Chrome (PC) - Guest Post

Another guest post by the mysterious mecha-neko!

Stop staring at me. Stop it.

This post is presented in 'click on the pictures to make them big'-o-vision™.

"Two mercenaries, Bolt Logan and his friend Ron 'Pointer' Hertz, are heading for planet Zorg."

Zorg.

Not even they can believe that's what the loading screen says.

Bolt's on the left and he's voiced by Jon St. John aka Duke Nukem! I don't know who plays Pointer, but he won't shut up about how great we all are.

Well how about that! Zorg's a pretty planet! With trees. During the day. In a video game. I'm amazed!

I can't dally because Pointer is yelling instructions at me. There's a skippable tutorial that basically wants me to mess about with items and things. Tutorial objective: Check the binoculars.

I have checked the binoculars.

It's our spaceship! I can't nick it and fly away, though. I make up for it by jumping all over it while Pointer yells at me to cover him.

"Logan! Don't walk away!"

I'm not walking away you goon, you're running away from me! I don't know where we're going!

I know we're going to find some blueprints, but I don't know if they're in this forest, or in a building or underground or what. I'd prefer to sneak around in the grass, but Pointer just wants to run ahead.

Aha, so that's where we're going.

We don't get anywhere near it before a sniper starts shooting at us.

Pointer orders me to take care of the sniper. I don't know what exactly he wants me to do about it, because I don't have a sniper rifle. This is the first game I've played so far that allows you to hold right mouse button to steady your aim, but all it does is move the gun slightly closer to the screen. Bolt doesn't want to look down the sights.

Can I kill the sniper from this distance with the assault rifle like this? You bet your ass I can!

This pleases me greatly.

It's so nice for there to be 'a distance', never mind be able to see it, never mind be able to see it clearly, never mind be able to shoot people there!

I reload a save because I want to see if I can get close to the sniper and knock him off the tower somehow.

As it turns out, there's no 'somehow' about it: these guns pack some serious punch. A couple of shots from the assault rifle at close range and the sniper is sent spinning through the air, twisting and sprawling every which way.

Now I am the great sniper.

Pointer wants me to cover him while he runs through the front gates like a loony. I shoot the guards one by one, causing them to fly, jitter and roll about the place like leaves in wind.

The blue sniper screen doesn't make seeing the guards easy. Pointer seems to be doing just fine against the guards I can't see.

That's a nice buggy. Shame I can't drive it because I'm stuck up here. (And there's no way the game would let me anyway.)

I tried to make my way down to help Pointer at close range but that earns me a Mission Failed for disobeying my commander. (I thought we were partners!)

I can snipe the driver and gunner, though, which puts a big smile on my face.

Outta ammo. I spin round and find a box full of grenades. That's a lot of grenades!

Throughout all of this Super Adventure I tried using these grenades on every type of enemy in every encounter in every level. They were completely useless. Bolt takes two seconds to throw one, and sometimes the game bugs out and you can't throw another (you start to throw ghost 'dud' grenades). They make a nice bang, but they're crap compared to the guns.

Pointer's got himself into a bit of a fix, so I've got to bust in the facility myself and get him out.

Turns out you CAN drive the buggy! I drove it into a tree.

The buggy is fun, controllable and has a great big machine gun turret on top. I'm free to explore the island with it, but it's a shame there's nowhere to go and nothing to shoot.

Okay, fun's over. Now we get Serious and move on to the Test Chamber 01, the inside of this thing.

Bloody hell, is it ever dark in here! I don't have a light or magic bionic eyes or anything.

At this range, the heartbeat sensor at the bottom of the screen lets me see all the enemies in the rooms ahead but it's so damned dark they always shoot me first and kill me pretty much instantly. I'm lucky they all have a couple of health packs for the taking.

Since we were in close quarters, I decided to give those grenades another try. The alternate fire is just as slow as the regular fire but the grenades are rolled instead of thrown, meaning that there's at least a slim chance of scoring some radical air.

The whole mission was a set up by Pointer and now I'm locked in a stinky dark room with only a space Uzi for company. DARN.

Bolt tries all the doors but they're all locked. He stops just short of saying 'WHERE IS IT?' before this chick in a crazy orange leather catsuit appears. She doesn't explain why she's here, but she can open the doors, which is good enough for Logan.

There's guards everywhere but they're super easy to kill. If they don't kill you first.

Or if you shoot Carrie. Don't shoot her. Not even by accident.

We've reached the roof! There's guards here, but I can take them down with the assault rifle at this range without even needing to steady it. I don't know where we go from here, and what's that noise?

It's Pointer! And he's nicked the ship! Give it back, you thief!

A couple of seconds of concentrated automatic fire and the ship's a smoking wreck. Ha ha! Now... how are we going to get off this planet?

These hovercraft weren't here before! Not that I'm complaining! Let's get out of here!

The drive from the facility to the forest was playable, but all there was to do was dodge a tank before the next cutscene started. We escape on Carrie's ship and make it very clear that we're sick of the sight of each other and should get as far away from each other as possible.

One Year Later: Bolt and Carrie are working together as bounty hunters in a far flung corner of the galaxy.

There's a really long cutscene on the ship where they discuss the next job. Their distracting, weak, over-loud delivery of the script that makes me wish this cutscene was OVER.

Hey! I get to choose my loadout for the next mission! I can pick from any guns I want! Except the sniper rifle! BAH!

Chrome's got a tile based inventory system. All of the enemies you kill have their inventory which you can raid for goodies. For all of the enemies that I've found so far, the game has let me take their gun if I want it. The only gun you really need is the assault rifle but as always you'll end up using whatever the enemy have because that's all you'll find ammo for.

Remember when I said in the Tron 2.0 adventure that if I found 'Tile Based Inventory System with RPG Elements and Lots of Boxes You Fill With Stuff You Find (and there's probably an FPS in there somewhere too) The Game' you'd never see me again... well, Chrome is very almost exactly that.

I don't get why I have a bunch of smaller slots numbered 1 to 6. They're not bound to the weapon number keys; the weapons wouldn't fit in those little boxes anyway. The weapon number keys are really awkward in Chrome: 1 is knife (if you have it), 2 is pistol, 3 is assault rifle AND shotgun AND space Uzi (not all at once, sadly). If you're carrying more than one of them, it's a gamble which one Bolt will whip out at any time.

The game only lets me take two health packs with me even though they only take up two boxes. That's going to be a bit of a problem, because I go through a lot of those things.

Carrie's dropped me off on... another pretty planet! That's ace!

This time, without that idiot Pointer yelling at me, I'm free to explore the island at my leisure and cause whatever chaos I please.

You thought Jurassic Park week had ended. It's only just begun!

This game is fun... when the enemies aren't doing their super-accurate, super-deadly thing and the weapons are glitching up. The music was suitable and the weapons go bang. It gets to live!

Next!