Chromehounds Retro Review
The Short Version: Chromehounds had a persistent online war mode where players created their own customized “battle mechs” and joined a squad of teammates to do battle for their nation. With an amazing variety of encounters, actual squad coordination and deep customization options, the online experience was amazing and highly addictive, too bad it didn’t last.
In this older Angry Joe Video I reminisce about the good old days with a game called Chromehounds. Never heard of it? That’s why I hate you. Because had this game been more successful we might have seen a sequel by now. This game however when it had first released made for some of the most fun online battles i’ve ever taken part in. Here’s my quick video blog run-down of it.
It was certainly a great game, but its odd because I cant particularly recommend it present day, you see it was primarily online based – with a persistent territory control mechanic, and now that its been over 3 years after release date – i’m sure the community is dead or at the very least not what it used to be. I just wanted to say thank you to those of you who bought it when it came out, and EFF you to those of you who ignored it.
I doubt we will ever see a Chromehounds 2 as the franchise seems to be the bastard child of From Software, not even mentioned anywhere on their website. Hopefully one day we will see something like a sequel in a different game, where we can once again do battle in a persistent online war with custom created mechs of DESTRUCTION!
Until then you can read this poorly written “quick” review.
The Review: In the future three factions wage war against each other using mechs called Hounds. As a pilot of one of these hounds you will get to construct your very own machine like a Lego set – adding components that fit your play style. Like Speed? Go with a lighter load. Like Heavy Firepower? Pack on the Big Guns. There are six different role types which include, Soldiers, Snipers, Defenders, Scouts, Heavy Gunners, and specialized Tactics Commanders. The sheer amount of parts, role types, and system devices spread out over the three sides make for some awesome variety when you actually engage with the enemy.
Once you’ve perfected your vehicle you can take into the Persistent Online War where you join one of three factions battling for control of the global map. While Chromehounds wasn’t the first game to offer this kind of persistent online experience it’s certainly among the best. What makes the experience so memorable is the pacing. Chromehounds isn’t your fast, shoot-em up where you have tenths of a second to react before you are killed – respawning miles away from the action. No, instead you are piloting a 1000 ton battlemech, therefore you can soak up alot of damage. This makes for a more strategic experience – did you get separated from your squad mates? and are now being attacked by 2 enemy hounds at once? No problem return fire, hit reverse, pull up your map to scream your coordinates to your squad mates, and while taking swigs of your beer as your jarred around inside your cockpit – chances are your buddies will arrive in time (especially if you built your mech to soak up enough damage) for a spectacular and cinematic counter-attack! The fact that you dont die in one hit (and neither does the enemy) forces you to coordinate strategies with your team-mates, and brings importance on making sure you have appropriate equipment and weapons for the task at hand.
It’s these sort of scenarios that play out at a speed that anyone can handle that setup some of the most fun gaming sessions i’ve ever had online. Few games made me feel apart of a larger war, a critical piece in an otherwise massive campaign the way Chromehounds did. At least thats what the experience was like when the game first released in 2006. I’m sure the online space is deader than hell these days, with only impossibly hard veterans scouring the barren maps for newbies that picked up the game from the bargain bin. And its a fucking shame, and the number one reason why Sega needs to bring this game back, Chromehounds 2 needs to be made. Take everything they’ve learned from the first one, add some new features and you’ve got yourself at least one happy customer for sure – me.
What you’ll Like:
• Deep and Engaging Customization of your very own Chromehound.
• An addicting Persistent Online War Mode that had you waking up in the middle of the night to see how your faction was progressing
• A massive amount of gameplay variety and replay value in the online war mode. Make no mistake this was an online game, everything good about it was found in mutiplayer online & the Mech Garage.
• Piloting a Massive mech that can soak damage allows you to coordinate attacks and work together better with squadmates.
What you’ll Hate:
• Single-Player was mainly just to unlock and familiarize yourself with the various mech classes so you can take these puppies online, but I can forgive that, this was the point of the game.
• Graphics weren’t anything special, but it sure was satisfying to see a big mech bite the dust.
• As time went on some players started building hounds that exploited the game, jerks ruined it for alot of people.
• Chromehounds was an acquired taste, with slower gameplay it’s certainly not for everyone.
Final Verdict:
8/10
Normally I’d tell you to buy it here, but its too late you asshole! You should have known about it back then. Ass.
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79 thoughts on “Chromehounds Retro Review”
They took the server down for AVP? I always thought the server was melted by a guy’s glitched mech with 37000 linked howitzers that he proceeded to fire all at once and it melted the servers. Either way, I wish I had been able to get online with this, I’ve seen old gameplay and it looks AMAZING. Btw cromehounds 2 never was made
First game, I got on the xbox 360, It was the REASON I bought an xbox 360 way back then, I played it till they took the server down for AVP game… DAMN YOU SEGA YOU BLEW IT UP!!!!!
I am proud to say i did played it. A friend gave it to me once, (I did give back to him) and i loved it. I searched for the game everywhere to buy it, but never found it. Chromehounds was one of the first games i played on my XBOX 360 and it was awesome, i kept looking for it untill… i found out the game was dead… Even tough i only played it for a week, i loved it, and remember it to date, Chromehounds is one of my remembered games that i regret i had never bought. Reciently my friend broke the disk and i almost killed him T-T
hey guys someone is working on a sequel to chromehounds, its in alpha and done by a small team but looks promising and I think we should support it! look up http://www.bombdogstudios.com/
hey try armored core 4, for answer and 5
I have played for answer. My cousin and I used to play armored core raven or whatever it was on the playstation 2 and loved it, so when for answer came out I bought it. To be perfectly honest Armored core is NOTHING like cromehounds. Sure you can still make your own unique mech and to be fair the customization is badass. But the gameplay is just not the same. Cromehounds mechs were slow and clunky, even wheeled and hover mechs were not overly fast but thats what it was meant to be like. Armored core is nauseatingly fast paced and if you’re not good and keeping track of EVERYTHING while your constantly jumping and flying about then you’re going to die ALOT against any kind of enemy “next”. I consider myself to be a gamer possessing some skill, and enemy “nexts” even on the easiest difficulty setting, whooped my ass. Apologies for long post lots of differences.
When this game first came out i bought it, I LOVE IT. I didn’t have Xbox live so i didn’t do multiplayer, but i personally enjoyed it. I hope that someone will pick up the franchise and make it even more amazing with modern graphics.
so miss this game was the best mech game me and my friends ever played…..chromhounds you will be missed….. T_T
The online for this game was great, I actually subscribed to Xbox Live JUST for this game. Was super pissed when they shut the servers down. Hope the likes of Hawken and the new Mechwarrior series picks up where it left off. I loved how if you had a battery of guns on one side firing at once the recoil would force your mech to pivot a little, knocking your aim off. Needed more mpas though, people in heavies with siege guns could just sit in a specific position and dial in on the bases just from playing the map THAT MANY TIMES
Wow, I got this game a few years ago because I was looking for something like MechAssault. I completely blew it off because the singleplayer sucked hardcore, it was super boring. Now I feel like an idiot for not trying the multiplayer, but i might’ve been too late already.
when i first got this game i didn’t have XBL so i blew it off as a bad game because of the SPC then i found some gameplay after getting XBL and re-bought it. when i load it up the servers are down. sucks that i mist out on a great multiplayer experience.
Ammending my previous comment. FromSoftware isn’t necessarily the ones to blame for AC5′s lack of support, Namco/Bandai, the publisher, holds responsability for updates and patches, and they have been evading the responsability quite effectively. In defense of the original comment, FromSoftware has released Chromehounds, four installments of Armored Core, and a few other mech games, so they shouldn’t have had some of the issues it had on release.
As an alternative to AC5 and CH, I’m watching a new mech game for the PC that has some potential. It’s called Hawken, and is scheduled for release on 12/12/12. It follows a Free2Play module, with paints and customizations available to purchase, and more weapons to unlock as you play. It will be multiplayer only, and teases two major team game types that should take up the bulk of the game, as well as the standard deathmatch and team deathmatch type games.
So, this December, if you are still hurting over the loss of Chromehounds like I am, take a look at Hawken. Again it’s Free2Play, so your life will be none the worse for looking at the page.
The official website is: http://www.playhawken.com
At the time of this post, it is in closed beta.
Fucking Chromehounds, damn I miss it. Though, yelling at Sega isn’t the way to go, you need to yell at Fromsoftware. They developed it, Sega just published it and hosted the servers. Fucksticks took down the servers, and I never got a refund check for the multiplayer parts I bought with MS points, so that’s just great.
Fromsoftware did release Armored Core 5, which is Chromehounds like, but last I played it closer to the release date, there was like one shotgun build that was simply superior to everything else, and it’s like the company gave the bare minimum amount of fucks for their Japonese playerbase, and no fucks about the Americans at all. Weeks went by, and they didn’t even give us the same balancing patch released in Japan. I don’t know if this is still the case, but damn is it frustrating when there is only one arm component worth having in the whole game.
But yeah, I bought the game at a discount in 2007 for $20 dollars, which was worth every penny. I wish I found the game sooner, and sure as Hell wish we had the fantastic multiplayer, instead of just the mediocre singleplayer.
hey Joe, if you like mech games like chrome hounds, try fromsoftware’s mainstreem mech series Armored Core, armored core V came out a few months ago so maby you can still review it!
I remember this game. I got it a two or three years after it came out and the community was still going strong. The campaign was fun and the multiplayer was great, being a noob sucked even more than normal though. First Mech game that I ever really got into.
Ah, the good old days…
Well, I recommend that you do more Retro reviews, and I did a retro review on Spacebattles.com of an old game (that case, the utterly crazy awesome that is Conquest: Frontier Wars) and when they recend the restriction, you can view it at the given address: http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=216452
You do a good retro review, and what you’ve said about Chromehounds does it justice…
Huge mechagame, you maybe should take look.
https://playhawken.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udEAEARD-Fo
I had to post on this even though this video is ancient. I am one of the few people I know who actually played Chromehounds back in its day. And I can say without a doubt that I share Angry Joes enthusiasm when it comes to Chromehounds. It had it all. Guns, mechs, factions, an economy, hell it even had a hint of politics. I made sure to vote in damn near every election I could. Seeing as how depending on who you elected could change how much you had to pay in taxes at the end of a match it was a smart decision. You would be taxed on things such as how many bullets you fired (The cost of ammunition) or how much damage you took (The cost of repairs). And would be rewarded if the match went well.
The amount of customization was damn near limitless. Want a giant quad-peddle mech that lobs mortars on the enemy team? Do it. Want to speed past them on a mech on wheels and attack their base? FIne, do that as well. (Just make sure you dont put to much weight on those wheels, as each weapon has its own weight, and then you can customize it even further with what type of ammo you want. Even the ammo is weighed dependent on your loadout.) Want a bi-peddle mech like something out of a Japanese anime? DO IT! Hell do it and put 3 shotguns on one arm, a couple of missile launchers on the other, and a mortar on your head! (I had a mech where a smoke grenade launcher was attached near the “groin” of my mech and when I would get attacked I would “poop” a smoke grenade, then pop thermal vision and go to town.) If you can imagine it you can probably build it, and thats where Chromehounds shined.
As he said the online component was unparallelled. First you would choose the faction you would fight for as pretty much a mercenary, then you would build your mech from parts either purchased off of the store that are owned by your faction, or be put in a lottery for an acquired piece of enemy equipment (And lets not forget about all the parts available to you in the single player campaign). You would then go to war in disputed territory to push the enemy out and take control. The more territory you controlled, the better the war was going for you. And if you were not a fan of fighting other players they had computer controlled enemies that you could wage war with, even within the multiplayer itself. So it allowed those who were not so hot at multiplayer the opportunity to feel like they are doing their part as well in the war. And when the war was over, it would reset and start all over again.
Depending on your playstyle you could receive medals that were (for the most part) all achievements. Ranging from attacking the enemy first 100 times to finishing a match with zero bloodshed 50 times. You could receive a medal for being loyal to your faction for 3 wars in a row and for donating $10,000,000 to your government. Since there are so many different medals with so many different requirements it was like you were progressing towards several different medals no matter what your playstyle. And it felt truly rewarding to show off your medals to your Chromehound friends, no matter how few and far between they actually were.
I myself have fought in countless wars and if it was not for the servers being shut down, would continue to fight the good fight. But seeing as how the servers are down, its been many a years since its release, and From Software is pretty much acting like this game never existed…the future looks dark…no, it looks down right PITCH BLACK. And that saddens me to my very core.
I needed to post this because Angry Joe is one of the only people I have ever seen appreciate this diamond encrusted jewel of a game, and that makes me very happy. To know that out of the many wars I may have fought…I wasnt alone.
Thank you Angry Joe.
Well stated man i feel the same way i only got to play the online part for 3 weeks it was so kick ass. GOOD TIMES
Damn right!
I’ll admit, like a lot of folk I overlooked this game at first, the single player was slow, controls were a bit wonky at first, all in all it was something of a chore.
Again, AT FIRST.
Once you understood the control and the combat, you started having a lot of fun, and better still, the online component made this game really last. Admittedly, I need a story with my online, otherwise I tend to loose interested, but in this instance I just made my own and ran with it. At the time I only had two friends that really played it at all, and I think for their birthdays I ended up getting them copies of it just to have folk to play with, but once they were in it (They, like I, were hard core Mechwarrior and Heavy Gear players) they loved it.
Being only three, we ended up doing a little kill team set of tactics. I was the speed demon, running out to bait, they were the hammer and anvil, I’d run out and harass the hell out of them, tiny little guns or mines/grenades, then run back and let my buds hammer them into the DIRT with AT volleys.
Man I miss good mech games…here’s hoping that the new Heavy Gear is done right…it better be…or Joe won’t be the only guy on a plane…
such a good point about mech games vs 1 shot death fps
reminds me of my time playing the original MechWarrior. You make a mech to exploit your friend. Then next time he makes a variant to exploit what u made. etc etc
Get your fuckin leg blown off, but can still use your jet packs to pick yourself up, turn the fight around and KABLAMO!