When you first head over to the Xbox Live portion of Chromehounds, you’ll have to sit through several text screens and options asking you which Hound type you want to use, and giving you background information on the war in progress. You’ll also choose which nation you wish to align yourself with. How well that nation does in combat will determine what parts you can buy and where you should be fighting at. When you’ve finally worked your way through all of that, you’ll be able to select a clan to join or start your own clan. This is the bread and butter of Chromehounds as you’ll need a solid team to be successful in the game.
The primary focus on multiplayer is of course, team-based play. However, the interface in very unintuitive, which made my time with Chromehounds multiplayer quite frustrating. You can choose between three play mode options for combat which include a battle related to the war you’re currently fighting, a single mission that does not affect the war, or free combat where you just team up with random players and go at it no matter what county you’re aligned with.
The way of the future...well, if constant war is a norm.
In the three days I spent playing Chromehounds online, it took an hour to find a match and actually start playing in the primary war mode. This included the missions that directly affect the controlling nations in the war, and individual missions that had no bearing on the war. When attempting to get a game going, you’re given three options: rendezvous, search missions and launch a new mission. If your fellow clan mates have already started a mission but have yet to launch the mission, you can select rendezvous to join their game. If no missions have been started, you can search for a mission that you want to join or start a new mission and wait for an opposing team to join.
This is where the problems begin. If you search for a mission you’ll see a list showing how many players each team can play with (up to six), where the mission will take place, and what rank the mission has been set to. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show you which missions have already started or how many players have joined on the opposing side. Four out of every five missions I tried to join I would get an error message either indicating the mission was already in progress and I couldn’t join, or that there was a communications error and I couldn’t join.
