Chasm: The Rift Review

Introduction

I’ve had somewhat of a retro shooter itch that never feels quite fully scratched. I’ve gone back and played Unreal, Kingpin, Quake 2 as well as Warhammer 40k Boltgun and I’ve loved them all. It’s here, in this genre, where I’ve lost countless hours and countless lives. I’ve slain demons, space marines and aliens on a variety of worlds… and got lost a hell of a lot along the way.

Chasm: The Rift was to be my next adventure, and my next trip down memory lane. The retro shooter, from way back in 1997 has been remastered and released for modern consoles, warts and all. But does it hold up to modern expectations or is it a relic that should have stayed in the past?

Story

Chasm: The Rift is a time hopping, FPS adventure and quite possibly a direct inspiration for the wonderful Time Splitters. As a government lacky who happens to be good with a gun, you are tasked with hunting down the TimeStrikers. A band of aliens who are using an anomaly to invade Earth at various points in history. It’s your job to go and deal with this alien scum the only way we know how. With liberal use of firearms and a never say die attitude, you’ll travel to ancient Egypt, The Middle Ages and the alien homeworld in an effort to snuff out the threat to humanity.

As you progress through the campaign, the story unfolds via fully voiced, in-engine cutscenes. This is usually just a bit of background on the upcoming mission but occasionally you’re given updates on events that have unfolded in the present. Whilst the main character is hopping across time trying to prevent a catastrophe, there is a very real war happening in the normal timeline. It’s hardly riveting and just serves as motivation for the shooting, but sometimes all we need is some B-movie popcorn engagement.

Gameplay

Each chapter opens with a first person briefing where the objective of each mission is laid out. From there it’s standard FPS gameplay. Run, shoot and navigate the maze like levels looking for keys and switches to progress. Thankfully, all of this feels super smooth and aiming on a controller is a breeze with subtle, but very helpful aim assist. It all runs at a hell of a speed by default, so I definitely recommend turning off autorun when you start out.

There’s a good variety of weaponry available. The starting weapon is a single barrel shotgun but you’ll quickly upgrade to a double barrel, a minigun and rocket launcher as well as more exotic tools of destruction such as saw blades, a bolt caster and the games very own equivalent of the BFG – a weapon I fired once and cleared a room and gibbed me as well. Thank you save scumming!

The only problem with the weapons is that nothing feels powerful. The single barrel shotgun might take five shots to kill, whilst the double barrel takes four. Even the rocket launcher may take two or three shots before a simple boar goes down.

The enemies on the other hand, are the complete opposite. It’s easy enough to dodge some projectiles at a distance and picking the right weapon for the job gets it over with quickly. However, the game is happy to trap you in small rooms with three or four hard hitting melee enemies and zero maneuverability. Once they close the gap your health gets obliterated. With this being a game where health packs are a thing, it can leave you in a tough spot for upcoming encounters. This approach slows the gameplay dramatically. Instead of blasting into a room and dancing around projectiles, you’ll find yourself corner peeking and using the environment to trap enemies for easy kills.

Expect random difficulty spikes and trap rooms that will kill you at the drop of a hat as well. You’ll get stung a few times before you find yourself hitting the quick save button every 5 minutes so it doesn’t happen again. Speaking of which, it’s probably a good idea to get yourself acquainted with the quick save and quick load buttons because there are no checkpoints or autosaves here. You die and it’s all the way back to the point YOU saved it.

Overall, it’s a tough game and not just because of the enemies. It often felt like the levels were designed to be infuriating to navigate. They are vast mazes of similar looking corridors with one blessing. They hadn’t figured out how to do rooms above each other in 1997 so it’s all played on one plane. I ended up playing most of the game with the map in the corner due to how easy it is to get lost. It also doesn’t help that it hides the way forward behind destructible walls. Key colours also mean nothing, as the doors aren’t colour coded, and switches will tell you something has happened but the descriptions are often meaningless. The game also has a terrible habit of introducing new mechanics, but not actually showing, or telling you about them. It’s old school though, so we didn’t really have tutorials back then, it was just a case of figuring it out. Signposting could definitely have been better as the path forward is often blocked and result in lots of aimless wandering.

However, this is not your typical shooter. Sure there are boss fights at the end of each chapter, but these are no mere bullet sponges behemoths and are instead, puzzles. No spoilers here, but I found this alternate approach refreshing. One thing I don’t really miss about old shooters, is standing in a big arena, unloading every round of ammo into something until it stops moving.

Presentation

Chasm; The Rift was a great port on the Serries X where I played. It appears to run at a full 40k60 with everything looking crisp and running smoothly. The models are chunky and the proprietary engine it ran on back in the day delivered some decent texture work that has also scaled well with the resolution bumps. Enemy designs are varied and are loosely based on the time period you are exploring. It does suffer from the old issue of everything being a bit brown and grey though.

Audio is passable at best. As I previously mentioned, the guns lack oomph- nothing sounds loud enough when its fired. There was definitely a valiant attempt at providing voice work but it all sounds like it was recorded in a cupboard. Again though, this was all new and the studio weren’t exactly one of the powerhouses of the day.

Conclusion

Despite all of the times I got lost, despite the weak weaponry, I found myself strangely enamoured with Chasm: The Rift. It was challenging and and often frustrating but it was bold enough to try new things that we don’t even see today with boss encounters. With that said, I can really only recommend it to players who absolutely love classic boomer shooters. A lot of the old school design will turn off new players who are used to modern conveniences, such as waypoint markers and proper sign posting. The controls are smooth, the shooting is fun but lacks impact and level design is mind boggling but I embraced it, and thoroughly enjoyed my time.