The gaming gods have not been kind to us Mech game fans over the recent years. As an industry, we’ve basically gone from seeing blockbuster classics like the Front Mission or Mechwarrior titles rolling out on a daily basis, to suddenly grasping desperately at any straw flung our way - Front Mission 5 for example no longer seems on course for any kind of impending release in North America. A small shining beacon of hope rained down not too long ago in the form of the ambitious Steel Battalion, and it’s bigger multiplayer brother Line of Contact, but what promised to be a fantastic and revolutionary online experience was marred by unfathomable bugs and design flaws which ultimately ground the game into dust. Beyond that and the occasional online kicks spurred by Mech Assault 2, there isn’t really much hope for those of us who love watching giant robots duke it out. Hence why so many eyes are cast towards Sega’s Chrome Hounds as of this moment, and why many parties may find themselves overly critical of how the game turns out. Does Chrome Hounds have what it takes to compete in what is effectively a marred and abused portion of the industry? Desperately hoping it would, I found myself picking up an Xbox 360 (an ultimate eventuality with Gears of War and Halo 3 in development) with the intent of playing this game and finding out.

For those searching for a convenient context to place Chrome Hounds into, try Armored Core meets Robot Jox. Literally – combine the high degree of customization offered by FROM Software’s previous releases in the Armored Core series with the nitty-gritty modern day-esque reliance on machine guns and cannons and you’ve got the basis for Chrome Hounds. The game takes place in a kind of alternative storyline, where a massive solar disaster has been impeding long range communications and many other aspects essential for a properly functioning global economy since the 1980’s. This in turn has led humanity down a slightly different path, and from a tactical sense places a reliance on “COMBASES” - large tower-like structures which must be captured and kept under control to maintain a communications and radar network in the field. Ultimately, the solar flare in question has led to all major nations falling into a state of disarray. The game itself focuses on a smaller plot of land called the “Neroimus” region, where three smaller nations – Sal-Kar, Morkoj, and Tarakia – are preparing to square off against one another.

Now if you’ve heard anything at all about Chrome Hounds, you’ll know that most of the focus is with online play – and this is effectively true. In fact, the singleplayer portion to Chrome Hounds is meant more of an introduction and training segment, and leads directly into online play, both in terms of plot and accessible options. But first, a little more on the gameplay. Chrome Hounds is a third-person Mech action game, focused individually into six different “RTs”, or “Role Types”. By loading on different equipment and adjusting tactics accordingly, players can focus their “HOUND” into becoming a Soldier, Sniper, Defender, Scout, Heavy Gunner, or Commander (though the roles aren’t rigidly defined – rather, an artificial graph shows how much a player’s HOUND “fits” a role as they add specific parts) The singleplayer campaign is explicitly geared towards training players in these six fields, by providing separate storyline campaigns where players learn how to accommodate themselves best into these roles. By beating missions and getting a higher rank (you can also go back and re-do old missions if you’re having trouble getting a higher score), you can unlock new components to construct your own personal top of the line HOUND with. These parts can then be brought into the online campaign. Fear not however – you only need to do but a single training mission to have the game’s full online functionality made available to you, though it’s really recommended that you take the extra effort and play through all of the singleplayer missions so that you know what you’re doing.

The downside to singleplayer is how disturbingly easy I found it once I grasped the basics. The game provided me with two options for each mission – either a “Borrowed” pre-made hound specific to the mission, or I could bring my own hound into the fray. For the first two campaigns I stuck to the pre-made designs, but after launching into the “Defender” campaign, I noticed that most of the enemies I was pitted against were lower-grade “ACV” designs, and true enemy “HOUNDS” only appeared as bosses towards the end of each mission. To this end I eventually transitioned over to a basic wheeled chassis with nothing more than a few Assault Rifles and was able to breeze through each and every mission, even blatantly ignoring the scripting in many cases (such as the Heavy Gunner campaign, which expects you to be in a heavy and slow 4-legged chassis). The lack of versus-HOUND combat led to a dramatic pacing shift once I finally got online and began squaring off against other players, and realized that my super-fantastic singleplayer designs meant next to nothing for online play.

But this wasn’t much of an issue for long. The main draw to Chrome Hounds is the capacity to create HOUNDS in a completely personalized manner, and this extends to everything from the paint job and decals, to the physical design of the HOUND itself – on more than one occasion I’ve found myself exercising this ability to create some of the most warped and strange-looking HOUNDS possible through the use of diagonal spacers and misshapen components, allowing for a good deal of hilarity. Additional parts are available on a per-faction basis, so there’s plenty of hardware to choose from in creating just about anything your brain can dream up from a combination of pre-existing parts (no making your own parts sadly, though this is for obvious balancing and design reasons). But the main focus for multiplayer is in team work. When first going online, players are presented with a screen for choosing from the game’s three major factions. After this, they then are shown a campaign screen, where players can bring up the status of any territory in the game and see statistics, with the ultimate goal being to take over the capital of each of your enemy nations (after which the campaign then resets with awards and bonuses being given).

Let me emphasize this however: In order to properly enjoy this game, you must find a squad to join, and having an array of friends on Xbox Live to hook up with can help greatly to this degree. While it’s perfectly possible to engage in free-form battle missions, these ultimately won’t have any effect on the campaign territories and you’ll be missing out on a good chunk of the game’s draw. But with the massive community backbone integral to Xbox Live, finding a squad or group of friends to link up with isn’t that hard, and the ultimate level of fun and satisfaction you can get from this is worth it. Working closely with friends to assemble your own HOUND designs to capitalize on the different role types in the game and blast away your opponents with cunning strategic precision definitely makes for some good times online.

Unfortunately, because of the game’s potential, it pains me to state that the stability is very much lacking. Comparisons in this regard to Steel Battalion: Line of Contact are almost inevitable, as that game also attempted a massive online environment in a similar scale and was marred horribly by a ridiculous number of technical issues – and it turns out problems on the same level also mar the experience for Chrome Hounds. When doing a standard squad battle for control of territory, players will see two kinds of scenario: One versus other players, or one versus the AI. Versus player matches only occur if the game’s matchmaking system happens to pair you off with an enemy player team pre-launch, but if no players are available, AI players will fill the slots instead. This is all fine and good, but it eventually turned out that over 90% of my matches turned into battles against bots – and the few matches my team did get in versus players resulted in inevitable connection errors that actually disconnected us completely from Xbox Live and forced us to sign in again. Unlike Line of Contact’s apathetic publisher however, SEGA has openly acknowledged these problems and stated they are working to correct them, and has even offered up a free downloadable parts pack (originally planned to be a paid upgrade) as a consolation prize. Very cool, but the question still lingers in my mind on if these inexcusable errors will ever be corrected. The game’s stability also is somewhat questionable, with many players reporting common lock-up issues (and I’ve even witnessed this too, in spite of having a completely new 360).

On the bright side, the game’s graphics engine is a remarkable achievement and brings forth the Xbox 360’s capabilities quite nicely. HOUNDS are rendered in exquisite high-polygon detail and are animated very nicely. The landscape geometry also looks quite pretty, though the wide open landscapes don’t particularly offer a fantastic level of variation. On night-time missions, you can also flick on your headlights and see some impressive dynamic shadows, and the game offers a stunning backdrop of tracer-fire during a night-time operation in desert areas (a friend commented it looked something like Desert Storm with giant robots). What is really impressive however is just getting into a massive six on six online battle between two player teams and watching HOUNDS duking it out using all manner of unique and different player-borne configurations – a sad rarity given the game’s stability problems.

Ultimately, Chrome Hounds is far from being the worst Mech game offering I’ve seen – despite it’s limitations, the singleplayer mode is relatively engaging and even offers a decent music track here and there. The capacity for unlocking additional parts and custom-building your own HOUND adds a great deal of novelty value, and once you finally get online, the game offers some great multiplayer action. However, the technical issues that currently exist in the game in a connection-based capacity really are unacceptable, and it saddens me immensely that issues like this still exist after the widely-known tragedy that was Steel Battalion: Line of Contact, and given how much potential this game has. Even with the connection issues however, Chrome Hounds is still a worthwhile pickup, if only to stave off the onslaught of messages from your Xbox Live friends list asking if you’ve gotten the game yet and want to join a squad.