Posted on: April 2, 2011

wildstoo

Games: 268 Reviews: 1

Decent premise, abysmal execution.

Avoid this game. It has perhaps the worst AI and pacing I've ever seen. It's a shame, because the engine itself was quite nice, and there was some interesting level design in places, but the broken AI and the fact that enemies frequently pop in from nowhere right in front of you (or behind you) makes it no fun at all to play. Once again, avoid this game.

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Posted on: August 12, 2020

schickimicky

Verified owner

Games: 672 Reviews: 48

Chaser, but why?

Warning: do you ever wanted to steer a submarine with bad controls into grey water into a grey ship graveyard? You can't see anything. It's really an absolute programmed mess. Have a look at these underwater vids on youtube before buying this title. I hate using cheats and stopped playing, perhaps I will skip these awful levels later on to be able to see the end titles. Really the worst levels I ever saw in a pc game. These programmers should have oriented themselves to the underwater levels of nolf or red faction instead before creating such a crap. Pros: budget shooter, sci-fi setting, the patched gog version runs stable on win 10 64 BIT so far, on average okay graphics, few graphic glitches, nice soundtrack, big choice of weapons, good shooting behaviour, bullet time mode, it's a little fun. Cons: huge levels without map function, sometimes you stand right in front of the exit, but you can't see it, stupid enemy intelligence, much too long and too many video sequences with bad voice acting and forgettable story plot, clone company of always the same enemy types with same parents, endless waves of enemies or buildings filled with enemies each number of meters, sometimes everywhere respawning enemies, especially from behind out of nowhere, at times very hard even on easy mode. Better skip this title and play again one of your well-known shooter classics.

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Posted on: October 28, 2011

rampancy

Verified owner

Games: Reviews: 15

A game you may hate to love...

Remember that "FPS then and now" picture that people love to put up from time to time? Or EPIC/People Can Fly's parody game "Duty Calls"? That's what I was thinking of as I was playing through the first two sections of Chaser, an FPS that's gotten a lot of love over on the Steam forums. On some level, I can understand why, with a decent plot premise reminiscent of Total Recall and a refreshingly contemporary assortment of weapons reminiscent of games like CS or Urban Terror. But while there were a lot of good ideas and elements that made it into the game (like the start of Montack City), the game just turns into a disappointingly linear FPS with a plot that apparently falls flat on its face towards the final act. It's not Chaser's linearity which ultimately bugs me; the fantastic Painkiller, which was released not long after Chaser, is arguably even more linear than Chaser. No, it's that Cauldron never seems to *do* anything with that linearity. Enemies and NPCs look, sound and feel utterly generic, and the levels, while sprawling and impressive in their architecture, nevertheless feel utterly bland and boring in their texture work and detail. As a cheap way to itch that scratch for some old-school run-and-gun FPS game play (or if you want to play a game where you want to feel like you're Ahnohld in Total Recall), Chaser will do in a pinch, but otherwise, the game to get will still be Painkiller...which is a real shame, given that this title had so much unrealized potential to be Painkiller's sci-fi complement.

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Posted on: September 25, 2013

chlop

Verified owner

Games: 2568 Reviews: 106

Tries to mix things up, but fails

Having a knack for buying computers with partial support for OpenGL, Direct3D and the like, I never really played any modern games before playing Chaser. I know Chaser isn't exactly modern, but I was excited to escape DOS games and play a modern shooter. Sadly, despite its interesting premise, it quickly becomes repetitive. It seems that despite having missions in various locations, ranging from an island to deep space, most missions take place indoors. Meaning that no matter where you are, everything looks the same. And despite the high variety in mission locations, all you really do is move from room to room shooting people. It's fun for a few missions, but quickly becomes stale. The game does change later on, but only for the worse. Like when you're asked to act stealthily in a game that has no real stealth mechanics, or when you're given an escort mission. That escort mission gave me flashbacks of playing this game before, only then it was called Time Crisis, and I played it in an arcade. The game does try to avoid being an arcade corridor shooter by having smart enemies - ones that hide & change location when they're hit, but they do it in such a predictable way, they might as well stand in the middle of the room. Also due to bad design or bad AI, you can hurt enemies without them ever knowing you're attacking them. It seems enemies won't spot you through windows, or see you peeping down corridors, giving you ample time to aim and shoot. You can also shoot through solid objects - such as shooting through the roof and hitting the people standing on it. Their shadow bleeds through the roof, making them easy targets. A bit of story might have saved this game from being mediocre, but cutscenes are so long, sometimes stringed one after the other, I usually skipped them. After all, the game is so linear and confined, the plot doesn't really matter. Walk from A to B shooting everyone in sight. It is fun, but it was more fun in the arcade, wielding a light gun.

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Posted on: November 11, 2011

beliar

Verified owner

Games: 379 Reviews: 11

Guilty pleasure

Chaser is in no way a perfect game, but I have a lot of fond memories playing in endlessly a long time ago, and upon replaying it I can say, that it still is hugely entertaining. In Chaser you are an amnesiac man waking up aboard a space station, that is suddenly attacked by hostile forces. The game will take you from space to Earth to gang turfs and deep see trenches to the cold wastes of Syberia and even exotic Mars. If I have to use one word to describe the game, it's "ambitious". Chaser starts with a bang and for the first half of the game engages in a non-stop heart-pounding action. However developers ran out of steam and after that the game becomes more bland and repetitive, storyline also suffers as a consequence. Still, I would consider it to be one of the strongest scenarios in an FPS. The game is fairly challenging and provides a lot of guns to help you. Even an easy difficulty setting is of quite moderate difficulty. Also the game is very long and might just be one of the longest first person shooters. The downside that in the end the game becomes repetitive and is quite buggy (nothing critical; some graphical glitches, ability to get stuck in walls, jumping doesn't work as intended...). Pros: Strong plot Memorable characters Engaging gameplay Varied missions (shoot them all levels, sniping levels, underwater levels, stealth levels) Very long Lots and varied weapons Graphics still look good even today Cons: Buggy The second half of the game is worse and becomes repetitive, design also suffers Underwater levels are notorious (though they are more irritating than actually difficult) Extremely unsatisfying ending Other: Voice acting is so bad, that it becomes good:-)

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