We all know the feeling.
It’s Friday night. You’ve had a long week of work at your uncle’s glue factory in Western Kansas. In the back of your mind you can still hear the unfeeling din of machines crushing hooves into gel… So you invite all your buds over to play some Rock Band, just to have fun and take the edge off.
Suddenly, “hold up.” They put down the plastic instruments. “You don’t get to shoot anyone in this game? Weak, man. Let’s play some Call of Duty.” “Yeah and we can use that sweet mod where we all get to look like horses.”
Will this nightmare never end?
Some people are tired of the rhythm game formula. Maybe the Dance Dance Revolution series, 8 Rock Band iterations, and seemingly countless Guitar Hero games in the mid to late 2000s simply bled that horse dry (be strong, you’re a journalist now). But that won’t stop developer Harmonix, masterminds of the Rock Band and original Guitar Hero games, from innovating the genre that they know best. After teaming up with the fine people behind Counter Strike: Global Offensive, this super group is out to shock the industry with the world’s first musical FPS, Chroma.
Chroma isn’t a Rock Band clone. Harmonix insists that while the title uses elements of the beat matching genre to carve out its niche, players shouldn’t feel left out if they were born with no groove bone. The five playable classes announced so far (assault, support, engineer, tank, and sneak) require varying levels of musical dexterity, but all do an impressive amount of blasting. The assault class, for example, carries ye old machine gun that’s ready to spray all the time, but also grenades that go only off when the music hits a downbeat. As of this stage in development, players compete in teams to control constantly changing areas of the map. Each weapon has it’s own sound, and the shifting dynamic of land possession alters the soundtrack.
Chroma is set to be a free to play title for release on the Steam platform. As a matter of fact you can even sign up to play it now. Keep in mind, the game is still in early development, meaning totally unbalanced, glitchy, and unpolished as the minotaur’s mirror. Eager beavers who want to participate in alpha playtesting should go to http://www.playchroma.com to sign up.
Featured Image via Neoseeker
