Posted on: January 4, 2025

ODB68

Games: 15 Reviews: 1

Not bad for the time

I remember playing this when it first came out; it got pretty good reviews and was considered a good game given the somewhat obvious low budget. Of course it lacks many more modern gameplay features like a cover system, etc., but it was thought of as a good classic-style shooter at the time.

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Posted on: June 7, 2015

Ramevox

Verified owner

Games: 650 Reviews: 68

A really poor game.

I won't be alone saying that I really wanted to like this game. I really did. Lately I'm craving for pre-next gen shooter experiences, even a HL2-level of mediocrity could do (yes, HL2 was a mediocre FPS). Yeah, it's nice it has pretty big, although corridored levels. Resource management is there, you're not a bullet-sponge, medpacks are few and scattered (although it's not balanced - sometimes the game gives you a load of medpacks when you don't need them, taking them away in segments where you need to kill like 50 enemies with only 1 medpack in a current area. There are simple puzzles to solve. They're pretty varied, which is ok. But the gameplay itself is so luckster, it almost gave me a brain tumor while I was beating my teeth out in frustration over spawning enemies at your back or even few steps before you (Little Tokyo, man, fuck this level, man). The spawns are not a problem itself, but their implementation connected with a terrible gunplay (poor sound assets that make almost impossible to locate enemies, no indication where did you get a hit), and the fact sometimes you get 1 or 2 shot from 200 meters long corridor by a godlike aim AI shooting full auto from their uzis, made me to cry over and over with frustration replaying the same segment over and over again, just because the game decided to spawn enemies outside the level (rooftops, closed rooms you don't have access to). I lost my nerve a while ago, replaying the Portland-Khabir level 20 times in a row. The fact the game spawns enemies outside accessible areas over and over again, having also to protect a truck was enough for me to ditch this game. Aside from dying from 1 shots in my head, the truck got destroyed over and over again by yet another spawned enemy on the roof I thought I've cleared 1000 times. The difficulty level is inflated beyond the reason by a poor encounter design and gunplay execution. People not playing it loose nothing.

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Posted on: March 4, 2016

tgw105

Verified owner

Games: 127 Reviews: 24

Worth playing

I played this once before and it was exactly as i remembered - the action is slick enough and you have to stay on your toes - their can literally be enemies around every corner and although they aren't very clever they are often tucked away out of sight and can do you serious damage before you've even seen them. There's a decent range of weapons though i did miss having a shotgun at times. There's a fairly wide variety of maps and some of them are quite cleverly designed to get you lost, but they never get too annoying. The slightly strange plot contains a particularly irritating set of twists and turns and by the end you can't remember what it was about (if you ever knew) but hey this is an FPS - it doesn't matter :-). The game this reminds me of the most is the first Red Faction game - though i'd say that was better if you enjoyed it it's worth playing this. Ultimately if you like an FPS game of this vintage it's diverting enough and as i knew the (very unsatisfactory) ending even that didn't disappoint me this time. I read somewhere there were different endings but it seems it's the same each time.

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Posted on: April 16, 2018

hamishpaulwilson

Verified owner

Games: 739 Reviews: 1

Lacking the charm to be a flawed gem

Chaser starts poorly, featuring a few crappy stealth sections and oftentimes clunky gunplay. Chaser reminds me of the on-foot segments of Shogo in a way due to its tactic of forcing you to take on loads of almost identical weak hitscan enemies that nevertheless are capable of dealing significant damage. The main difference being that Shogo had charm, which Chaser lacks. Production values are also all over the place, with most of the focus seemingly being placed on long elaborate cutscenes while the rest of the game suffers from a lack of attention to detail. I was even able to jump off the map in one level. Interestingly the game featured a bullet time mechanic only a few years before F.E.A.R. did the exact same thing. What undermines it here though is that your own weapon also slows down substantially. Nothing sucks more than having to watch your character reload in slow motion. By the end of the game though it does average out to be decent, in spite of all of its pitfalls. If they had a made a game that was half as long but twice as polished they could have even had something close to exceptional on their hands, as when the gunplay works, like it did for the most part in the Soviet levels, it comes close to Return to Castle Wolfenstein in terms of sniping and tactical bliss. Sadly though most of the time it falls apart due to its overstretched ambition and cumbersome mechanics, not least the impotence of the game's explosives which really started to grate on me by the end, or the intricate platforming and navigation puzzles that just served to show off the game's unwieldiness. Still, compared to how weak the game began I am reasonably impressed with how it turned out by the end. It was certainly worth the measly few dollars I paid for it. By far the biggest strike against it is that it still lacks the charm needed to be a flawed gem.

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Posted on: December 8, 2021

shoboy

Verified owner

Games: 167 Reviews: 5

good old school fun from early 2000's

First and foremost this was a mid priced "budget" title from early 2000's, so take your Half Lifes and Call of Duties and go home if you cant accept less then a AAA title. Chaser is a LONG game so you are getting your monies worth for playtime. It was one of if not the first games to have a "bullet time" and it is done very well. There are a LOT of weapons and they handle great. Levels are really big and take awhile to get through. In engine cut scenes are a bit long and they sometimes break the action in a negative way, but they are narrative related. Graphics were pretty good for the time with a couple of clipping issues here and there but that was the normal back then. Yeah the dialog and overall story was cheesy and lame yet it doesn't ruin the gun shooting action and mayhem that this game has in spades. And AGAIN, this was early 2000's. The one thing that this game was notorious for, and has been mentioned already in most every review, is the enemy respawns and spawning in from nowhere. Even on EASY they have deadnuts accuracy and do more damage than they should on the EASY setting. Health is readily available though, but still, thier aim is unforgiving. This adds to the almost contant action but it does get repetative since this is in reality a pretty big game. Nowadays it's a great bargin for the price and a solid throwback to old school shooters. There was a time where the FPS was the king of PC games and hundreds of them were made. This one was a mid level, budget priced game, and it shows, but it has some qualities to it that many games of that day didn't have or didn't do well. It is worth your time and money, just put away your experiences from modern games and you'll enjoy this gem of nostalgia shooters.

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