I usually wait a few years before I play a game like this. Well worth the wait.
You first have to accept that the camera is crappy as all get out! However, after a short time you will get used to always rotating the camera as you play. I can not for the life of me remember any other game, especially NWN 1, having this kind of crappy camera angles and views. The gameworld and interiors ALWAYS get in the way of your view no matter how you control your party. But again, after a short time you will get used to always rotating the camera to a better view. There is also a slowdown bug that can happen to some people. It started for me after I had played about 25hrs and didnt show up until I loaded my game when I sat down to play, NOT while I was already in the game. There is a simple fix. You download a small file that is actually a JADE EMPIRE slowdown fix, and it corrects the stuttering/lagging bug seeing as the 2 games share the same engine. Worked great for me and havent had a problem since. When you first start the game there is a crash when you try to select screen size and details. IIRC you just go into WINDOW MODE, set what you want, then go back to normal mode after you accept your changes. I only had to do this once. Reviews like this and topics in the games forum have all the answers if you have a problem. Dont let the 2 easy to fix bugs stop you from buying this fantastic CRPG. As for the camera, yeah, it is ridiculous how the camera is implemented considering there have been MANY 3d crpg's before this that got the camera work done better......even NWN 1 was better. And it's not like the Dev's tried something new for camera angles but failed. They just dropped the ball on this part of the game.
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.
I give this 4 stars because this is a very simplistic, no frills game that still manages to be fun. Yes, it's OLD SCHOOL, as in the original Unreal Tournament engine OLD. Runs just fine on my 2021 machine---Win10, i5, 16gb ram, 3060ti. The only real complaints I have is the cheesy voice acting of the "professor" and the bad mouse aiming. You move the target reticle around the screen, but the up and down is HORRID! The reticle will go to the sky, off your screen, and you cant see it because your field of view is locked on your character. It's like your looking at the ground 30ft in front of you. You cant see the map very well. Still serviceable and playable, but it was though the Devs were trying something "new" back in the day and should have just kept to what they knew. Still a fun game, worth the money when on sale, mindlessly blasting aliens never gets old. I never played an X Com game so I cant speak on this being in the established X Com "universe".
This game was often called a Diablo clone, like so many other action rpg's of those days. Well, it is NOT a clone and while it absolutely has its similarities, it can stand on its own. Modern machines will allow you to really crank up some GPU settings to make this old school 3D engine look better but on its own, the ingame options and settings are very limited. Controls are simple enough but there is NO ingame page to see what they are let alone change them. Fortunatly there is the internet to search out and see what hotkeys do what and what mouse movements do what. You can rotate the camera 360 while playing or leave it at a default "isometric" view, a top down view and a "chase cam" view. No matter what you use, and you can switch at any time, you will need to manually rotate the camera sometimes in order to pick up items. Your sword shaped cursor is absolute when clicking an item, it must be directly over it on what seems like the smallest pixel, or it wont do anything. It will change color from white to red so at least you know you're on the item, but it is pretty sensitive. There is no crafting, there aren't many side quests and there are no seperate but related storylines to follow. You go down levels in a massive dungeon, level up, gain spells and better weapons, and then fight the main badguy. When you do get some side missions given by a random townsfolk, you would be best served by writting it down on paper because there is no real quest log to speak of, and giving the item to the person who gave you the quest is not identified on the map or a log. Fortunatly there aren't many people in town to click on to find the right person. This is a great game from 1999, but that's just it, it's from 1999. Action RPG's were in their infancy back in those days, so dont have expectaions to anything "modern". It is a great game and shouldn't be missed. Take a weekend and give it a run through, you wont be disapointed.
