The Chaos Engine (originally know as "Solders of Fortune" in North America) ,developed by Abstraction Games and published by Mastertronic, is a 2 player,top down run and gun(without the run),originally for the classic consoles(Amiga, Sega Mega Drive)now on Steam, with new bells and whistles(i think). So what is this engine of chaos exactly? Well the story is not too descriptive. At some point it time scientist create the engine, at first seaming primitive, but in time it learned, and decided to mess stuff up. Somehow it manages to bend time, space and organic matter, creating monsters out of everything from frogs and plants to dinos and cave men. You and your partner play one of the six mercenaries who are hired to take care of this mess- Navvie, Thug, Brigand, Mercenary, Gentleman and Preacher, each having seemingly unique stats to them and you must fight through the 4 worlds, destroying electrical nodes and blasting monsters.

 

Now as bare bones as the story is, when considered the time frame of when this is made, i can without a lie say, that i like the idea of it. But as forgiving as i can be i still dont like the "characters", i mean for peets sake, one of the mercenaries is called "Mercenary"! But i guess i should not expect much from a old game, but come on at least for this version they could have changed the name at least. Speaking of which, here i have to give a answer to the most important question old players of the original are having: "Is this a good port?", to which the answer in my opinions is- well kind of. If there is any credit i could give is that on the service the games port seems to have effort put into it. I was honestly expecting a plain pre-packaged emulator deal, but that is not the case. Graphics wise, there are barely noticeable changes, though personally i am not a fan of the artstyle. Mainly the fact that for most of the environments they use dark, muddy or grey-ish colors, sure most of the enemies and character pop out, as do the characters, but i still find it makes the game not all that pretty to look at. But considering todays market which has its fair share of games with "retro style artwork", this could easily fool someone that its a new retro game. What about the music? The problem is that its too good of a port of the original. What i mean is that its the keeps its whole originality, just updated so it could sound more crisp and clear for the modern systems, but that does not change the fact that it has the problems of all old titles- repetitive to a mind numbing extend. Now if you are nostalgic for the original i think you would like love the soundtrack, but i personally dont. The rest of the sound design is pretty good actually, i like the fact that small background elements, like bubbling mud pools, have their own sound effects to them. And of course i like that they kept the traditional design of "Everything explodes". From enemy deaths to projectiles, everything explodes with a nice explosions sound effect.

 

But what about the most important part- the gameplay? Well it sort of has the same problem that the music has, in that its a bit too close to the original. Moving in 8 directions, shooting stopping you in place, having a bigger it box that it seams- these are all staples of old school games like this, but in the now this is just bad design. Not only that but some other parts of the game itself that gave it that old school difficulty, like enemies spawning from behind, some of them having projectiles with inconsistent ranges, some enemies taking one shot to kill on one level, but the next one the same monster now takes two shots and many other little things.

 

Now are things that are good? Well yes, i like the character customization/ leveling up. While i dont like the forced co-op ,i like how it shows how smart you can make the AI of CPU on different characters. Who the AI no matter how low it is, you can still for the most parts you could leave it to clear the whole area for you. As for the rest of the port, well there is supposedly new small features like Bloom and Smoothing but honestly i have not noticed it. And there are system bugs that i have had rarely had, but still be mindful for them.

 

In the end, while i personally would not play this again i can see this being a blast to play with a friend or just to have enjoy a nostalgic feeling you might get. But still in the end my score is simply for the effort that has being put in the port, which sadly i feel that is not enough.