Game Review | February 27, 2010 12:28 pm

By Meta

Chaotic: Shadow Warriors is mostly a turn-based strategy game, developed by Fun Labs and published by Activision. It was released in November 2009.

Chaotic the video game is based on Chaotic the kids' cartoon which is based on Chaotic the card game--it's sort of a mix of Pokemon and Magic the Gathering, except it has far fewer creatures than Pokemon and not quite the strategic depth of MtG.

You battle your 'army' of up to 5 creatures against an enemy army. Each creature falls in to 1 of 4 tribes, and has 4 vital stats and potentially 1 to 4 elements. Each creature also has the potential to cast magic spells called "Mugic", as in magical music. On top of this, you can equip battlegear to further enhance stats or abilities.

The Overworld tribe is generically the "do-gooder" group and has a lot of courageous and fast-type animals, like cat people, and gains bonuses from having multiple friendly creatures in a single army. The Mipedian tribe fouses on wisdom and has lizard- and bird-like critters, and gains bonuses depending on types of Mugic used and battlegear equipped.The Danians are ant- and bug-like creatures that gain exclusive perks through a Hive ability, and the Underworld tribe has the "villain" types of monsters, like demons, with very destructive Mugic.

In Shadow Warriors, you play as a guy named Tom Majors. As in the cartoon, Tom and other Chaotic players are able to teleport to the world of 'Perim' where the creatures are real. Players run around with scanners that allow them to add new monsters to their pool and then duel each other when they aren't going on adventures.

The story of the game is pointless and short, mainly serving as a reason to go from point A to point B and scan new creatures along the way. There are items and Mugic spells scattered around the landscape, and glowing blue symbols that you can scan to get more battlegear. There are also annoying little animals that nip at your heels. Your main path through the world is marked by ammo pickups sitting around, and it's easy to find hidden spots and scans—the game lets you hold the Left Trigger to get an indication where to proceed next in the story, so all you have to do is go the other way when you hit a fork.

Once you actually encounter a monster and battle begins, you are brought to a screen where you can arrange your army, choose creatures and attach battlegear. This setup screen also lets you 'refine' creatures, which essentially combines 3 scans of the same-level monster into a single scan 1 level higher. Once creatures are level 3, they can't be refined anymore, so you'll want to get as many duplicate scans of low levels as possible.

Battle takes place in a turn-based format. Each turn involves you doing one major action with each creature, either Attack, Mugic or Taunt, and Abilities can be used once per turn as a freebie. You have 3 monsters in the front row, and 2 in the back that cannot attack or be attacked directly. When front-line monsters go down, a rear will move up.

Attacks and Mugic spells have timed button-press mini-games that increase effectiveness. They are all very simple but help avoid the typical zombification that can come from hitting the A button continuously in turn-based games.

As mentioned before, every creature has 4 stats and potentially 4 element types, and these affect what kind of damage they do, how much they take, and how effective their different moves are on enemies. The game does a good job of relating this information if you know what to look for, but the tutorial at the beginning is very brief and only gives the basics.

It's fun experimenting with different combinations of creatures and playing with the tribe-specific bonuses you get from an army that is all the same tribe, but the light platforming sections that come between battles are boring and there are only 3 "puzzles" to solve. The controls are very floaty so it's a good thing there's no real penalty for missing jumps.

On top of the poor adventuring element, the turn-based combat also loses some steam once you realize that despite their crazy appearances, many of the creatures are similar to ones you've already encountered in terms of stats and abilities; you could easily complete the entire story with just the initial creature pool.

The graphics and sound serve the purpose but don't stand out in any way. Spell and ability effects lack pizazz and the garish monster designs stand out against the bland terrain and architecture.

Once you've completed the short single-layer campaign, you cannot go back to scan any creatures you missed or pick up items, so all that's left is online multiplayer. The online community is already a ghost town, so you'd need to set up boosting matches. It needs a mode where you could duel the CPU or a friend offline.

Overall, Chaotic: Shadow Warriors gets 6/10 because it's short and there's not much to do. If you're a fan of the show and/or card game then this could be a 7 or 8 because it is faithful to the source material and I never encountered any glitches or bugs.

Achievement-wise, Chaotic is a very easy 940G. There are only 39 different creatures total that need to be scanned, and the 'hidden' battlegear and Mugic aren't difficult to find. The last 60G will require winning 50 Ranked matches online.

Reviewed: Chaotic

Keywords: None