Chrome is semi-open world FPS made by Techland, the studio nowadays best known for Dying Light, Dead Island and Call of Juarez series. It’s a pretty dull FPS with basic revenge story with evil space corporations in background. Each mission you get dropped on pretty big maps (for a 2003 game) with some simple objectives and you’re free to roam around. It kinda reminded me of first ARMA where you can approach from whatever direction you want, with enemy patrols roaming around and huge pieces of land or forests with nothing of interest in them. Oh and like in ARMA you can die very easily, you can’t get one-shot but if you stay in open one enemy can fuck you up pretty quickly and I only played on medium difficulty.

However the game quickly becomes easy once you find out that AI in this game is fuckin retarded. When engaged they barely move, when you throw a grenade they don’t even try to run from it, when you snipe them most of them will duck and stay where they were, some have a bit more IQ and actually try to hide, but given how few of them try it might as well been a bug. You can easily sneak up on them or loose them. The only thing that makes them dangerous is their insane reactions, if you’re close and get in their sight they shoot almost immediately, even if you have good reactions it’s impossible to kill them without taking at least a single shot from them even with reflex implant. Oh and yeah this game has implant system that give you buffs and extra abilities, you start with only 2 but the more you use them the more you unlock. There’s 8 in total, but I mostly used only 4 through entire game, time slow, aim boost, zoom-in when aiming and dmg resistance.You also had faster running, infra-vision and something else I never used ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You get to ride a buggy with a mounted gun in some missions, take control of a walker with heavy machine gun and once a heavily armored walker with machine gun and rocket launchers, those walkers are quite fun and one of few positives in this game.

The story is basic and forgettable, voice acting is ok-ish for most part, the only standout is the voice of your protagonist, but that’s because it’s voiced the by Jon St. John himself.
Gunplay is meh, you have good set of weapons but most of them don’t feel and sound too good. You have your standard pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, a sniper rifle, rocket launcher and a futuristic looking revolver (the only fun gun in entire game imo…).

Overall a dull FPS, pretty for a 2003 game I guess?

Prequel to Chrome.

Wow, this standalone expansion is an improvement in almost every way. The AI is no longer dumb, they actually take cover, try to hide from sniper fire and run from grenades, if they’re in group one of them will charge you while others wait covering him. Their insane reactions are gone too which makes the fight’s fair and you can take a couple of weaker enemies down in slow-mo before they fire a single shot. The boring assault rifle from first game is gone and split in two, faster firing AR and less accurate but more powerful AR with bigger magazine. The game is more linear now but most levels maintain that openness from previous game, it’s just that this time you’re either lead by a NPC or walking in canyons/mountains that don’t give you much room to roam around :P But considering the locations in the first game were boring and the game is nowhere as intense and varied with units like ARMA it’s a good change.

The story is perhaps the only part that’s as boring as previous game. You’re a SpecForce soldier, commando-like unit, you and your partner from first game get sent on a mission, shit goes wrong and you’re stuck on planet with rebels that fight evil corporation that fucked over your unit and commander.

Overall I enjoyed this one more than first game, but there’s still many more better FPSes out there, play it only if you’re starved for FPS and you played most of them out there.