Chaos Field review (GameCube)

Meanwhile, those big robot/spaceship/things you're fighting will be doing what you'd expect them to do. Your opponents are big and have lots of moving parts you can blow up, which is nice, but they're pretty forgettable, shapeless things otherwise. You only get one life per credit in Chaos Field, but you can take several hits before you blow up, and in the latter phases you'll find yourself blowing up quickly and often as energy-sword-immune bullets come flying at you in huge cascades. Even if you set the game on easy difficulty and max out the number of shields you get per life, it'll still probably take a good several hours before you can finish Chaos Field for the first time.

Where Chaos Field falters is largely in its execution. While the game looks decent and runs smoothly, collision detection just doesn't feel quite right. Your ship appears very big on the screen, but only a direct hit causes damage. Even so, it can be difficult to tell why some bullets hit you while others miss, since the bullets themselves appear rather large. You just don't get that down-to-the-pixel precision that you need in a game that's so demanding of skillful maneuvering. Furthermore, the heavy focus on nonstop boss fights lends a sort of monotony to the action. Whereas other shoot-'em-ups distinguish themselves with different-looking levels and enemies, Chaos Field doesn't throw many curveballs at you after you wrap your head around the oddball mechanics.

The other issue with the game is that its audio is strangely muted. There's some nice ambient techno music that plays in the background as you fly and shoot, but other sound effects are barely there. You'd naturally want to hear booming explosions and other distinct audio cues while playing this type of game, but it's almost as if the developers, knowing their game was going to sit around in the company of other noisy arcade machines, didn't really bother with this part of the formula. That's not the case, though, since these audio issues are apparently and unfortunately peculiar only to the GameCube version of the game. At any rate, the subdued sound of Chaos Field definitely hurts the overall experience. On the plus side, the game does optionally run in progressive-scan mode, enabling sharper, cleaner visuals if you've got the right setup.

Despite its problems, Chaos Field is still worth checking out if you enjoyed Ikaruga and its predecessors, and aren't expecting more than just another shoot-'em-up that tries to be different but doesn't break the mold. There's no shortage of challenge to be found in this game, and it's got some decent visual effects here and there, but Chaos Field seems like it could have been a lot better with more fine-tuning.