Chrome Preview

The blossoming scene of FPS games today gets another good and promising title, coming from the Polish developer/publisher TechLand. Chrome is a first-person person shooter with a cool sci-fi storyline. Your main character, Logan, is one of the best and highly-trained mercenaries of the 25th Century. He has a standing of four long years in the so-called Expedition Corps and another four in the SpecForce. The most distant planetary system of the New Frontier, Valkyria, is the perfect place for a mercenary. In short, Logan found himself in between two powerful conflicting corporations that are constantly struggling to gain control of the valuable minerals and similar resources that represent the very essence of the Valkyria solar system.

Welcome to the Chrome limbo contest!

Weeeee!

After you've realized the purpose of Logan's journey's you'll get to travel with him to five different planets, where many intricate tasks await completion. Each planet has its own distinctive atmosphere conditions as well as unique settings such as: tropical forests, rocky deserts, canyons, craters, snowy glaciers, lakes, and mountains. In these vast worlds gamers are going to have to complete 14 extremely challenging missions, some of which do not necessitate the clichéd shoot-everything-that-moves-on-screen principal. It was recently uncovered that the in-game mission assignments will feature a few rather exigent tasks; for example, most of them require a more stealthy approach since they denote ultimate tasks such as steal, retrieve, escape, and so on. In these cases, your enemies are going to be too numerous to be handled by yourself, hence you must avoid being seen as often as possible... If you wish to survive that is. After all, Logan is a skillful bounty hunter and that means he'll need slyness to progress through the game. This is where the game's interesting augmentation system comes into play - a system that's manifested by slotting various implants into your character, enhancing parameters like accuracy, endurance, stealth, movement, and additionally they will improve Logan's sensory abilities and reflexes.

In order to complete his missions Logan is going to have to use the standard bounty-hunter equipment at his disposal. That's mostly your usual lot, such as the Auto Pistol, Silenced Pistol, Combat Shotgun, Sub-Machine Gun, Assault Rifle, and Sniper Rifle. Other weapons and items include cool and varied futuristic thingies like the ASR Nitron HEX Individual Rifle, LeRogue BM4000 HEX Auto Cannon (a destructive, but extremely heavy and slow weapon), and Xatron Mark IV Heavy Hunting Rifle. To ensure you won't get bored, and to make the gameplay generally easier there's the cool addition of handy futuristic equipment, like the Dermal Armor (a full body armor that reduces the damage of bullets), the Smart Pistol Link Mark (automatically seeks target at closer range), Scoped Eye (a useful addition to weapons that don't have a zooming scope).

Another aspect that can now be called a typical ingredient to any FPS game is the inclusion of vehicles which players can drive and utilize in combat. FPS drivers will be happy to know that there will be diverse vessels for them to handle; ranging from light-style and speedy vehicles like the RMG Conquistador (a four-wheel utility vehicle, similar to the buggy we've seen in Mobile Forces) and the B303 Slider (which resembles the hovering speeder bikes from the movie Return of the Jedi), to heavier tank-like modes of transport such as the ArmoBeatle4. In addition to those, gamers will also get to try out two types of Mech units (the so-called GOLEM IV and the TC SteelGuardian). But that's not all, cause the game will also feature a couple of flying units like space ships, shuttles, air-transport units, etc.

What's up dude? Rough night?

Zoom in and take him out.

In terms of in-game graphics Chrome's main building block would definitely have to be the highly detailed environment. It's something similar to what we've seen in Serious Sam - huge levels and lots of vegetation. Moreover, varying planet atmospheres indicate different weather conditions, so that each level is going to feature different environmental conditions that go in accordance with the planet's climate (you can mostly expect to see heavy rain, strong snowstorms, and so on). The game is also powered by a pretty solid physics engine, which allowed the developers to add various interesting gameplay enhancements. For example, in-game models will fall down differently almost every time they are hit, and the way they'll collapse largely depends on the structure of the terrain and nearby obstacles. Nice and realistic, you might say.

For players who wish to entail themselves in Chrome multiplayer matches, the developers are preparing the customary deathmatch, team deathmatch, and CTF modes. Plus, there will be other variations like domination and last man standing. Before each multiplayer game, players are going to have a choice of configuring the modes they wish to play in (adjusting players' abilities, style of gameplay, etc.). Sadly, it looks like the game won't feature a cooperative multiplayer mode. Still, all of the other modes of play are enough to provide you with hours of online and offline multiplayer fun (allowing up to 32 players at once).

As you can see, we have another promising FPS title on our hands and it is likely that Chrome will find itself a home among many gamers throughout the world. It will be released shortly after summer 2002.