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When Sega's Chromehounds debuted on the Xbox 360 in July of 2006, it garnered cheers for its persistent online multiplayer campaign and jeers for a single-player mode that amounted to little more than a tutorial for online action. That dichotomy will disappear early next year, as Sega today posted on its official Chromehounds message boards that it will discontinue the game's online modes.

"We regret to inform everyone that the Chromehounds online service will be closing on January 6, 2010," an administrator wrote. "At this time, all online components for Chromehounds will no longer be accessible, and the game will only be available for play in Offline modes."

The admin thanked Chromehounds players for their support and urged them to "enjoy the remaining time with the game."

Chromehounds was the first Xbox 360 title developed by From Software. The studio subsequently developed a pair of titles in its signature Armored Core mech combat series for Microsoft's current console, as well the role-playing game Enchanted Arms, and the ninja action games Tenchu: Shadow Assault and Ninja Blade.

So ends one of the few games on the 360 I considered worth my time anymore. Chromehounds lacks client side server creation, and the single player component of the game is non-existent. So without its main server, Chromehounds won't even be worth the shelf space at a dollar store.

Just like Steel Battalion!

It's kind of strange they never did the online factional warfare thing with other titles. I mean, Armoured Core really turned to shit, but it would have been less mindblowingly boring and repetitive with online-ness, and maybe that'd force them to actually balance parts.

Frankly, persistent online factional warfare in the world of AC4 or ACFA would be asskickery. I could never really get into Chrome Hounds because the mecha aesthetic wasn't really my style (lol i am shallow), but I can practically write fanfiction about Armored Core. The setting is practically made for it, as well.

Ford Prefect wrote:Frankly, persistent online factional warfare in the world of AC4 or ACFA would be asskickery. I could never really get into Chrome Hounds because the mecha aesthetic wasn't really my style (lol i am shallow), but I can practically write fanfiction about Armored Core. The setting is practically made for it, as well.

It never really helped that people were spending actual money to buy better parts than were available in the base game.

Ford Prefect wrote:Frankly, persistent online factional warfare in the world of AC4 or ACFA would be asskickery. I could never really get into Chrome Hounds because the mecha aesthetic wasn't really my style (lol i am shallow), but I can practically write fanfiction about Armored Core. The setting is practically made for it, as well.

I'd agree with you if AC3-4 hadn't introduced so much unworkable stupid shit without resolving the control/UI issues. The change to power and flight is nifty (although they dropped the ball on making differnt play styles effective) but seriously, all the in-core expansion addon shit is stupid crap (and your core is 95% laser drones and shield gens lol).

Yeah, I know what you mean. Actually making full use of the abilities on offer in ACFA requires you to enter a Zen-like fugue state and you have to go to the hospital afterwards to get your fingers fixed. Even setting aside the superhuman precision required to actually really use quick boosting a lot of it was just clumsy; artefacts of the days when Armored Core wasn't a mixture of Macross and Gundam. Targetting, for example, is nowhere near as robust as it should be and it's really easy to lose track of a moderately fast NEXT at anything less than extreme long distance vertical launch missile range.

I mean, when it works I think it's great, like when you have a tense battle against a superfast enemy with inhuman precision and you manage to execute a series of snap turns, shooting down its missiles then turning around and nailing it with a purple lightsaber. But it suffers from usually quite small, uninteresting arenas and a huge number of superfluous parts, especially in multi. All those cool shoulder weapons like the bitching sniper cannons seem pretty much useless and it's plagued by the usual balance issues that stem from whiners, which makes only a small number of loadouts all that useful. It's not really awful, but it's basically mediocre most of the time, frequently kind of frustrating but with some real gems from time to time. It's because of this experience I've held off on trying out Ninja Blade.