Summary
One of the few games I have actually thrown away.
The Good
I so SO wanted to like Chaser: It had a great game engine for its time with lots of environment tricks; the audio (especially the music) was fantastic; the story setting was my cup of tea (sci-fi). The opening sequence where you have to get off of a ship while it is in the process of breaking up wasn't original, but was well executed. After the first 20 minutes, I was pumped.
The Bad
The rest of the 20+ hours I wasted trying to finish this game was so wrought with frustration that I broke down and just started cheating in an effort to just get to the next damn level. I don't have a problem with the difficulty of games as long as they're engaging, but level after level just went on and on and on... it was beyond tedious. Unreal 2 did the same thing, but at least they announced when a level was going to be tedious; you had warning. Like others have said before, this game had tons of potential and simply squandered it. The voice acting was stiff, the levels were monotonous, and for being a sci-fi game it had surprisingly few sci-fi weapons or locales.
Ultimately, it was a disappointment because there were so many missed opportunities. There was no coherent storyline other than a lame attempt to string together all of the completely different levels that were created. Wait, I take that back -- the very very end of the story (spoiler warning!) had some thought, but only because it was a lame rip-off of Total Recall (except this time the ending ended on a sour note, almost as if the developers were mocking you for actually completing their game).
And, oh yes, you can't install the game under Windows XP Service Pack 2 or higher -- I had to uninstall SP2 to install the game, then reinstall SP2. JoWood has acknowledged the problem and publicly stated there will be no fix. Great.
The Bottom Line
Don't bother. Honestly, there's no point -- I could have spent the 20+ hours playing some other game instead. Hell, I could have played Tron 2.0 for a fourth time.
(Yes, I really did throw the game away -- and I'm one of the founders of MobyGames, I *never* throw games away!)
