Chaotic: Shadow Warriors

While I know nothing about the series it is based on, Chaotic: Shadow Warriors had a cool-looking box so I thought I would check it out. I later found out that it is based on a TV show that is simply called Chaotic that was popular for a short amount of time. While this was released for the Nintendo DS, I am looking at the version which was released for consoles such as the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and the Nintendo Wii.

Gotta Catch Them All For the Duel

Ok, so full disclosure here, I have no freaking idea what is going on with the story. Basically, you play as this kid who is transported into this strange world where there are these warring factions, and you are thrown into the middle of it.

I am sure if you are a fan of the show the story is great and that it all makes sense, but as someone coming into this completely ignorant to the source material, I do feel that they could have done a bit better in explaining what is going on.

A Mixture Of Styles

I must say that I found the overall gameplay on offer here to be pretty interesting. Chaotic: Shadow Warriors has two different main styles of gameplay. The first has you playing as the kid as you run around the environment and explore. In this section, it is a bit of an action platformer as you will be running, jumping, and even shooting bugs. The game feels a tad on the clunky side and it is certainly not fluid like Uncharted or Ratchet and Clank for example.

The other part of the main gameplay has you taking control of these creatures that you collect as you play. In this regard, the game has been compared to stuff like Pokémon and Digimon. This part of the game features RPG-style turn based battles. You select what attacks you want to do and then if you are quick, you can press a series of buttons to dish out a bit more damage. These turn based battles last way too long and the reason for that is the characters never shut up!

Where Did The Money Go?

As I have never seen the show I cannot say for sure how faithful Chaotic: Shadow Warriors is to the source material. The presentation of the game has a very low-budget feel to it. The characters move in a kind of jerky way and while the creatures look kind of cool, even they have clipping issues and just very strange animations. The game is very shallow in terms of the environments too, there is like a handful of places you can go and they all look very similar.

The voice acting in the game is ok and I am sure faithful to the show. The problem I have is that during the turn based battles these characters talk way too much and this causes their moves to take forever! It makes what was already not a so great game, that little bit more annoying to play!

Pros:

• The game has some interesting looking characters
• I liked how pressing the right buttons gave your attacks more power
• It has voice acting
• The game can be found for next to nothing!

Cons:

• This game is low-budget in every regard
• The battles last way, way too long!