Farewell, John (Game Review: Chaser)
No, it’s not a real person I’m saying farewell to but John Chaser, a rebel fighting against a megacorporation in the universe of the videogame "Chaser".
I finished it again some days ago and I won’t be playing it again. It’s time to retire this great game and remove it from my hard drive.
Right from the first time I played it last year, I fell in love with the game engine. I had only a 2-pipeline videocard, which was pathetic but the game played well with decent graphics. After Halo, I was high and dry, a game addict flopping on the dry shores of FPS Island — there were no more sci-fi shooters I could get my hands on. (Well there was Pariah, but critics say it’s horrible.) After the first few minutes of fighting visored troopers on board a space station orbiting Earth I was hooked.
The game has decent AI. The troopers will take cover behind pillars, airlocks, and barricades and will take potshots at you with automatic, high-caliber weapons. Certainly, it isn’t Far Cry as far as AI quality is concerned, much less F.E.A.R., but hell, they know how to take cover!
It was enough for me; I dashed though corridors overlooking our looming blue planet as the space station, having been thrown off orbit, squealed and strained against the explosions ripping its innards, Earth’s gravity well slowly sucking it inexorably into its atmosphere. It was run-and-gun!! It was a dumbed-down Far Cry that was more than saved by the intensity of its firefights.
And man, was it intense! Troopers will rush at you in groups of three or four, screaming "Freeze!" or "I see him!" They know how to use grenade launchers; many were the instances where they shredded my armor with grenades before they went in and finished me off with machine-gun fire. It was the perfect cathartic escape.
Months later, I purchased a Geforce 6600 GT and wondered how the game would look like. I played it again and the game turned out to be, if not stunning, then gorgeous.
No, you don’t get to pilot these but they do swoop in into one of the best cutscenes I’ve ever seen.
Ripe melon!
The game doesn’t hold back when it comes to blood and gore.
Varied terrains; doesn’t get monotonous.
Later on, you get to face MARSCORP’s elite.
Of course the game has not without its flaws and I have two gripes against it namely its audio and some instances where the AI gets fooled. Soldiers don’t run for cover or go against the offensive if they don’t see you; if you see a shoulder or a foot sticking out from a corner or a doorway, it’s goodbye Gracie without even a shot fired from the other side. Chaser’s audio is lacking too; its background music is more than decent for me but its effects leave something to be desired. The weapons are loud, they have this "oomph!" but always they lack some sound from the high frequency range inherent in weapons fire and turn out sounding kind of hollow. (Think of the machine gun and BFG in Doom 3 and you get my idea of a perfect balance between bass and treble in each shot fired.)
All in all, Chaser is good and above average for gamers on a tight budget; the Cloak engine it uses can render coronas, sheen and other eye candy pretty well even for budget videocards. Think of tweaked 2002 graphics, run-and-gun style of play that makes you scream "Bring em’ on!!" as glass shards shower you amidst explosions and you will have one hell of a time in crossfires with Yakuza, gangsters, soldiers, and elite MARSCORP troopers in power armor.
As a reviewer wrote "……so over the top, so outrageously violent, that it would make John Woo proud."
Farewell John Chaser. Or should I say —— nah, that would spoil the plot. 
/Me types "regedit"…..
