Oh, how I wanted to like
Chaser. Or, to put a finer point on it: oh, how I wanted
to give Chaser a good score. In fact, I did enjoy large
segments of the game, as Chaser certainly starts out
strong.
The title character,
John Chaser, awakens on a space station with no memory
and in a heap of trouble. The station is being attacked
- with Chaser as the primary target - and his narrow
escape results in continued flight from danger on the
unfriendly city below. Or as the box explains, his fight
through hell. One of the game's best moments follows
as large chunks of the just-destroyed station can be
seen careening into the towering skyscrapers above.
The effect of these massive
structures' height and the brilliant balls of flame
smashing into them is wonderful. Other Über Moments
include a sequence where the space station is beginning
to break up, causing a corridor to do an Irwin Allenesque
tip to the side worthy of a Shelley Winters fly-by.
These scripted sequences in Chaser's early game are
frequent enough to add interest without becoming intrusive.
The techno soundtrack is good enough to make you pause
and listen, provided you are a fan of the genre. Stable
code (the game never crashed on my system) and a high
framerate added to my optimism that this title would
be a winner.
Such optimism was not
to be sustained. Chaser soon devolves into a repetitious
corridor-crawl where the tired tedium of die/quickload/kill/quicksave
becomes the core gameplay. Samey levels make it difficult
to determine if you are advancing through the map or
retracing your steps. Frustratingly difficult mission
objectives and contorted jumping puzzles interrupt
the tedium but serve largely as temptation to quit
the game altogether. Worst of all is an inability to
jump higher than your shoelaces. Ladders are often
a death sentence. Invisible barriers frequently prevent
exploration.
The game's weapons do
provide a decent tactical challenge. The weapons are
varied enough that the right choice will aid in your
advance, and snipers will enjoy Chaser's substantial
sniping level which takes place atop a lighthouse.
Despite these strengths, the weapons themselves, modeled
on real-world guns, are rather dull for this type of
game. Plasma-spewing gauntlet of death is more my thinking
for a sci-fi assault. Instead you are armed with a
MAC 10.
The UI is a mixed bag,
too. Quickloads and quicksaves are mercifully fast
(you will die a lot), but there is no compass to aid
in navigation. The HUD has no labels to identify items
until they are obtained, and rotating through weapons
with the scroll wheel is slow because the animations
must play before the next weapon can be selected. A "bullet
time" feature (dubbed "adrenaline mode" here)
provides a nice assist for those tougher enemies.
Criticism of a game's
AI has always seemed a bit pointless to me because
there isn't any AI worthy of the name "Artificial
Intelligence." At least none that I have witnessed.
Nevertheless, the AI in Chaser is especially bad. Enemies
often remain motionless as you slowly chip away at
their health from around a corner. The voice acting
of the main character is consistent with the AI - really,
really dumb.
The characters' dialogue
is humorless and the story becomes incomprehensible
by game's end. Chaser doesn't know who he is, neither
do we, and there is no reason to care. Plot twists
of the friend-turned-foe variety abound, adding both
to the pointlessness of bonding with the characters
and to the sense of the game's unoriginality. Absurd
plot details confound believability, as when gang members
attack Chaser - because his space station escape pod
crashed into their turf. Think Space Shuttle astronauts
having to fight their way through South Central LA.
Not even.
So, I'm left with the
sad duty of scoring this title with an honest two stars.
If you've already played everything in the near-future
sci-fi FPS genre, really love playing as a sniper,
highly value stable code, find a strong framerate essential,
but don't care about story quality or creative level
design, then Chaser might be worth your time. Everyone
else should pick up one of today's other excellent
titles. - Last Update 06/11/06
