User Reviews (1 - 11 of 35)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Uniquely complex game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 24 / 24
Date: July 31, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Chromehounds is a mech simulator. It may sound obvious, but a lot of people seem to think it's the next Mechwarrior. Mechwarrior (for x-box) was an arcade game that was simple to play and easy to learn. Chromehounds is much more difficult to play and the learning curve is very steep.

The single player story mode is shallow and really nothing more than a glorified trainer for the x-box live version. In fact, if you don't have x-box live gold, this game isn't even worth renting.

The graphics run from very good to pretty poor. The mechs look great and are highly detailed. You can customize your mech with a ton of camoflauge patterns and decals. The environments, on the other hand, are pretty sappy. Buildings, grass, and sand look pretty bland.

The mech customization is really the key to play (otherwise equally powered mechs would just be strafing each other and whoever has slightly better aim would win). You can load up on weapons and armor, at the expense of speed. There are TONS of weapons, legs, and cockpits. You can carry missle counters, thermal vision, night vision, and other "assist" parts.

X-box live featurs a "war" with three warring nations. Every player must pick allegiance to one nation (though you can change allegiances) and you can go on missions for your country. The goal of each mission is to destroy the enemy's HQ while defending your own. You also win, but get less points, if you destroy the other team's mechs.

X-box live also features ranked and unranked games so you can just try out your mech against other players before taking it on the campaign.

This game is complex and it takes a while to figure out how to build the right mech for the right mission. My only real complaint is going on missions requires you join up with your squad. If you've ever been in a "clan" on x-box live, you know how hard it is to link up with your team to play other teams. Overall, this game offers a unique mech simulator that assures players won't necessarily be beaten by trash talking 13 year olds with excellent hand eye coordination.

Great online team gameplay

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: September 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

ChromeHounds is the first Mech related adventure for the XBox 360. A little bit combat, a little bit strategy, this provides quick, easy missions and then involving online gameplay.

If you've seen mech games before, you know the basic idea. Big, plodding robots with legs, tracks or wheels. Lots of weapons and armor to plunk onto the mech in lego-like fashion. Enemies and buildings to blow up, while staying alive.

Where other mech games go for arcadey non-reality, ChromeHounds tries to keep things real. Your mechs don't zip along at 100 miles an hour. They stomp with realistic weight and speed, leaving behind footprints and track marks. The detail on their glistening metal body is quite impressive. With the incredibly huge amount of customization available for your mech, you can spend hours honing the exact perfect mech for your gameplay style, and really care about its survival.

The world you inhabit didn't get this same level of loving detail. The missions are all very short and really don't need a plot. You are blowing things up while trying not to be blown up yourself. The environments you stomp through are almost an afterthought. Don't look for waving fields of grain or purple mountains majesty here.

As in many modern combat games, the basic mission tree is really all just a training mission for the *real* challenge - facing other human beings. You want to replay the local missions several times, tuning your mech movement skills and your weapon / armor combination to get ready for the team based online gameplay. That is where the real fun and skill-testing begins. Can you coordinate your efforts with your friends to ward off attacks from other skilled players from around the world? You can't just run and blast away - that technique will get you killed quickly. You have to know your mech's limitations and advantages, and then plan joint attacks to achieve that victory. It really is a fun combination of hand-eye coordination and tactical intelligent planning.

Well recommended for people who have online gameplay and enjoy that level of thought. For someone just wanting an arcadey fly-fast-and-blow-things-up-locally, you might want to rent this first to see if the realistic mech functioning will keep you happy.

An awesome game in my opinion

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: July 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Chromehounds was a game that I had been looking forward to for a long time, and boy was it worth it! The huge online multiplayer is really a lot of fun to play. Unfortunately, I am having trouble finding my way around the whole game although I am getting used to it. One of the best features of the game is the garage. This is where you will spend a lot of time customizing your hound. I like to experiment with certain parts and then decide on a final model to keep. When in the xbox live menu, a large map of the territories is displayed showing where the battles and cities are. Squads are also important. Be sure to join one as soon as you start playing. Its hard to comlete a mission with just one hound. Explosions are some of the best I have ever seen. Unfortunately, after destroying an enemy hound, it simply just dissapears. I don't know if it's a glitch, but I hope it gets fixed. Overall this game is the game for me, but I respect other peoples opinions.

Pros: MULTIPLAYER, the biggest feature of the game.

Overall detail of your hounds and what they can accomplish is extremely amazing!

Squads are a ton of fun to be in.

Cons: Not a game for everyone. Some will be dissapointed

Maps are a little barren, but not a big deal

The background music in the menus got annoying very quickly.

An online tactical mech sim

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: July 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Chromehounds is a decent mech game that merges the style and customization of Armored Core games with the simple control style of Mechassault. The developers also tried to encourage teamwork by forming RTs or role types for each of the mechs. You've got Soldiers, Defenders, Scouts, Snipers, Heavy Gunners, and Commanders. Most custom mechs will be hybrids of the different RTs but that adds to the strategy of the game. Unfortunately, the strategic element of the game is ONLY realized online. The single player portion of the game plays out more like a training mission to familiarize the gamer to how to use the wide variety of weapons and components. If u don't play online, don't buy this game.

Now, if you do enjoy online play, you are in for a treat. As long as you don't mind sim style play and teamwork, ChromeHounds will provide hours of squad play, mech customization, and occaisionally some pretty wicked battles. Unfortunately, this is far from a 'next-gen' title. The graphics are decent but the environments are Afghanistan-boring. The sound effects are decent but the music is definitely mute-worthy. The online mode variety is top notch though. The biggest draw is probably the persistent war that force clan and nation affiliation. New clan members have to be approved by teammates of course. The war option also has online shops, part trade rooms, squad lobbies, and such that build upon the option that was introduced in the Mechassault series.

Mech customization can be intimidating at first. Each part has a laundry list of stats. Stability, weight, reload speed, energy, heat generation, speed, defense against different types of ballistic weapons (note that this game has no energy weapons or lasers), turning speed, and more. It takes a little experimentation and trial and error but once you catch on it can be fun.

Lastly, the controls are simple but there is an art to it. Each of the different weapon groups require different aiming. This is important because unlike in Mechassault, you can do damage to different parts of your enemy. Blow off all their weapons, wreck a scout mechs mobility by damaging their legs, or simply blow them apart by focusing on their cockpit. Missile racks fire at a wide angle, shotguns spread out, artillery weapons do splash damage at long range(yet must be lobbed), mech melee 'piles' require point blank precision, and so on.

In the end, the fun factor of this game is pretty high if you play online, enjoy teamwork, and like sim-style 'realism' if you will. Offline play for this game is worthless. If you can't play this game online, do not buy it. The single player version can be beaten in about a day and the AI isn't good enough to make CPU matches interesting after a few hours of play.

Attack Dogz

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: July 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Alright, you want to know what chromehounds is? It is a game for gear heads and patient people, and fans of the mechwarrior style genre to bask in its solid gameplay, excellent graphics, and astounding amounts of customization. And thats not even including xbox live.

Now, lets start off with the Gameplay. Its simple, and to teh point. There is no stupid menus you have to use to pick an attack. There is a menu to issue commands, but only commanders can use it, and even then, its not necessary unless in campaign.
Right bumper changes weapons, right trigger fires, the analog stick control movement, and the right thumstick clicks in to give you a first person view that wobbles realistically with the terrain and movements. other than that, there isnt much you need to know, unless surfing through the game menus like the garage or mission selection (out of gameplay).

Onto graphics, now, and be prepared, because they are excellent. The game is normal mapped, which means geometry isnt very complex, which also, while some games are hampered by this, makes chromehounds even better. Because of the hardedged style most mechs are built in, it makes it look more realistic, and also adds a surreal beauty to the buildings, especially in the urban maps like Xerxes, because they can do much more with lighting and texturing. Note also, that I think the particle effects, while on occasion seem a bit redundant, are probably unrivaled on the Xbox 360. Even GRAW's notably spectacular explosions cant stand up to watching smoke trails form in real time, and then fade away realistically in the wind.

Onto maps, and this is where I think Chromehounds takes a bit of a slowdow, but I dont mind, and you shouldnt either. The maps are mindblowingly huge. Take into mind, of course, that you are a threestory tall walking/rolling/floating machine of death. That means you should probably be moving faster than a ground soldier. And it still takes around fiveminutes to cross fully some of the smaller maps. And, they are all well designed with varying terrain in many of them that seems realistic.

Onto online play. This is probably the greatest part of Chromehounds....but Im not enjoying it much, only because I got confused as to how to get into the Neroimus War Persistant World. I am too busy to read the manual, or play with it, but the freeplay and quickmatches are great, fun, and solid. Just takes a bit of patience. Ah, the chaos of a teenage summer.

And lastly, the mindblowing customization. Because of the hexagonal style of the weapons, you can fit many weapons onto one mech. And, you can customize the series which each one fires into four different classes, designated by you. If thats confusing, I mean, you can tell the hounds which weapons to link together to fire. Once you see it, you understand. Also, there are many different pieces to fit in each of the many chategories. Of course, you get a free mech for going online to play with, if your not into doing that, but its really simple to do once you get the hang of it. And, like me, you might just end up sitting infront of the TV set building it and fine tuning it for hours. I prefer a fast mech with a high rate of fire, so I have many chainguns, and I constantly keep my eye on my max speed, keeping it above 200 at alls times. There is also a hexagon which tells you which way your mech leans. You'll recognize it from other games, mainly RPGS...I think there is one like it in Pokemon for the contest things....

Overall, this is a game that will keep me playing for years to come, and despite what people are claiming, I say that the campaign is fun, especially when you tear through it with your own mech, instead of the borrowed ones.

Finally a game for hardcore mech fans

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: August 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have played well over 200 hours as I write this review so I hope to correct some of the misinformation in other reviews...

1) This is a Mech simulator most similiar to the Mechwarrior (PC) series, especially MW2 & MW3.
2) It is nothing like the Mech Assault (Xbox) series.
3) Chromehounds does have single player missions which are really just training for online play. The single player teaches you about each Role Type (RT) and grades you in your performance in each RT.
4) Once online, you must choose a side and then find a squad to join OR you can create your own squad and recruit others. Don't worry too much about which side to choose because you will eventually want to switch countries to acquire each country's unique parts.
5) Chromehounds is a squad based game. Playing alone, although possible, isn't much fun. The most fun is playing with 4-6 per team. There is also a free battle mode that is basically a FPS fragfest.
6) Experimenting with different mech designs is nearly as much fun as testing them in combat. In the beginning you may find yourself spending more time in the garage than on the battlefield. If you like customization, Chromehounds offers millions of possible mech combinations from super fast scouts to heavy gunners than can take out half a grid square.

As much fun as Chromehounds is, it isn't perfect. There are still some bugs to be worked out but patches are in the works and minor maintenance is performed every Tuesday. Don't believe the naysayers who shout that Chromehounds will eat your disks, kill your 360, run over your cat and drop crumbs in your bed; Chromehound's flaws are of the much more mundane variety... money glitches and a few network glitches.

Overall, Chromehounds is the best multiplayer mech simulator since Mechwarrior 2 and is a must for true fans of the mech genre.

What MechAssault 2 Should have Been

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: October 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

For starters, I read some of the other reviews on this game and some people out there really need glasses. This game looks excelent! Much better than ANYTHING a developer could have ever accomplished on the original XBox.

As far as the difficulty in building a good mech goes, it has nothing to do with spending time to get "better parts", it is all about learning how to build a better mech. You really need to spend time finding out what kind of mech works for you. That does indeed take some time and effort, but all the parts to build a decent mech are all right there. Sure, there are some advanced parts that you can aquire through the Marketplace, playing through the storyline, or bidding on in the auction, but they aren't anything spectacular. This game is not for people who want to plop in a game disk, find the rocket launcher, and get 30 kills.

I really enjoy this game, it isn't as fast paced as the MechAssault games are, but the customization is so much fun. Anyone willing to spend the time to tweak their mech just right to fit them is going to have lots of fun with this game. I personally love my little hovercraft mech with 4 pile weapons and a machine gun on it. It is fast, maneuverable, and can eliminate almost any mech with just two hits. Throw an NA jammer on it during multiplayer games and come up behind the commander mech and take him out before he even knows you're there.

This game is really fun, with amazing graphics, but it does take some time to get into and isn't for those who like to jump right in and expect to be good at it right away.

Chromehounds: A little rusty under the hood.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: July 31, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Although I'm not a die-hard "Mech" fan, I have finished Mech Assault and Mech Assault 2 on the original Xbox. As of this writing, I have completed the Chromehounds single-player missions and have played online for a few days.

There are two types of single-player activities in Chromehounds, Story Mode (not connected to the Xbox Live service) provides 43 missions which average about 5 minutes in mission length and Individual Missions (available when you're connected to Xbox Live) offers an additional 11 "search and destroy" missions which are 10 minutes each.

One thing that other reviewers have not mentioned is that -although it is short- the Story mode offers an incredible amount of variety. When tackled in order, this mode will take you from being a "grunt" (a Soldier mech which is on the frontlines of every battle) to the Commander mech (where you monitor the war from behind the battle lines and guide other units on missions). The Commander role is unique because it adds an RTS (real-time strategy) component to the game, where you're actually ordering other units to engage in the battle, rather than piloting a mech yourself. Along the way, you'll also be piloting mechs with different equipment specializations, like sniper, defender, scout and heavy gunner.

In addition to the variety of gameplay, you can also customize your mech. Unfortunately, this can lead to an incredibly uneven fight online and I've found myself slaughtered by users that had created the "ultimate mech" when I entered the fight with a weenie mobile. Sadly, losing that battle also cost me a considerable amount of mech cash, which is needed to better equip yourself for battle.

As a next-gen game, Chromehounds excels in some areas and is surprisingly lacking in others. Load times are amazingly quick with the pre-game briefing and the entire levels (which are quite large) loading in less than 15 seconds. The graphics, for the most part, are quite impressive, but the developers have sometimes "cheated." For example, a wheat field looks like it's blowing in the wind when you're far off, but once you walk into the field, the poorly designed texture looks flat. One nice touch is that your mechs will leave footprints in sand and crack any roads you walk over. Smoke, explosions and other effects are top-notch, but one odd feature is that there are no menus while you play. For example, if you embark on a single-player mission, and press the Start button, Chromehounds just pauses the game. You don't have any options to quit the game or even restart the mission. This is incredibly short-sighted, since I wanted to restart many times and couldn't, or you may wish to leave a game prematurely.

If you enjoy earning Achievements, this is probably not the game for you. Completing the single player missions only nets you 140 of the 1000 possible GamerScore. Once you complete the Story Mode, there's an additional 20 points for earning a "perfect" score on every level. And, there are many "secret" achievements out of the 49 available, including some random ones you can earn just by aligning with a nation online. When your nation wins a war, you earn a medal, even if you've never fought a single battle online.

All said, Chromehounds is the only mech-style game available on the Xbox 360. And, for all its faults, Sega has created a unique and interesting model for online warfare. But, in doing so, they ignored some of the most basic principles for creating a solid game. Dedicated fans of this genre and those who enjoy massive online play should pick up this game without hesitation. Gamers who are looking for a rich single-player mode should probably look elsewhere.

Let Loose The Hounds Of War!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 13
Date: July 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Chromehounds, Is THE BEST mech game 60 bucks can buy. (the only alternative for you rich peeps is steel batalion, it had a $300 controler) any way as the story goes, The cold war errupts into a full scale global civil war!!!!! I know cool huh? Now in this alternate reality there are 3 countries: Tarakia, Morsgoj ( pronounced mores-goy), and Sal Kaar. Now each country has its own features, technolegy and land scape that players will have to consider before choosing your alliance. For example: Tarakia is mostly the ruins of a war-torn metropolis, Morsgoj (hopefully you pick up the eastern eurpeon language refference here) has you guest it.. SNOW SNOW AND MORE SNOW!!!!! Oh yeah and some mountains. And Sal Kaar is similar to the middle east, Deserts.
When you start the story mode you will have to pick a country. it is best to fight for each eventually in order to pick up the most weopons and experience. Now there are 6 types of "hounds": Soldier, Defender, Heavy Gunner, Sniper, Scout and Commander. In story mode you complete missions with the types of you choice in order to become sertified in that class.
And Now For the best part of alll.....................
Baaa... Baaa......Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,... BA BA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE ONLINE MODE!!!!! ( BA BAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!) This Online mode is run by a seperate server than other games. allowing a percistant world of plunder, warcraft....and.... EXPLOSION!!!!! BIG EXPLOSIONS!!!!!!!!!! You can be allies with up to 19 friends to make a squad and you fight with 5 other squad members at a time making a clan. You fight other clans that try to defend your terretories. also you can conquer other terretories. In other words you are playing an entertaining game of risk.you goal is to take over the world. Everyone has there job. and through comunication you prevail.
I have been watching this game since winter 2005 on G4 and it has not disapointed me. on july 12 Xplay on g4 reviews chrome hounds. you can see what they say at [...] also check out [...] for trailers. A BIG 5 OUT OF 5!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fun, strong title for the xbox360, needs more depth

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I've played a variety of mech games over the years. From Armored Core, Mech Warriors, Frontline, etc. This game overall is aobut ABOVE AVERAGE. But i wouldn't say its a great game.

The missions could use a little more work. When you get lost in your mission maps, i couldn't get a repeat of my mission or find out what i needed to do...unless i couldn't figure out how to bring up the mission briefing menu...IN the mission, multiple times, NPCs would get stuck if I didn't clear "objectives" that were in there way. These were a major blow to the game.

Building your Hound, was decent. Legs, engin, cockpit, armors. Especially the way you compose your weapons was a neat touch to this game. I.e. YOu spread out a rifle to your head, left/right arms; when you shoot at your enemies it fires in a triangular pattern, hitting in a widespread fire. OR you can have all your rifles clumped to the right side of the hound. Compressing the bullets together to hit your target in a more close range of firing pattern.

Overall, I think the game could use more depth in the game. Graphic details are fantasic, but lacks gameplay. I think I would rather rent this game to buy...but i already bought it!!! >.<

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 Next 

Actions