Chaser (Windows)

RandomDud commented:

I made a review for steam after I played it for the first time 2 years ago:

Chaser is terrible, an horrible and uninspired game no matter how I look at it, and if you like it you probably love to eat ♥♥♥♥. 2/10, only because it wasn't that bugged, didn't crash a lot and because the guns were kind of okey, not good but not so low in quality as the maps design.

Story: Extremely retarded, it doesn't make sense and is just filler until the last 2 missions. Chaser spend the entire game getting into problems and killing everything in his path without knowing why, and the moment he finds someone how actually knows him they confused him with another guy. Because, spoilers, Chaser is not Chaser just a dude called Stone, but everyone and their mother call him Chaser just to confuse him I guess, because the explanation is too stupid to be serious. Chaser is just a stupid character making stupid decisions in a world with the same low IQ.

Gameplay: Basic, bland, empty. You just aim and shoot. Sometimes you use the bullet-time to do the same thing but better. Enemies are basic humans and there is almost no variant, AI is basic, stupid but with godlike aim. Bullets can destroy you in an instant. Explosives can destroy you but you do only a 25% of the damage with a missile to an enemy. It was shocking the moment I saw a new type of enemy, maybe at the 80% of my playthrough, a soldier that could fly, a normal enemy, not even a boss. But the moment I kill him it was the last time I saw him in the game. Why did the developer make a new type of enemy not to use it? Then there are turrets, all the same, and an human in some kind of a suit that just ♥♥♥♥♥ your ♥♥♥♥ up or does nothing and stares as you while you destroy it, totally random. Its a shame to see a game with so many weapons but making 50% of them the same, machineguns with more or less recoil, more or less damage, half of the time with a grenade launcher that does NOTHING in comparison with the standard bullets, no reason to use explosives. The scrolling between weapons doesn't make sense, some of the weapons will get stuck in a load animation and others will not. If you want to change weapons in a fight (you won't do that for almost the entire game) you will be stuck in a slow animation of the player pulling out a gun until is finished, making you an easy target, dangerous in a game where in the late game every bullet can delete almost all your health.

Level Design: ♥♥♥♥ the developers, ♥♥♥♥ them, I never once saw a game so poor in level design. The only reason I would recommend this game is to see a perfect example of how NOT to make maps. The developers had no idea on how to make a level, they just added ♥♥♥♥ everywhere, pat their backs and moved on. They don't know how to communicate to the player where to go, they made HUGE COLOSSAL maps with NOTHING in them, you can walk for 10 minutes in a map and see NOTHING at all, no items, no enemies, just emptyness, and guess what?? You will be going in the correct path, but for the player is SO hard to know if you are going to the correct path or not. Some of the times I walked a path just to find myself in a place I wasn't supposed to be, seeing the glitched and black void of the background game engine. Sometimes you will walk for minutes to find yourself in a corridor that just ends, with no exit or anything, and you would need to go back a long way you realize there was a vent or a window you didn't see before and that would be the correct path. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, there is a time there was a "ladder" made of just a few broken steel bars, there is NO WAY and NO INDICATION to know that work as a ladder but it does. Just that part of the game you will see something like that that works as a ladder.

The last 2 missions are retarded as ♥♥♥♥, in the one you walk for 20 minutos to a random direction in a colossal map to get into a train, to then travel without seeing more than 10 enemies for the rest of the level. The train will travel for 5 minutes, then stop for you to press a button and speed up again, travel 5 minutes for you to repeat, and again, and again. And in the end the train will explode causing another train to be destroyed, why? ♥♥♥♥ you thats why. And the last level is pure cancer like the one before, you have to go down in a place to """"WARN"""" some guys about an attack, while is happening IN THERE, so there is nothing to warn about. You just jump down and travel down for whats feel like kilometers, in retarded nonsense level design, getting stuck without nothing make sense, finding the right path behind a small hole in the floor, walking paths that just ends, making you fight many times enemies in random corridors that leads to nowhere, just making you lose health and bullets for no reason. When you reach the end, after killing so many aimlessly, you encounter a labyrinth because ♥♥♥♥ you, with a few enemies that yo will kill too of course, and then you will find a hole in the wall. You enter and then there is a small level without enemies to a door and then you will see the final scene of the game. No boss fight in a first person shooter, can you believe it? And the sequence is stupid, they told you the entire plot of the game in just a few minutes, then Chaser realize he is an idiot and kills his only ally (its the first time Chaser meet him and know about him) and not the "bad guy" (is the first time Chaser meet him and know about the "bad guy") Then the game just ends when the "bad guy", who a minute before told Chaser to kill his ally to work for him, kills Chaser.

Then credits rolls.

I love to play games I didn't played before, no matter the age of the game. I played many older games too, so my hate for this game is not because I'm not used to a game from the year 2003, there is nothing about this game that can be excused with the typical: "is just old, games were different years ago, the quality wasn't the same", that would be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. One reason I keep playing and finished Chaser was because for every level I played there was this feeling saying me "is about to finish" but damn the game is LONG and full of NOTHING, the first moment I thought of the game finishing was about 30% of the total of the game, I was so wrong. The moment I realize how much I played and how close I was to finish it I said "♥♥♥♥ it, why not?" The other reason is because I love to criticize games, no matter the genre or how old are them, usually finish all the singleplayer games I get my hands into because of that reason. I like to compare them with other games of the same era, see what they do well, what they do wrong, what new stuff they bring to the world of game design, even if its something little. But I never saw a game like Chaser, a long game with nothing in it, with horrible and disgusting level design, 0% logic in the story, bland, generic and uninspired gameplay. A 2/10 experience.

To close this, there is one thing I keep thinking about this game after finishing it. And I believe it is the best way to summarize the thinking behind the game. Before the final door to the last sequence of the game there is a small level. The game take away your weapons except a basic pistol (used in the final sequence by the protagonist. That's the only reason the player can keep it), all nice and good, BUT: Just before the last door, in the middle of the only and tiny corridor, there is a healthpack, just a normal healthpack laying in the floor. And I keep thinking: Why? Why would the developers add a healthpack in a level with no enemies, just before the final sequence of the game? There is no final boss, no combat, nothing else to do, just crossing that final door and finishing the damn game.

And the only logical answer is: They just did it.