Now Playing: Chaser

Chaser is a first person shooter originally released in 2003. I actually bought this game on release but never completed it at the time. I can’t remember the exact details, but I hit some kind of bug late on that left me unable to progress. Recently the game was on sale on Steam for a quid so I thought I’d give it another shot.

Well, it hasn’t aged very well, I have to say that. Graphically, it’s not terrible to look at. In fact, it actually looks surprisingly decent in places. The shooting is solid, if unspectacular, and there’s a wide range of weapons with alternate fire modes. The levels are large and open, requiring a little exploration to progress and there’s a fair bit of variety to the environments too.

Negatives? Just about everything else, unfortunately. Enemy AI is awful, which utterly destroys any real challenge as it's so easy to abuse. They stand still and shoot, or they kneel and shoot. Sometimes they roll, but that’s about as advanced as it gets. The story is ridiculous and the characters are terrible.

VA is laughably bad, although it's clearly not helped by the badly translated script. Still, it does provide a lot of unintentionally funny moments during cut scenes. Music is decent but gets repetitive to the point of irritation during the long levels.

Overall, I couldn’t really recommend Chaser. The shooting mechanics are fairly solid, but it’s all rather basic and incredibly dull at times. I completed it this time around, but it was a bit of a struggle to care.

4/10