Blazing Chrome – Review (PC)

By Dave Lambden Last updated Jul 11, 2019

Blazing Chrome is a nostalgic arcade shooter paying homage to the classics that dominated arcades and living rooms in the early 90s. Developed by Brazilian Studio JoyMasher and published by The Arcade Crew, this is a game that seeks to take those of us in our late twenties and early thirties back to a simpler time in our lives, and a less forgiving time as gamers.

Blazing Chrome has you take control of one of several playable characters. Mavra – the bad ass blonde human commando, or Doyle – Mavra’s trusted companion who has defected from the robot army, are playable from the beginning of the game. Two other characters can be unlocked for subsequent playthroughs. These secret characters possess special close ranged move sets that, while they look super cool, make the game harder. Both Doyle and Mavra can be played simultaneously as Blazing Chrome allows for local co-op, allowing you and a friend to team up to take on a bigger challenge.

Building on the subject of difficulty, Blazing Chrome has three different settings to suit every player’s needs. These settings don’t seem to change much with enemy ability or your own character’s health – one hit kills you regardless which setting you’re on. Rather, different difficulty levels will grant the player varying amounts of lives, access to support capsules, save points, or even leader-boards. As an example, playing on the easiest difficult will give you seven whole lives before you see a game over screen and the use of support capsules. However, none of your end level scores will count toward the game’s worldwide leaderboards, which should be a huge draw for a game like this. The amount of variety and selection from a difficulty standpoint is impressive in Blazing Chrome. Even if you opt for an easier playthrough your first time, the allure of leaderboards and new characters will make most players want to dive back in on a tougher setting.

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A game like this will draw the obvious comparisons to classic shooters like Super Contra and Metal Slug – and those are well founded. However, having spent more of our youth playing games like Mega Man X and Battle Toads, we felt just as much inspiration from those 16 bit arcade shooters as we did Contra. These are really really good things for us, despite the lack of originality. Blazing Chrome managed to hit a level of personal nostalgia that we haven’t had in a very long time. Whether it be the fast paced cheesy music, or the gargled audio that passed as voice work in the early 90s, or the ridiculous amount of enemy attacks coming at you at any given time – it vividly reminded us how and why we broke so many Genesis controllers when we were kids.

The gameplay is wild, punishing and varied. Four different weapon variations can be used, three of which must be found throughout levels. There is the default rapid fire pea-shooter as the best all-around option, a grenade shot, which is less accurate but does huge AOE damage, a whip shot that sacrifices range for persistence, and a charge shot that, when powered up, can take out most enemies with one blow. Weapon selection will come down both to preference and circumstance. We tried to find one that we liked best but found each had huge upside in different scenarios. You’ll want to be careful as, if you die while using one of the three collectible weapon types, it will be lost until you pick it up again.

Support Bots can also be found to give Mavra or Doyle an advantage in battle. These bots will follow your character until you die or take enough damage. An attack variant will mimic your characters attacks giving you twice the fire power. The defense bot gives you a shield and allows you three or four additional hits before you’re killed. Lastly, a speed type will increase your agility – making it easier to dodge enemy attacks. While the Support Bots lack the variety and utility as the different weapon types, they act as a nice crutch in this unforgiving game.

Another major standout for Blazing Chrome are the bosses. Each level features two bosses – one near the middle of a stage and another to finish it off. While the first boss in each level could be considered a mini-boss, we found many of them to be as spectacular, if not more, than the end level bosses. Most of these set piece encounters allow the player to attack and destroy piece by piece. It’s not always as simple as hitting the bosses in a weak spot. Rather, different attacks will often come out of different appendages of the bosses. If you find one attack particularly annoying or hard to defend against, simply focus all of your fire on the area of the boss from where that attack comes. Many of the bosses are modeled after different types of animals or insects. A memorable encounter for us was the eagle boss. We loved the way it disappeared into the background only to come swooping out of nowhere and filling the entire screen.

Story, on the other hand, is just sort of there as set dressing. The game is introduced with an opening cinematic describing a war between humans and robots (or “toasters” as they’re lovingly referred to in the game) that brought the world to armageddon. It falls somewhere between Terminator and The Matrix but, again, is really just there to set up the use of robotic enemies and post apocalyptic static backdrops. We don’t know how many people will pick up Blazing Chrome for an engrossing story-line but, if anyone does, they will be disappointed. Granted, it’s not really the point of a game like this.

Boasting challenging run and gun gameplay, an impressive amount of replayability, and an unmatched level of nostalgia, Blazing Chrome is a must have. The allure of some fast and frantic retro style couch coop is enough to sell us on the game alone. We highly recommend you check out Blazing Chrome when it releases on July 11th, 2019.