Chase the Chicken review - Unreal Tournament 2004 Game

[page=Run, Chicken, Run]

It's a simple life: laying eggs, pecking at seed, checking out the foxy hens. Of course, no one ever told you that you'd end up in the lair of an insane cook, inches away from a butcher knife and trapped in a town full of hungry psychopaths...

Around this point, running seems like an ideal plan.

When you quietly side-step out of the kitchen, slipping down the alley way and over the fence, only to have the maniacal cook smash straight through the wall a la Looney Toons in pursuit, it becomes clear that the life of a simple chicken may not be that simple after all.

Chase the Chicken, as the title does not properly suggest, is not about running down a frantic, egg-laying fowl. Instead, players are tasked with beating their feathery little cheeks and getting the hell out of dodge as the chased chicken itself in a frantic, high speed race across a rural Mexico City filled with very hungry and very bored citizens.

Viewing the game from this role creates an interesting dynamic: As a chicken, you don't necessarily have a lot of powers at your disposal. You can lay the occasional egg, you can flutter into the air for a couple of seconds, and should someone cut off your head, you can still flail around a bit before realizing that your noggin is gone, but really, there isn't much to save you from that pot.

Not the place I want to start my morning.

So you run. And run. And run. Chase the Chicken lets you loose in a large city, with a direction to head in, and your own discretion about how to get there. Want to dodge down side alleys, leaping over trashcans and boxes in an attempt to stumble the ever growing crowd of people pursuing you? Go for it. Want to head for the streets, relying on your fast feet to propel you ahead of the citizens that bolt out of their doors to give chase? The world is your oyster, provided you are quick enough not to get served along with it on the dinner menu. Whatever you choose, you better move fast, because with each cry of "GET THAT CHICKEN," more and more people are joining the chase!

How does the chicken know about the escape plane? Why doesn't the cook just grab one of the other chickens sitting around? And really, is there THAT much meat on our hero to make him worth chasing?

These questions don't matter, flashing in and out of your mind at high speed as more people shout and give chase. As a demo for what will hopefully become a full product at some point in the future, Chase the Chicken is fantastic. It is colorful, exciting, and a true departure from the game platform it is built on. While it is not entirely devoid of problems, these minor details whip past at high speed and disappear behind you as you run for your corn-loving life in a madcap dash that'd give even Lola pause to consider the shenanigans.

[page=Catch Me If You Can, Cluck-Cluck!]

On the right! Dodge! Dodge!

What ever happened to the simple, action packed games of yester-year? While I'm a big proponent of not reusing the same formulas and retro crap that only seems great through the wistful eye of nostalgia, there is something to be said for games that harkens back to simple game play mechanics with fast and exciting results. These are games like Katamari Damacy and Alien Hominid, which are both simple, yet wickedly exciting.

Chase the Chicken is no different. With an entire city to explore at high speed, things better be on the simple side, or you'll find yourself constantly dying in a desperate attempt to figure out the bloody controls. To this end, your frantic chicken features only a few skills, all of which complement the idea that you are just a normal, average chicken in one extraordinary situation.

While dashing along through the level, your character can jump and dodge from side to side, making you a slightly harder target to hit while you move. When the heat starts to rise and the crowd starts to get dangerously close to you, there is a sprint button that allows you to nitro ahead of everybody else at the expense of your health, which rapidly depletes as you use it, only to regenerate later as you move. As far as attacks go, your character can lay eggs while running, which has got to hurt, by the way, that'll trip up any people directly behind you. Plus, you have a button labeled "flutter" that presumably does something beneficial as well, but never seemed to work for me.

Everything seems quiet...

And with this, you have the game. An indicator in the top corner of your screen shows you the direction of the airport, your salvation in the midst of all this madness, and everything else relies on your ability to move fast and stay alive. As you pass houses, more pursuers dive out after you to give chase, constantly replenishing the number of people on your tail. To make things easier for you, there are foods littering the environment that you can gobble up for health or to use for your turbo dash ability. Checkpoints are also dotted around the environment for you to find and use when you inevitably hit a dead end and get annihilated by the rather vengeful crowd of people.

One thing I would like to see the developers do, if they continue to build this little mod, is find interesting ways to keep the situation new, exciting, and just as ludicrous as everything that has come before it. Let's face it, these game play mechanics work well for the whole single level we get in the mod, but stretched across a full game, it would get very tiring, very fast. Why not throw in the occasional power up around the level, allowing you to shoot ahead like a rocket with a feather tail, or some kind of blast to knock back your opponents and keep them at bay?

Even better, create some wild scenarios for you to end up in during the middle of the level. Rather than just running the whole time, why not have the chicken leap onto the back of a speeding truck, hanging on for dear life while pecking at the hands of the town's people as they try to climb into the vehicle and get him? Or while racing down a hill, start an avalanche that forces you to contend not only with the people, but the rapidly escalating disaster around you! Things like this would keep the game from becoming monotonous and would ensure that the game is consistently madcap and exciting throughout.

But for what we get in this version, it suffices. While the game is short and can literally be beaten in a matter of minutes once you get the route down, it is one hell of a fun ride from start to finish with some truly stellar production values throughout.

[page=The Great Feathery Escape]

When you are watching for it, the sky doesn't look so good.

Graphically, the game looks pretty phenomenal. While I'm not an expert on the subject, I'd venture a guess that none of the default Unreal Tournament 2004 textures are used in the game, which has a decidedly cartoon-esque appearance that really lends itself to the ludicrous nature of the mod. And while the comic style is somewhat simplistic, there are lots of nice graphical touches to be found throughout the title, from your character's feathers disappearing as he looses health and slowly becomes a plucked roast, to giant billboards advertising for the Chef that is chasing you. All of these combine together to form a really engaging and cohesive game world for you to run through.

That being said, there are a few problems to work out in the game, though nothing show-stopping. As you can see in the screenshots, which isn't quite as apparent when you are trotting along at high speed in the game, the skybox and the distant trees don't look very good, which is kind of a let down when considering the nice looking visuals throughout this title.

A somewhat cluttered death animation.

More distressing is the frame rate, though, which doesn't handle the wide number of pursuers very well from time to time. When you are keeping well ahead of the crowd, things remain pretty smooth, but when their hands are right at your back and things reach their most thrilling, the game tends to become really jerky, with characters appearing and vanishing around you, landscapes inching by, and animations halting as you seemingly float above the landscape. People in the distance sometimes appear and promptly vanish as well, which can be kind of distressing when you have only a split second to decide which way to turn.

Sound is a bit more forgiving, with some great, though repetitive, sound samples for the different people shouting things after you and a great little musical score to compliment the proceedings. Though the selection is a little on the sparse side, it gets the job done and fits the rest of the game well.

Really, everyone should give this little romp a try. It is simple and fun, something the many complicated games out there nowadays tends to overlook. It is a goofy idea blown up into a game world that anyone can enjoy, running around and trying desperately to get the number one spot amongst the top runners. While I wish some options existed to manage the performance a bit better, Chase the Chicken looks well on its way to becoming a big hit amongst those who prefer quality over length.

Pros:

• Simple and engaging design
• Fun game world with great graphical direction
• One of few family-friendly mods out there
• Exciting from start to finish...

Cons:

• ...Unfortunately, that finish comes pretty quick
• Some minor frame rate problems