September 08, 2006 @ 2:22 pm

Chromehounds (Sega)

Quibian Salazar-Moreno

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Storyline: The story begins in the aftermath of World War III as fictional nations struggle to put things back together while protecting their own land. In an effort to do so, and as they continue to lose soldiers, America develops mechanized soldiers called “hounds”. These “hounds” are controlled by hired mercenaries that carry out different missions on behalf of the nation. right Audio/Visual: Ideally, everything on Xbox 360 should blow your mind visually. Unfortunately for Chromehounds, it’s only about half way impressive. The mechs look great and are extremely detailed with its hydraulic pumps and gears, and its animations of movements and firing of weapons. The thing is, when you blast on your enemies, all they really do is disappear. There’s no splintering of metal or debris. Poof! They’re just gone! The environments are real boring as well. Most of the terrains seem to be either deserts with a few hills or mountains with a few trees here and there. When it comes to the audio, the voice acting is okay, nothing special though, with the exception of the sounds of the missiles, gunshots, grenades and all the other war time weaponry, which sound great. Controls: The controls are simple to manage with the triggers allowing you to shoot and change weapons and the analog sticks helping you aim and move around. The Y button brings up a grid map to help you find your way around the desolate lands. You can also communicate with your bosses using the directional pad. The only downside is how slow your mechs move. If you’re being fired upon there’s no way to dodge a missile in the fast enough and if you have to go to the other side of the map, prepare for a long arduous, boring walk. By the way, unlike other mech games, your boy can’t fly or hover. Hotness: The Xbox Live portion for Chromehounds is what this game was built for. Once you go online you have the option of joining a squad and be able to battle other squads in other territories. If your squad is good, you territory grows and your capalities widens. More people may want to join your squad or continually want to battle you. Once you get into it, you start getting little notes every now and then on which squads have lost, which cities have been taken and who’s making the biggest moves. You can definitely lose yourself in this world. Wackness: If you don’t have Xbox Live, don’t even bother getting this game. The single player mode gets really repetitive and you’ll get real bored after the first few missions. Even though the premise of the game is interesting, Chromehounds doesn’t really rely or go deep into the story - it focuses on the game play, which is sometimes good, but mostly bad. Test Drive Rating: 3/5

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