Chrome Specforce PC

Like sci-fi movies, futuristic shooters tend to be hit or miss. For every Total Recall there's a Battlefield Earth, and for every Halo there's a Starship Troopers. Chrome SpecForce is neither a hit nor a miss, because while it manages to avoid going terribly awry, it also avoids any sort of fun or excitement. SpecForce falls smack in the middle of mediocrity, and it seems that every good idea or interesting gameplay mechanic is countered by an underwhelming or annoying design flaw.

Chrome SpecForce is the follow-up to 2003's Chrome, and in SpecForce you once again play as the awesomely named Bolt Logan, who is a member of the elite SpecForce soldiers. The story is fairly transparent, and since there are no cutscenes to move it along, most of the plot information you receive comes from some brief text on the loading screen before each mission. Apparently there's some sort of conflict going down on the planet of Estrella, and the SpecForce has been commissioned to take care of it. Eventually you learn that a huge, insidious corporation is training supersoldiers and threatening the very existence of the planet. Bolt Logan and the SpecForce soldiers have to save the day by trudging through jungles and military bases to hack computers, blow up key structures, save prisoners, and so on.

As cliché as the missions are, they're at least somewhat varied. While you spend most of the game on foot, running around and shooting enemies, there are times when you have to hop on a speeder bike, pilot a huge mech, or man a turret to fend off aerial attacks. The vehicles are generic, but they work well to break up the monotony of the rest of the game. In addition to piloting vehicles and shooting, you occasionally have to hack a computer system to unlock a door, upload a crippling virus, or retrieve some information. This whole hacking thing plays out like a simple game of memory, where you reveal tiles and match like shapes to eventually clear the board. These sections are laughably easy, to the point that it makes the minigame seem like pointless busy work.

Minimum:
 OS: Windows XP SP3
 Processor: 2 GHz Intel Dual Core Processor
 Memory: 2 GB RAM
 Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8800/ATI Radeon HD 2600 (256MB minimum)
 DirectX «: 9.0c
 Hard Drive: 10 GB HD space
 Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible
Recommended:
 OS: Windows XP SP3/Vista/Windows 7
 Processor: 2.3 GHz Intel Quad Core Processor
 Memory: 3 GB RAM
 Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX460/ATI Radeon HD 5850 (512MB minimum)
 DirectX «: 9.0c
 Hard Drive: 10 GB HD space
 Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible