Chrome

More and more games from the Eastern Europe are coming out by different developers. Even if not perfect (and some of them have bugs making the games unplayable) this one is a bit exception. The Polish Developer Techland, has released the first in series of the game Chrome. Like said even though the game isn’t perfect, it show some potential, and gave me a pleasant surprise by performing really well with not so many game bugs. The story of the game is focuses only on one thing, Chrome. Chrome is a mineral that has replaced almost every other resource in the world and the company that controls the import and export of this mineral in the universe almost controls the universe itself. The game is set in the 22nd century, and by then Earth’s technology has improved enormously. But now there is a struggle in the universe between the two main and the greatest companies that are fighting between themselves for the overall predominance over the complete mining and shipping of the Chrome in the universe. That's where you come in. You play as Logan, a mercenary caught between the power struggles of the two corporations. You will be hired by the companies to do different tasks for them, but in the end it will be your decision, will you chose to stay on the companies side, or team up with the workers who are being mistreated in a horrible way. Chrome is comprised of 14 levels spread over a number of different planets. Most of your missions will be put together by multiple tasks and they will require different objectives to be accomplished like stealing secret documents, rescuing hostages, download data from a computer deep within an enemy base, demolition buildings and plain old' vanilla assassination. On the standard game difficulty, it should take you about a half of a day, to wrap it up, depending on the skills you possess. Attacking while running directly at the enemy is a 100% suicide. While you’re running it is impossible to get a clean shot as the aim is going back and forth. The best tactics is to lay low and using a wide range weapon to get a clean shot. Chrome offers up a variety of different play styles within its first-person shooter core, like driving vehicles, manning turrets and sniping from high towers, making you adapt to the game very quickly or you have nothing to look for in the game. You will come across some mini-games that will require from you to break into enemy computers and perform such actions as disabling security systems, downloading valuable information and opening previously locked areas. As for the equipment you have at your disposal, you are being limited to a certain number of weapons and accessories that you can carry with you. As you have to watch on your limited space you will be mostly carrying two different weapons with you, one short-range, one with a long-range. An ideal combination with surely be a pistol and a sniper rifle. But there are missions that require different setting of equipment like a rocket launcher instead of a sniper rifle. But you don’t have to worry about running low on ammo or health packs, as you will stumble on them by killing your foes and searching them afterwards. So looking up ammo and additional medic packs shouldn’t pose a problem at least not for those who aren’t playing on the hardest level of gameplay. As we are talking about a game that is set in the 22nd century there are additional boosts or better yet implants for you to use as when you need them. They give you special abilities such as increased speed, hardened skin, more accurate aiming and a built-in zoom function. The one you will find most useful is the implant that increases your movement speed. The AI of the game is something that you shouldn’t be afraid of too much as they won’t pose any immediate threat for you. You will find yourself in situations when you take out one of them and his comrade won’t even notice it if he wasn’t standing nearby. But if you are looking challenges that will make you sweat and fell your heart pumping adrenalin into your bloodstream than the Very Hard mode is for you. In the previous difficulty levels you are provided by movement radar, which you lose in this mode and everything from ammo to medic packs are used only when thinking twice. The accuracy of the foes is increased enormously, so there is no fooling around more, especially in the Boss battles. This game even if not as highly ranked as other games released in this genre is a good-looking shooter that features nice textures, bump-mapping, beautiful, realistic natural environments and shafts of light that trickle through the canopy of trees. Even if the game isn’t as “perfect” as with some games, you can feel something else when looking around different areas in the game. When you are searching through a building you will notice they are done almost by the blueprints of the game, as you will come across dead ends in storages and closets. Or when you are going on a mission to recover some data from an enemy base you can just get it to finish up the level, fleeing and going to the extract point is also included. The audio system of the game is probably the weakest thing about it as it has some lacks to match with the noise that should be made like walking through thick forest, but you just hear the noise of walking on the grass nothing else. Besides the single-player mode you will be offered a couple of multiplayer modes, pretty standard for a shooting game, like death match and capture the flag. All in all we have a game that maybe if not in the rank of games that are released in the similar time as it was it does meet a lot of expectations of the FPS fans, but the multiplayer mode needs working on it as it lacks in lot of areas that concerns it. For the time being stick to the single player mode and you will not certainly regret it.