#chromehounds

I want fully modular mecha again.

Like genuinely, I'm curious how that would pan out in a few key ways.

'From' is like 900,000,000% more famous and obsessed over than they were in 2006. For reference this is THREE YEARS before Demon's Souls. Immediate adoption based entirely on name recognition is highly likely, a vastly LARGER audience is guaranteed at day 1. Beyond that? Curious.

The internet and how gamers interact with information about games has evolved since 2006- gone are the days of months passing before someone figures out what a stat means, between data miners, obsessive testers, youtube guides, and how LARGE an audience day 1 would expect to experience- the evolving meta and evolving understanding of how to play the game would be vastly different than what we experienced in 2006

Appreciation for "Different" games has arguably risen in recent years with the caveat that you (for some dumb reason) usually need a big dev name attached for people to allow the game to be different. It's 'From'. People would "allow" it to be different. But the ways in which Chromehounds is different is... substantial.

Would Chromehounds be shunned for its lack of speed? With the recent explosive popularity of Armored Core 6 it's likely many would shun it, just as they did at launch, for being different in this specific way- but would the exponentially higher initial audience counter-act this loss?

How many people would make videos trying to dig into Chromehounds as if it's a souls game

Would people become half as obsessed as I am about the modular mech building gameplay? It's literally 300x more extensive and interesting than anything Armored Core has EVER done but it's in a game that's slower pace and was banished to an exclusivity deal on 360 before 'From' had a substantial audience- who's to say.

Would either 'From', via creative developing, or the player base itself enact an 'honor rule' in regards to Comms? Would it become an afterthought feature like it did when Parties were added to xbox or would it become a respected part of the gameplay loop? I personally "assume" that From would like, simplify/buff commander by letting everyone see the detailed radar if a commander exists- so actual voice comms wouldn't matter like the OG but comms would still matter. IDK.

I was Thiiiiis close to sending a 4am nostalgia message to my cousin to ramble out specifics on Chromehounds and why I miss it but instead I'll ramble here.

Like just LOOK at the unique gameplay feel Chromehounds goes for in the mech genre!

LOOK at the emphasis on communication being a part of the challenge via maintaining combas connection (Sure I'm blowing that out of proportion as this died off with the advent of Xbox Live Parties but look at it in its hayday!)

Look at those gloriously free builds- where any part can be slapped anywhere you like- sure these are some cookie cutter cannon / sniper / howie builds but where other mech games (even other Fromsoft joints like AC!) limit you to all looking the same and piloting anime as hell speedsters that are basically humanoids holding a gun in each hand- Chromehounds lets you play legos and I fucking love that!

Look at how combat isn't sped up for flashy spectacle! Look at how the hounds have weight and feel cumbersome to pilot!

Look at how this is emphasized in the gameplay through how aiming works! You aren't using auto-pilot, you don't "Lock on" you don't have aim assist- you aim and fire by hand and the cumbersome nature of it is emphasized by what view you have to do so->

The targetting reticle is NOT a uniform, perfectly scoped cross-hair- you PICK the reticle because when you equip your weapons you PICK where your weapon cams are placed, you notice how the recording person primarily uses weapon set 3?

This is the set they have all their weapons tied to fire at once and their view is on what seems to be the top right cannon, meaning when they aim they don't get the luxury of centering their target and firing- they have to compensate for the location the cannon resides on their chassis, where the others are, and estimate the impact that distance between weapons will have based on distance for their enemy.

It's a small thing, but the way in which you aim in Chromehounds is half of what gives it its signature "Slow, methodical, and cumbersome war machine" feel! Something most mech games run in terror from because if they don't feel like light-speed in titanium then they deem themselves a failure- and doing that means tacking on lock on systems, boost dashes, and a billion other things that make the game just feel less "Weighty".

And I get the appeal, it ain't for me, but I get it with those fast mech titles- but holy hell I love Chromehounds slow meaty feel, and I love how something as simple as how aiming works emphasizes that and makes you play more carefully.

God, not to mention how sick it is that if your camera mounted weapon gets destroyed then that weapon set now has no camera to aim down lmao, I love that, and how it made even a simple build utilize multiple weapon sets just to have back up cams.

Microsoft used to get From software exclusive games on their consoles, but Xbox One had a Bad relationship with Japan.

Today's word was Titan, so I drew a mech from the game series Chromehounds!

Chromehounds is © FromSoftware