Chromehounds [X360]

It's also a lot more strategic. A standard multiplayer match has control towers on the map. If you capture these towers, you unfog the map for anyone with a Commander Hound. This lets him see enemies within the tower's radius and pass along the information to the rest of the team. But you can't participate in chat unless you're within the radius of a tower. As it's designed to be played, Chromehounds is a game about a team working its way across the map, one tower at a time, until it butts heads with the other teams.

At this point, Chromehounds becomes a glorious display of firepower. There are a variety of different maps, many with distinct visual styles and all with destructible features. They range from open deserts to Middle Eastern villages (giant robots in Baghdad!), from snowy forests to the narrow streets of Old World cities (just blow a building up if you want to get to the next street over), from the far view across a quiet village nestled in a valley to eerie flashes of gunfire and explosions during nighttime battles. The graphics engine could have used a little touching up, but for the most part, it accomplishes admirably the job of showing off your custom-built Hound.

In the first week of the game, many players seem to approach Chromehounds as if it were Halo. Stomping-and-gunning works reasonably well, but to really appreciate this game, you have to understand that it's not a solitary pursuit and it's not about just pouring on the firepower. A good team needs a Commander, which isn't a very glorious role. Similarly, the Heavy Gunners and Scouts are pretty much supposed to avoid direct confrontations. If you're the type of gamer who just wants to jump into Chromehounds and blow stuff up, it's not going to appeal to you in the long run. But if you're the type of gamer who, for instance, really enjoyed playing a support role or flexing the new commander abilities in Battlefield 2, then Chromehounds is going to be a long-term delight.

There's a persistent online campaign with three factions, each with their own basic style and unique equipment. As you win missions, either against other players or CPU Hounds, you'll earn money to buy more parts. There's a lottery to bid on rare parts, and you'll be able to raid the other factions for some of their parts. You can choose where to fight your battles, or search for battles already set up. This is actually one of the biggest problems with Chromehounds: there's a rich and complex system built into the online campaign, but it's so poorly documented that many will just find it frustrating.

The interface also needs more streamlining when it comes to building your Hound. There needs to be a better way to tracks the stats on different parts, so you can make informed decisions when you're deciding whether this gun is better or worse than the one you've already got. Right now, your best bet is a legal pad and a pencil.

It's about time someone made a game like this. We've been too long with giant robot games that were little more than thinly disguised shooters. Then there was the stately Steel Battalion, which was a rip-off not for its price (you had to pay for a humongous, cool controller), but for how poorly the multiplayer worked up until Capcom just abandoned it. So for those of you looking for a giant robot game that's distinct, exciting, deep, and eminently customizable, as long as you're willing to play with others, Chromehounds is what you've been waiting for.