

Quake‘s maps were labyrinths of polygons stretching in all directions and taking all sorts of grotesque architectural shapes, with floors on top of floors on top of floors in true 3D fashion. Anything to make them feel strategically distinct.Īnd those corridors are indeed cramped. It would be nice if the shotgun had a wide spread, and/or the laser crossbow could shish kebab monsters together, and/or the buzzsaws always cut enemies into little pieces. You only ever face one or two monsters at a time (yawn) in Chasm’s cramped corridors, but they all take too many hits to kill no matter what weapon you’re using, leaving each battle a war of tedious attrition. Unfortunately your weapon selection offers no tactical variety except “better than the useless rifle you started with”. Like Disruptor on the PS1, the variety of environments helps keep the game from becoming dull and like Quake, the end-of-episode bosses can only be killed by solving a puzzle. There are a handful of levels in each locale, populated with monsters that are almost never seen outside of that time period: gibbering subhuman soldiers are only found on present-day earth’s military bases, lion men stick to their own turf in Egypt, and vikings naturally never set foot outside of their Norse city. The player goes on a Mighty Max adventure across modern earth, ancient Egypt, equally ancient Scandinavia, and an alien citadel to kick the ass of the giant space worm that keeps farting all over the space-time continuum. The art direction gives Chasm a surprisingly distinct look that actually puts Quake‘s grainy, low-poly, mostly-brown art to shame. Whereas Quake was an odyssey of rusty bases and muddy castles, each locale in Chasm has a unique texture set with a good variety of muted colors. The answer is no, for many reasons both good and bad. But is it really that similar to its big, bad cousin from Id Software? It has a similar gritty style, involves dimensional travel to bloody realms of antiquity, oozes atmosphere, uses 3D models in lieu of sprites, and features a rusty status bar and grimacing, behelmeted protagonist that both look ripped directly from Quake.

It was released in 1997 and is often referred to as “the poor man’s Quake”, which is an apt title. So they call you instead.Ĭhasm: The Rift is the first 3D shooter developed by Action Form, creators of the Carnivores series.

The government figures maybe somebody ought to do something about these pests before they break the planet or something, so they call the guy from Quake to save the day. They’re changing the past, playing with our nukes, and making a general nuisance of themselves. Ambiguous alien fiends known as the Time Strikers have begun an invasion of present-day earth (circa 1997) from across the space-time continuum.
