The Chaos Engine

I first played Soldiers Of Fortune...er...Chaos Engine on the SNES back in 1994. Later, I bought the Sega Genesis port and continued to enjoy it. Playing the PC version, known as "Chaos Engine", brings back fond memories. This PC re-release of Chaos Engine includes some neat goodies. The save system is more user friendly, thanks to no longer needing to jot down pass codes. Two player co-op mirrors the fun I had on the Sega Genesis version. The graphics enhancements are welcome. Controller support keeps the PC version as accessible as the ol' 1990s console versions. The choice of characters with different weapons provides variety and a bit of strategy. All-in-all, Chaos Engine is a nice revisit to a game I've already played the crap out of. My only gripe is GOG's release not having Linux support, which the Humble Store release DOES.

The header pretty much says it all. "The Chaos Engine" is as legendary as its creators, The Bitmap Brothers. It was a great game in its time, and although modern run-and-gunners have naturally surpassed it in most regards, the creative vision and polish that made it famous do still show. But this port is simply lacking, especially in comparison with similar recent efforts like the brilliant "Chronicles of Mystara" port of the classic Dungeons & Dragons arcade brawlers. It's just thoroughly pedestrian - functional but with no flair, no fan service, nothing to show the LOVE that fuels projects like this. You'll get more options and extras by running the original game in an Amiga emulator. Although, if you do that, you might still want to buy the game just to give money to the people who've worked on it and placate your weaselly black pirate guts. I know that's what I did. :)

I'm not going to review the game itself, I'm only going to offer my observations regarding the version that GOG offers. First of all, the game performs horribly. On my (admittedly somewhat dated) machine (2010 MacBook Pro), I get what subjectively feels like a framerate of 15 fps. The controls are laggy, which, given the genre of this game, very much ruins the experience. The "graphical improvements" is simply a bloom effect, making the game look ugly. Moreover, for some reason the initial cut scene introducing the mercenaries is missing completely. So all in all, given the fact that GOG charges almost 10 bucks for this, you get very little value for your money. Please do yourself a favour, play the Amiga version on an emulator. It will run much smoother and look better. Only buy this version if you really think you must, and only if on sale.

It's still The Chaos Engine, great game I know from my beloved Amiga, however graphics are not really enhanced in my opinion, it looks like only some fancy video filters are applied nothing more. It doesn't look good in 1080p. Also GOG version is missing network coop multiplayer - this is huge disadvantage these days. I hope they'll add this functionality to GOG version. Steam version has it already as far as I know. Good thing there is a good old OST in this edition - and it's great!

Everything I remember about the Chaos Engine from my Amiga days is here - It was a fantastic shooter, pretty hard (but not impossible as I remember finishing it back in the day -- although replaying now I can't imagine how I did it !), beautiful, unmistakably Bitmap Brothers, graphics and sound. Had some slight difficulties getting it to work on my XP desktop but the GOG support team sorted that for me. (worked straight away on My Windows 7 laptop). I even dusted down my old Competition Pro joystick (through a USB converter) and this too worked a treat, Oh how I loved joysticks/hated game-pads. All in all, many hours of simple pleasure, thank you GOG, now make my life complete and release Speedball 2 please ?! (the Amiga version, not the PC version with the dreadful sound) Ice cream anyone ?!