Chaotic: Shadow Warriors

Back in 2009 Activision released Chaotic: Shadow Warriors, a third-person adventure game with turn based battles. It was never released outside of America which is a little odd – we know the trading card game on which it’s based was released over here as we once saw it for sale in TK Maxx.

Come to think of it, that may explain why Activision didn’t release it.

A combination of eBay, PayPal and a curious nature has lead to us to picking up a copy. Like most of Activison’s Xbox 360 releases, it’s region free. The price? A mere £6.

The third person bits aren’t anything too exciting. Environments are garishly coloured and the controls feel loose but it’s here that you find and collect battle cards. These are used to alter the stats on your team of mutants, and you need to pay attention when kitting your characters out. One card might give a character a massive boost of health points but at the same time reduce their resistance to certain magic.

Battles are reminiscent of the early Final Fantasy games, with some characters designed to support with healing abilities and others ideally suited to fighting. When being attacked you have the choice to block or scan your rival to add them to your collection. If you scan the same character three times in one fight you can then combine the three battle cards you’ve gained to raise the rank of a character.

It’s during the battles that the graphics are at their best – the character models aren’t too shabby. The artwork on the battle cards is quite appealing as well. The enemy AI during battles does become rather predictable after a while though, right to the point where you can guess what people’s next move will be.

Is America’s gain our loss? Not really, although if you wanted to introduce a younger gamer to the world of RPGs then this would then this would have been an ideal first stepping stone.

Leave a Comment