them apart, while snipers want to keep away from the enemy and take them out from a distance, defenders would want to defend his allies by using many weapons to take out enemys before they take out their allies, and scouts are nautrally faster than other RTs so he'll want to relay enemies postions outside of the TC's map's range.

Regardless of your RT the display of each hound is the game, its mostly plain with a meter of your health bar and a small version of gun-cam, however you have no crosshairs, the Gun cam supplies all the cross-hairs and aiming systems you'll need to fire, different types of weapons give you different types of aiming systems for example, the heavy gunner dosen't get a standard crosshair while using a morter instead he gets a screen showing how high hes looking up and using that information he could predict where his shots will end up,zoom is also dependant on what type of gun your using, sniper cannons and sniper rifles will get full zoom while standard rifles will get a semi-zoom and machine guns will get no zoom just a cross-hair.

Information and a map for your hound is brought up manually, the only information thats displayed about the hound is which parts are damaged however the map is much more informative. The map is like a battleship map with coordinates for easier tactical reference, but only the TC is able to see enemies positions, while everyone can see HQs and COMBAS.

Despite what you may think Chromehounds is a very tactical game in games that involve more than 1 player or teambased modes, a team is made of up 6 people each with his own prefered roletype, that team can win the match by killing the opponent,taking all the COMBAs on the map or destroying the enemy HQ. This sounds simple however 1 hound can not go toe to toe with 2 hounds at once , COMBAs are used for extended communication range (Which is started at the TC's NA maker), and there are more than 1 HQ on each map , players that go for the HQ may find that they are going to a decoy one as no player not even the TC is able to find out which is which from a nonvisual distance. So if players work together in doing one of those objectives, and as long as everyone sticks to their RT they'll win.

The Multiplayer modes are either Neroimus war or Freeplay , The Neroimus war is a evolving world where the 3 factions squad off against one another in a battle for the entire map, area is gained through numerous squads fighting in each area.Freeplay is your standard quick match/ranked match options with Team deathmatch,Deathmatch, ect.

The singleplayer mode has the player being a Rafzakeal (Try saying that 20 times in a row) Mercenary and he joins each faction, the faction and difficulty is decided through the role-type that player plays, for example Tarakia is easy and has the player using Soldier and Sniper, Morskoj is Normal and has the play using Defender and Scout, and Sal Kar is hard and has the player using Heavy Gunner and Tactics Commander. After each mission the player is awarded with a rank (From D to S) depending on how well he did, if he got a C to A he'll recieve 1 hound part to use in multiplayer or in other single player missions, if he got a S he'll recieve 2 parts so it pays off to do well in the single player missions, after beating each single player mission the player is allowed to replay those missions for better scores using the hound they give him or his own custom hound.

The Pro:Addicting multiplayer

The Cons:Short Singleplayer

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/08/06