Chameleon Full Review

Chameleon

Developer: SilverWish Games

Publisher: Take 2, Cenega Czech

Platform: Windows

Release: May 19, 2005 Czech republic

Genre: Stealth, Third-Person Shooter

Modes: Single-Player

Available: Rare. Not in any English stores.

Disclaimer:

-I love stealth games

-I play on the highest difficulty

-I try to be as quiet as possible, but I knock out all enemies I can.

-I'm harsh and picky.

-I'm not a professional journalist.

-Most of my reviews are usually the PC version. I am the PC master race.

-I try to 100% games unless it's pointless or tediously stupid.

-No bribes were taken.

-No bribes were offered.

-I'm a ghost who hides in the shadows.

-Played with English patch that was made for the Russian version.
-Game uses Starforce DRM

Story:

The plot is about a man who lost his parents to a sniper 15 years ago., in 1975. Not being able to get over it, he gets fired from the CIA and decides to set out on his own to find the killer. The story of Chameleon is very bare-bones that lousily connects each mission to the overall plot. Mission briefings are sparse that can be summed up as this person is a lead, go here. It's a shame as the story is really what this game has going for it and even the revelation is lackluster. It feels like the developers had no idea what to do for the plot so they just made everything up as they went along.

Graphics:

Levels like this have nothing to explore.

Technology wise, the graphics are quiet mediocre and outdated for 2005. The game engine is the same as Mafia: The city of Lost Heaven, there doesn't seam to be any improvements. Plenty of blurry textures and non visually distinct shadows. It's hard to visually gauge how well the shadows will hide you and it's not always visually accurate to the game mechanics. If you compare it to a game like Thief 1 and 2, the shadows look like slightly darker textures then true shadows. The art style is a low-res modern look. The missions look like real world places that would be inhabited by real people.

Game-play:

Chameleon is a third person, stealth-action game made Silver Wish games, which was a division in Illusion Softworks, who made Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven. It is a shadow and sound based stealth game-play. The shadows affect the distance which enemies can see you on the map, up to 50 meters away, which tends to be bigger then most rooms or area's in the game. The problems with the shadow system is the levels are often too small, linear and cramped at times to use it effectively as most of the time.. Enemies will still be able to see you 5-10 feet away in the second and third darkest shadows. These shadows are the most common ones you will find even in the cramped area's, which prevents you from sneaking past enemies. You're forced to take care of them before moving on which is low quality that you expect from games that force stealth sequences. Rarely are there level's open enough to support this type of shadow system.

If you get into trouble, there are a small variety of guns to use although all of them are quite inaccurate. You can have the cursor be at it's smallest and you can still miss by a noticeable margin. The guns do about the same amount of damage regardless of caliber or type of firearm. So gun play is not fun and it isn't useful ether, but you will be forced to take the action approach at times.

Your footsteps are binary when it comes to sneaking. It doesn't matter what kind of surface you are moving on, only your speed and the distance from the enemy. Combined with the A.I.'s binary alert system, It feels very mechanical and repetitious rather then thoughtful and strategic. The A.I. has only three stages; normal, search mode, and alert. There is no in-between states or a gradual switch between states. This means that one wrong move will instantly trigger an alert state that forces you to run and gun, or reload your save. The game has two difficulty modes that don't have any noticeable difference at all in game-play.

Audio:

From the grey boulders is how far enemies can see you in no shadows.

This review is based on the Czech version that has English audio so I can't tell you how the Russian acting is. For the main characters, the English voice acting is solid quality. There is nothing bad about their acting. Every other character on the other hand, is low quality, hammy acting. The soundtrack is forgettable, subdued tunes that gets easily covered up by the heartbeat radar. While the heartbeat mechanic is helpful, it overpowers the majority of the audio. Even footsteps get covered up by it so you can't here where enemies are coming from unless you turn up the volume. Guns of each class, sound very similar to each other

Thoughts:

I can't recommend this game to anyone. Chameleon is a dull game that doesn't succeed in doing anything. It's a mediocre stealth game that has the potential mechanics, but fails to utilize them in meaningful ways. You can tell that the developers were trying, but ultimately didn't know what they wanted. If they had spent more time on this game, it could have been great. If you are still interested, go watch a play-through of it only as it's not worth the hassle of getting.

Notes:

-Has Starforce DRM

-English patch: 

http://www.moddb.com/games/chameleon/downloads