Chrome

by Strategy First

Product Features

• In the future world of Valkyria, a man named Logan is looking to make a fortune the only way he knows how -- through assassination. See if you can help him reach his goal.
• Make the most of 22nd century science in this first-person shooter, as you combine strategic thinking with quick reflexes to help Logan make his fortune
• You'll have to strategically use various high-tech body implants to give Logan new abilities & skills -- each mission will require different implants that you choose
• Stay alive in deadly futuristic car chases and use your enhanced muscles and heavy plasma gun to plow through walls of enemies
• Innovative gameplay and fantastic graphics in over 14 deadly missions, as you play a silent assassin on the prowl!

Product Details

• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00009WDS8
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: October 28, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #34,921 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Mega-corporations are competing for control of the Valkyria System and its most precious resource...Chrome. Espionage, sabotage and theft are all a part of everyday life in the new frontier, and no one knows this world better than Logan, mercenary for hire. Become Logan in this first-person tactical shooter. Wield an extensive range of weapons. Operate vehicles on land, sea, and air. Learn that one man, the right man, can make a difference.

Slip into Logan’s skin as a one-time elite soldier turned fugitive bounty hunter in the ‘New Frontier’. Betrayed and outlawed by the squad with which he once served, he now uses his talents for personal gain. Enhanced by implants, he has the ability to sneak into high security installations or to barge in with guns blazing...the choice is yours. Survive and discover the secret of Chrome.

Product Description

In Chrome you'll engage in tactical sci-fi shooter action, playing a deadly assassin looking to make his fortune!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great game that nobody played, March 24, 2004

By 

bayou_hannibal "bayou_hannibal" (West Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chrome (CD-ROM)

Chrome is not flawless, but it's just plain fun. There might be some pieces missing, but the most important stuff is done right.

Chrome is a first-person shooter with a couple of important extra features. These features don't sound like much until you actually get to play through them. You play as a mercenary/bounty hunter who travels across the galaxy rescuing hostages, recovering stolen equipment, and then getting in the middle of an intergalactic corporate struggle. The locales that you visit are not only beautiful, but they are huge and wide open. I can't tell you how much I love those big open areas. You can easily spend an hour and a half or more on each mission, thanks to all the time that you spend creeping around in the forest, sneaking up on guard patrols or avoiding them altogether. Sometimes you find a sniper tower that you can use to snipe guys from half a mile away. The levels are very nonlinear and rarely seem like they are contrived or built just for you. Instead, it feels like you are actually infiltrating realistic bases and installations. It's also great being able to play for an hour without seeing a loading screen. There are a lot of indoor areas too, but they aren't as much fun to play in as the outdoor areas.

Stealth ends up playing a big part in this game, and it ends up being surprisingly good. Even the pure stealth levels, which I normally hate in a non-stealth action game, are good. The outdoor areas have lots of trees and rocks to hide behind, and with the use of your binoculars or radar, you can avoid enemy patrols or pop them in the back of the head when you catch them by surprise. Once again, the big open areas are what allow you to do this.

The weapons have a realistic feel to them. Automatic weapons can only be fired in bursts, since the kick to them will make them too inaccurate after a few bullets. Firefights can be pretty tough if you are in the view of more than a couple of enemies. That's why cleverly taking on one at a time is necessary. That's also where your cybernetic implants become a crucial part of the game.

Chrome is not the first game to throw in special powers as a twist to the shooter aspect, but it succeeds where many others fail. They end up working like the force powers in the Jedi Knight games. All seven of your implants are useful, and they are well-balanced enough so that they don't overpower you and make the game too easy. This is mostly due to your nervous system getting overloaded if you use them for too long. If you have three implants turned on, then you can only keep them on for a few seconds at a time. They all seem well thought out, instead of things that were just thrown in because they sounded kinda neat.

The core gameplay is solid, so a lot of the other things that are good are bonuses. The most obvious are the game's gorgeous graphics. Everything looks top-notch. Another is the storyline, which is a nice surprise (in spite of the bad voice acting). Another is the successfully implementation of rag-doll physics. This seems to be hit-and-miss in shooters lately, but here it's great. Enemies seem to respond realistically, depending upon what weapon you shoot them with. A shotgun blast to the face produces a much more drastic rag-doll effect than a silenced pistol shot to the head. Bodies don't dissolve away and disappear like they do in other shooters, and the bullet holes seem to hang around for a while. One great thing about Chrome is that in an era where action games seem to always end after 8 or 10 hours, it lasts more like 15-20.

As I mentioned before, Chrome certainly has flaws. One of them is the enemy AI. It's not bad but it's unsophisticated. Enemies are too easy to kill with grenades, and they generally won't use any advanced tactics to flush you out of hiding places. The worst part of the AI is when you throw a grenade and the guy yells "grenade!", and then just stands there like an idiot until the grenade blows him across the screen. This ends up being the biggest problem in the indoor areas, since enemies kind of just stand there and won't help out their comrades when you are killing them in the next room.

Chrome has so many good parts that it's easy to look past its bad parts. This is a very unique and high-quality shooter in its own right.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chrome - A very pleasant surprise!!!, December 22, 2003

By 

G Darke "zontar" (West Grove, Pa USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Chrome (CD-ROM)

Despite subscribing to two different PC gaming magazines, I had never heard of Chrome till a few weeks ago. I found the playable demo on the web and downloaded it - not expecting much. However ...

The graphics were great (NVIDIA Gforce Ti200 on my machine), the game has a plot that evolves, many single player missions (I did not try the multi-player), different difficulty levels that add real challenge. It took many days to play and after completing the whole game once, I changed the difficulty level and went back and played with more of a stealth strategy (rather than "just shoot everything" and enjoyed the whole thing all over again.

It is on a level with Unreal 2 for plot and game play. I also found it similar in style (weapons, inventory management, strategy, in-game movies, etc) to the first Deus Ex - which is one of my favories.

If you liked games Deus Ex, Unreal 2, Half-Life, and even Halo - you should look at Chrome. It is also a great value for the price.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutly Awesome!, November 16, 2003

By 

"miya_sogabe" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chrome (CD-ROM)

This game is truly awesome and very enjoyable. The graphics are top notch and very realistic, right down to the grass blowing in the wind and the occasional butterfly that flies around. The indoor environments are somewhat repetitive but it is no bother since pre-fab structures would most likely be the norm in space exploration. The game is sort of a mix of Deus Ex and Operation: Flashpoint, but it is more comparable to Deus Ex.

The story lacks the depth of Deus Ex but it is servicable for a game of this type. You play a mercenery named Logan who does dirty work for the various corperations and colonists of the "new frontier" and in this New Fronteir exisst a substance called Chrome. The game never fully explains it but it is a rare substance that is used for terraforming, mass destruction weapons, and as an energy source. It is very much the equivilant of Gold or Uranium. And much like those susbtances, mega corperations are willing to to anything to get their hands on as much of the stuff as possible and develop technologies and make profits based on the material. There are plenty plot twists and turns.

Much like Deus Ex you have augmentations, called implants in this game, and instead of having to watch the bio-electric energy consumption you have to watch your neual health as the implats tend to put it into overdrive and cause it to heat up, which can lead to brain damage. I ended up not needing the implants as much as the augmentations in Deus Ex but they are useful, especially the targeting assistance, eye scope, and dermal armor.

In this game you get to pilot various vehicles, the most interesting of which are combat walkers, which are sort of like mechs. The infantry weapons are typical for a game of this type but at least they are not too quake-like. You get a combat knife, a pistol, a submachinegun, an assault rifle, a heavy assault rifle and my personal favorite, the 14mm Sniper Rifle. You also get a rocket launcher (despite being called anti-tank, it is not very powerful and even light vehicles can take several direct hits), a railgun-type weapon and a Electromagnetic beam weapon (basically a MASER). The default vehicle weapons are also quite limited, being mostly of 20mm cannons and missile launchers for the large walker. The game is moddable (I do not know to what extent) so that could be fixed.

The game's multiplayer is nothing special, being the usual Unreal-like setup and while the game supports bots, they are only used to even out teams. Hopefully mods will change this. And if you have a 56k, stick to games with less people (16 at most). This game is a dark horse and blows other other titles like Halo and Unreal 2 out of the water.

The developers did a great job with the engine. Do not worry about the steep requirements, the game will run quite well on a mid-range system, even if they are equipped with GeForce MX Cards. The detail settings have a minimal impact on the graphical quality so you can set many of the settings to low and you will generally not notice much difference in visual quality. In some places the framerate will choke up, but you can solve it by saving, then quitting and reloading and in some cases even pausing and un-pausing.