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Great game that nobody played

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 13
Date: March 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Chrome is not flawless, but it's just plain fun. There might be some pieces missing, but the most important stuff is done right.

Chrome is a first-person shooter with a couple of important extra features. These features don't sound like much until you actually get to play through them. You play as a mercenary/bounty hunter who travels across the galaxy rescuing hostages, recovering stolen equipment, and then getting in the middle of an intergalactic corporate struggle. The locales that you visit are not only beautiful, but they are huge and wide open. I can't tell you how much I love those big open areas. You can easily spend an hour and a half or more on each mission, thanks to all the time that you spend creeping around in the forest, sneaking up on guard patrols or avoiding them altogether. Sometimes you find a sniper tower that you can use to snipe guys from half a mile away. The levels are very nonlinear and rarely seem like they are contrived or built just for you. Instead, it feels like you are actually infiltrating realistic bases and installations. It's also great being able to play for an hour without seeing a loading screen. There are a lot of indoor areas too, but they aren't as much fun to play in as the outdoor areas.

Stealth ends up playing a big part in this game, and it ends up being surprisingly good. Even the pure stealth levels, which I normally hate in a non-stealth action game, are good. The outdoor areas have lots of trees and rocks to hide behind, and with the use of your binoculars or radar, you can avoid enemy patrols or pop them in the back of the head when you catch them by surprise. Once again, the big open areas are what allow you to do this.

The weapons have a realistic feel to them. Automatic weapons can only be fired in bursts, since the kick to them will make them too inaccurate after a few bullets. Firefights can be pretty tough if you are in the view of more than a couple of enemies. That's why cleverly taking on one at a time is necessary. That's also where your cybernetic implants become a crucial part of the game.

Chrome is not the first game to throw in special powers as a twist to the shooter aspect, but it succeeds where many others fail. They end up working like the force powers in the Jedi Knight games. All seven of your implants are useful, and they are well-balanced enough so that they don't overpower you and make the game too easy. This is mostly due to your nervous system getting overloaded if you use them for too long. If you have three implants turned on, then you can only keep them on for a few seconds at a time. They all seem well thought out, instead of things that were just thrown in because they sounded kinda neat.

The core gameplay is solid, so a lot of the other things that are good are bonuses. The most obvious are the game's gorgeous graphics. Everything looks top-notch. Another is the storyline, which is a nice surprise (in spite of the bad voice acting). Another is the successfully implementation of rag-doll physics. This seems to be hit-and-miss in shooters lately, but here it's great. Enemies seem to respond realistically, depending upon what weapon you shoot them with. A shotgun blast to the face produces a much more drastic rag-doll effect than a silenced pistol shot to the head. Bodies don't dissolve away and disappear like they do in other shooters, and the bullet holes seem to hang around for a while. One great thing about Chrome is that in an era where action games seem to always end after 8 or 10 hours, it lasts more like 15-20.

As I mentioned before, Chrome certainly has flaws. One of them is the enemy AI. It's not bad but it's unsophisticated. Enemies are too easy to kill with grenades, and they generally won't use any advanced tactics to flush you out of hiding places. The worst part of the AI is when you throw a grenade and the guy yells "grenade!", and then just stands there like an idiot until the grenade blows him across the screen. This ends up being the biggest problem in the indoor areas, since enemies kind of just stand there and won't help out their comrades when you are killing them in the next room.

Chrome has so many good parts that it's easy to look past its bad parts. This is a very unique and high-quality shooter in its own right.

Chrome - A very pleasant surprise!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: December 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Despite subscribing to two different PC gaming magazines, I had never heard of Chrome till a few weeks ago. I found the playable demo on the web and downloaded it - not expecting much. However ...

The graphics were great (NVIDIA Gforce Ti200 on my machine), the game has a plot that evolves, many single player missions (I did not try the multi-player), different difficulty levels that add real challenge. It took many days to play and after completing the whole game once, I changed the difficulty level and went back and played with more of a stealth strategy (rather than "just shoot everything" and enjoyed the whole thing all over again.

It is on a level with Unreal 2 for plot and game play. I also found it similar in style (weapons, inventory management, strategy, in-game movies, etc) to the first Deus Ex - which is one of my favories.

If you liked games Deus Ex, Unreal 2, Half-Life, and even Halo - you should look at Chrome. It is also a great value for the price.

Absolutly Awesome!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: November 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is truly awesome and very enjoyable. The graphics are top notch and very realistic, right down to the grass blowing in the wind and the occasional butterfly that flies around. The indoor environments are somewhat repetitive but it is no bother since pre-fab structures would most likely be the norm in space exploration. The game is sort of a mix of Deus Ex and Operation: Flashpoint, but it is more comparable to Deus Ex.

The story lacks the depth of Deus Ex but it is servicable for a game of this type. You play a mercenery named Logan who does dirty work for the various corperations and colonists of the "new frontier" and in this New Fronteir exisst a substance called Chrome. The game never fully explains it but it is a rare substance that is used for terraforming, mass destruction weapons, and as an energy source. It is very much the equivilant of Gold or Uranium. And much like those susbtances, mega corperations are willing to to anything to get their hands on as much of the stuff as possible and develop technologies and make profits based on the material. There are plenty plot twists and turns.

Much like Deus Ex you have augmentations, called implants in this game, and instead of having to watch the bio-electric energy consumption you have to watch your neual health as the implats tend to put it into overdrive and cause it to heat up, which can lead to brain damage. I ended up not needing the implants as much as the augmentations in Deus Ex but they are useful, especially the targeting assistance, eye scope, and dermal armor.

In this game you get to pilot various vehicles, the most interesting of which are combat walkers, which are sort of like mechs. The infantry weapons are typical for a game of this type but at least they are not too quake-like. You get a combat knife, a pistol, a submachinegun, an assault rifle, a heavy assault rifle and my personal favorite, the 14mm Sniper Rifle. You also get a rocket launcher (despite being called anti-tank, it is not very powerful and even light vehicles can take several direct hits), a railgun-type weapon and a Electromagnetic beam weapon (basically a MASER). The default vehicle weapons are also quite limited, being mostly of 20mm cannons and missile launchers for the large walker. The game is moddable (I do not know to what extent) so that could be fixed.

The game's multiplayer is nothing special, being the usual Unreal-like setup and while the game supports bots, they are only used to even out teams. Hopefully mods will change this. And if you have a 56k, stick to games with less people (16 at most). This game is a dark horse and blows other other titles like Halo and Unreal 2 out of the water.

The developers did a great job with the engine. Do not worry about the steep requirements, the game will run quite well on a mid-range system, even if they are equipped with GeForce MX Cards. The detail settings have a minimal impact on the graphical quality so you can set many of the settings to low and you will generally not notice much difference in visual quality. In some places the framerate will choke up, but you can solve it by saving, then quitting and reloading and in some cases even pausing and un-pausing.

BEST SCI-FI ACTION SHOOTER of 2003? YES!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: January 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Wow. Wow. Wow. What a nice surprise. SOOOOO Much better than Deus Ex 2--Invisible War. Terrific Action. Enormous outdoor environments that are incredibly well-designed and realistic. Driveable vehicles. DX-like cybernetic modifications. This is the game Deus Ex 2 SHOULD have been. Great strategy component, too, as you can only carry a realistic inventory and you're often outgunned in firefights unless you use a bit of strategy. The only flaw is the facial modeling of the characters is a bit weak, but the lip-synch is actually darn good, as is the acting and the story. Buy this instead of DX2! You'll be GLAD you did.

Best game I have seen since Unreal 2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: November 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Grafic of this game is simply amazing.
I have the full version of the game. After playing it extensively I have to say this is one of the best FPSs' in years. I have played the demo and it was a buggy piece of crap. The full version on the other hand is amazing and I love it. The pace, the environment, the combat, the controls, the implants, the arsenal, the inventory, the graphics and sound, it all comes together to make a startlingly great game. I was excited about Halo BEFORE I played this. But trust me guys, Halo has nothing on this game. Yeah I'm sure all you XBox-nuthuggers have something to say about that, well play this game on a great PC and then talk. Its excellent, its expansive, it has GREAT adjustable difficulty (from very easy to very hard and the hard level is HARD, and the easy level is not too bad) and its just a great experience. HIGHLY recommended.
Make sure you download a New Patch for this game (English version)

Interesting Title for a game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: November 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The previous reviews are very accurate...overall this was a great game. The graphics are superb except for the character's faces. I think for the extent they went thru for the enviroment, weapons, vehicles etc...they could have made the faces more realistic and less cartoonish....anyway 14 great missions with the 14th mission an interesting scenario,,,,I will not say more and spoil it....a very challenging game,,,thank goodness for quick saves!!!! 5 stars....get it.

demo GOOD FUN

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: February 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

haven't bought game, im cautious about adding more disks to my collection, but playing demo for two days now and its like Halo but with other people online. the weapons are much more accurate and the graphics aren't as "blobby" as Halos'. good deal i guess

Chrome Maybe, But Does it Shine?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 10
Date: February 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I seem to be getting frustrated with PC games lately--well, I suppose I've been frustrated with computer games for years, but lately I seem to be going through turmoil. You hear so much about the newer games and how great they're supposed to be, but they often disappoint. I've got a list of my favorite games, but not too many of them have been released in the last two years. Where's the holy grail of gaming--that ultimate game that takes me away into a world in which I don't want to come back to answer the phone?

I looked for such an experience in Chrome, and not surprisingly I didn't get it. Don't get me wrong; Chrome has some very good traits. It renders some amazingly realistic tall grass and bushes. Take it from me, if you're a nature lover, then Chrome might be your game. It even includes some cool butterflies that flutter so realistically that you'll want to swat them! However, as we all know, great graphics alone won't cut it.

I guess my biggest beef with Chrome is the gameplay. You do a LOT of exploring in this game, and end up wondering the huge levels looking for your objective. You've got a map, but it isn't always clear where you're supposed to go because the objective might be on a different floor of a building. The goals are marked by red rectangles that are often not very conspicuous, and you can easily miss them. Even worse, you need to "hack" computers by pressing the use key, and clicking your mouse on grey rectangles to match up hidden symbols. Such a task is fun when you know what to do, but the skimpy manual doesn't explain how to hack the computers! Worst of all, the drivable vehicles are steered using the strafe keys which is awkward as you might imagine. Why not allow the player to steer the vehicles using the mouse? The vehicles could have been ten times as fun if only the developers had implemented such controls.

Chrome is a decent shooter, but sadly its imperfections really drag it down. My guess is that the developer tried to be innovative without adequately thinking through the best way to implement those new features. I say let's return to the great shooters like Quake II and Unreal. Give me games like those with graphics like Chrome's, and you'll finally be getting it right!

The glitchiest game I've ever played, by light years

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: August 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Let me begin by saying that Chrome is a very good game. It's no Half-Life 2 or Doom 3, but it's head and shoulders above the sea of mediocre first-person shooters floating around out there.

But in the bugs/glitches department, this is far and away the most incompetently programmed game I've ever played. I'm using a two-month-old, high-end computer engorged with silicon testosterone, but even after downloading all the Chrome patches (amounting to over 100 MB, 10 times larger than the next largest patch-set I've ever downloaded--the fact that it was necessary for the company to generate this much patchwork speaks for itself), I can't play the game for more than half an hour without a problem.

I'm not talking about the kind of minor, vaguely annoying bugs one commonly encounters in a game, or even simple crashes to the desktop (that would be orgasmic)--Chrome sports only the most significant and crippling glitches possible, the kind that constantly lock up your computer and force you to do a cold shutdown. Even better, these lockups are frequently triggered by actions that MUST be performed in order to progress in the game. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the game, and I've had to use a skip-to-the-next-level cheat in the middle of three different levels because the game would lock up the computer every single time I tried to perform a required action (such as unlock a door, etc.).

I've spent days researching all the known issues regarding hardware/software conflict with Chrome, and all of my specs are supposedly ideal (and then some). But none of the other reviewers here seem to have encountered the problems I have. Maybe you won't have my (...) luck.

LOOKS GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: November 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

CHROME graphically looks amazing. The environments look very big and good. I got 1024x728 wallpapers at their website, and they have a ton and they look very good. Anyway, it looks very good and the best part is the min. specification is a Pentium II 500Mhz, which is great for me because my PC sucks!!

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