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Chrome

Chrome is a post-Halo first person shooter from Techland in Poland, whose previous credits include Crime Cities. I don't remember it either. For Chrome, Techland has built an engine to render long-range outdoor battles, comlete with vehicles, indoor areas, and even a bit of stealth. You play a mercenary named...

Actually, that stuff doesn't really matter. What matters is that this looks like one of those entirely competent sci-fi first person shooters that's going to have to jostle for a place next to other entirely competent sci-fi first person shooters like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Far Cry, and everything else that isn't Half-Life 2 or Halo.

Like Tribes!

Or Halo?

Palm trees make it fresh

The fellow demoing Chrome described it as a tactical first person shooter "because you can't take much damage". The weapons are souped up versions of real world guns. You have a Diablo style grid for your backpack, so you can only carry the weapons that will fit, Tetris style, into your inventory. As you play, you earn implants that will give you special abilities like cloaking, improved accuracy, a scope view with any weapon, infrared vision, boosted speed, bullet time ability, and damage protection. Kitting yourself out with implants should be an interesting element of multiplayer games.

Your enemies are other human soldiers and the mechs and vehicles they drive. And the occasional dinosaur, of course. There will be two mechs and two vehicles, all driveable. Just to give an indication of how Techland was inspired by Halo, all you need to do is glance at the models for the buggy with its mounted gun and the hovering dropship. But there are far worse games than Halo to imitate; it's not as if Techland is creating a Mortyr clone. And with an engine that looks this nice, I say 'let a thousand Halos bloom'.