Oh no! It's an alien invasion! Earth's defense forces are overwhelmed and only you, awesome human being that you are, can possibly keep our planet from being wiped off the Rand MacNally Atlas of the Galaxy. Haven't we been here before? Sure. This is one of the oldest scenarios in the Big Book o' Game Plots, but that doesn't mean it can't be done in a new and exciting way. Unfortunately, Chaos Control from I-Motion and Philips doesn't even come close to filling that bill, but maybe someday something will.
For what it's worth, the idea is that Pioneer 10, a planetary exploration satellite launched in 1972, attracted the wrong kind of attention fifty years outside the solar system. When the satellite stopped sending signals back to Earth in the year 2050, we just assumed that some sort of technical failure had taken place. How wrong we were! The insectoid Kesh Rhan forces were on their way to pay us a nasty visit, thanks to the coordinates included in Pioneer 10. Didn't Mom warn you never to give your number out to strangers?
So on come the swarms, and it's up to you, as Lieutenant Jessica Darkhill, to clear the way for civilians to be repatriated from Earth's Lunar Base to the General Headquarters in New York City. In fact, Jessica has been fighting the Kesh Rhan since their entry into our Solar System, as they attacked Earth bases on Pluto and Mars, but the game starts in New York, presumably because the Statue of Liberty scene looks really cool, which it does. As the game goes along, you will get to virtually fight the aliens in the form of a computer virus that they have implanted in Earth's systems (oooo, how topical), and finally confront the fleet in outer space.
For the most part, the visuals in Chaos Control are quite attractive and fast moving. In the cut scenes, nicely rendered spaceship segments are combined with characters that look like they came straight out of Star Blazers. The Japanese animation esthetic is probably the most original and interesting thing about the game. The bits with the alien leader are menacing and nifty. Unfortunately, the game under the pictures is horribly disappointing and limited, as seems to be all too typical of Philips games.
Despite the fact that Jessica Darkhill is supposed to be an ace pilot, you will do no flying in this game. All the navigation is done for you, and it's your job to shoot down the bad guys using the mouse. Meanwhile, the ship is going through a series of complicated maneuvers which are sort of exciting to watch, but would have been a lot more fun to fly for yourself. The enemy attacks are just as unchanging as your flight pattern.
You control a crosshair target with your mouse. Usually it's green, but when it's pointing at the enemy it turns red. At this point a voice will say FIRE in your headphones. Not only is it likely that you would have already figured out that's what you should do, but by the time the message hits your ears, it's out of date, since the crosshairs have probably moved elsewhere. The attack formations happen pretty fast, and the voice just can't keep up. Sometimes the voice is so far behind the action that you may have been flying in silence for ten seconds, when it will suddenly say, GOOD SHOT. Sometimes it seems to congratulate you on shots you just missed. In the one element of subtlety this game includes, you can lose points by hitting your own defense forces, which look just like normal human tanks and helicopters. Your crosshairs will turn yellow if you aim at your own guys.
When you do actually hit something, you don't even get a satisfying explosion, except in your headphones. The thing you shot is still there, it's just obscured by a few smoke clouds. I guess since the perspective moves past so quickly, the designers thought they didn't need to bother to make the things blow up. If something hits you, it doesn't even make a sound. Your perspective shakes a little, and your shield meter at the bottom of the screen goes down a little. Eventually, the voice gives you a shield alert which soon becomes a red alert, and then you die.
The instruction book also makes reference to a gauge that keeps track of how hot your gun is getting. If you fire too often, you will lose firepower for a little while. While this sounds like a good idea, you will actually only be firing a little over one round per second no matter how quickly you click the mouse button, so it's very unlikely that that little gauge will even show up.
Chaos Control is a very shallow little arcade game that doesn't give you enough perks to maintain interest. These days there are so many far superior ways to play "kill the bad guys" that this one isn't even worth the trouble.
