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It's always a great thing to be able to strap into a gigantic mechanized hulk of a vehicle that's armed with tons of heavy armaments and blow up everything in the environment. With Chromehounds, players will be able to do exactly that, though they can't blow up everything, just a lot.
The booth at X05 was set up for a three on three multiplayer Deathmatch. To begin, we had to first pick a robot. Two types of sniper, assault, and gunner Hounds were available to us, all with their own unique stats such as mobility, core armor, and energy use. We first chose a gunner 2 Hound armed with 2 cannons and a high caliber cannon.
This Hound was amazingly slow, but according to the description that was because this thing carried some massive firepower. Our session started in a canyon level that featured a satellite tower, several small groups of buildings, and large expanses of green grass and grey cliffs. Between all of that ran a graphically impressive river that sparkled and reflected our Hound's image as we moved through it.
Our gunner 2 moved around in a crablike fashion and we were able to fire missiles and its other weapons at slow reload speeds. In the upper right hand corner of the screen sat a window that showed a zoomed in view of the landscape ahead. As soon as we blasted a trio of rockets in a triangular configuration we saw that the zoomed in screen was more of a weapons cam, allowing us to see more clearly our impact to the target as well as line up our shots more precisely before firing.
As we moved around the level pine trees collapsed in front of us as we ran then over and buildings crumbled under the blasts of our weapon impacts. Buildings in Chromehounds don't just blow up and disappear, they actually crumble in on themselves, their walls buckling and folding into each other until the whole structure comes down.
At this point we wanted a faster vehicle, so we switched to an assault 2 Hound which was equal parts speed and strength. There was definitely a significant difference in how fast the two Hounds moved, and we found this one to be much more enjoyable. As we switched between firing modes with the Y button we discovered that this unit had a deadly one-two punch, a barrage of missiles followed by a short range flak burst.
The most enjoyable thing about playing Chromehounds was the way the Hounds move. The left analogue stick controls where the vehicle is headed while the right controls where the top unit is aiming. Though it may initially seem awkward, it's actually relatively easy and intuitive to pull off walking in one direction while rotating around behind to blast a target and then reorienting yourself. Keep checking back for more info on this upcoming mech action game.
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Topic: X05 Chromehounds Impression (Read 534 times)