izigame.me

I'm gonna try and be really honest with this review because I'm of the opinion that this game has been somewhat misrepresented by a lot boomer shooter fans and YouTube personalities. Of course it's perfectly fine to have a different opinion of an obscure Ukrainian FPS game from 1997, but many of these people today fall into the same trappings as the small but dedicated group of gaming journalists from the 90s who claimed that Chasm was an honest to god "Quake killer".
Make no mistake, this game is far from being a Quake killer, even today. In fact, some of Quake's objectively obnoxious episode 3 and onward levels feel like a breath of fresh air compared to most of Chasm's offerings.
If you're anything like me, you probably grew up in the 90s combing through shareware CDs looking for cool games to try out on the family PC and accidentally stumbling across this weird FPS called Chasm. Right from the start it made a memorable impression with actual in-game cut-scenes (which was a rare thing at the time). I remember it like it was yesterday: The demo is just one level long, but it was just enough to make you want more, because unlike the rest of the game the first level actually isn't all that bad and is structured fairly soundly.
Let me take a step back and go over some of the positives first:
To begin with, this remaster is very faithful and contains everything from the original release, including the bonus "episode". If you already love the original game, you can safely buy this game right away and ignore everything else I write here because everything is there with a modern Vulkan renderer added for good measure. I think they also touched up some of the sounds a little bit, but it's hard to tell. TL;DR: Remaster good, source material mediocre/bad.
Another thing that is absolutely awesome are the graphics. From the textures to the 3D models and weapons, the artistry on display across all episodes is nothing short of amazing, and all of the monsters are animated beautifully. In fact, the animations in particular are probably the only thing that actually give Quake a run for its money.
The last positive thing I'll mention is the soundtrack, which is very appropriate and atmospheric without being too bombastic.
Alright, on to the negatives, of which (fair warning) there are quite a few:
I won't sugar coat it; The most egregious issue with this game is the level design, by far. It's honestly kind of impressive how much potential this game squanders with its awful and sometimes downright spiteful level design; It actually feels like the author of these maps is actively trying to stop you from enjoying yourself, that's how bad it is.
If you don't believe me, just look at the achievements: There's two of them that are awarded for getting stuck in a level for at least three minutes. I think it's pretty obvious that even the people who remastered this knew how bad the level design situation is, and I honestly don't blame them for poking fun at it. One map in the first episode spawns you in toxic goo that drains your health, and has you try and jump for safety before locking a gate in front of you and having you jump back where you came from to safety. See what I mean with "spiteful level design"?
Now, I feel obligated to mention that (in its original form at least) this game was technically very limited. It's fairly common knowledge among "FPS historians" nowadays that Chasm's underlying engine isn't actually true 3D, but instead uses 2D sectors populated with 3D models.
Many people compare this rendering technique to the original Doom or Duke Nukem 3D, but honestly if you crack open the level editor it becomes obvious that it's way more limited than you would initially think; Height variation in Chasm is very sparse for this reason, only sometimes using 3D models to simulate steps or ledges and the like. As a result, the levels feel a lot more flat compared to even a typical Doom WAD of the time. Oftentimes the maps themselves feel more like Wolfenstein 3D than Doom.
Also unlike Doom, Chasm has almost no room to comfortably move around in. Forget about circle strafing: Most of your time will be spent ducking in and out of cover taking shots at enemies, some of which take an unreasonable amount of damage to go down. Even more so on Hard difficulty. When the rare opportunity for player mobility strikes it feels like a huge relief as the game suddenly becomes enjoyable for just a moment, before moving you through more 64x64 unit wide hallways again.
Most of the maps in Chasm are mazes in the most aggravating sense of the word, and because the auto-map is always zoomed in you have very little sense of where you've been. It shows how a seemingly small change can have big consequences.
If the endless mazes themselves don't put you off from playing, then wait until you pick up an item at the end of one and get insta-killed by enemies spawning right behind you as a reward. Fun, right? Now imagine playing it on Hard difficulty like I did. There's challenging, and then there's just plain unfair.
When Chasm isn't making you go through mazes, it will make you hunt for switches that are hidden around dark corners, or expect you to do something crazy like shoot the lid off of a sarcophagus you had no idea you could even interact with. It's like they wanted you to wander around aimlessly for 30 minutes pulling your hair out.
Oh and if the cramped environments aren't bad enough, the hit detection around corners and 3D objects is considerably poor. It's really easy to assume you will be able to shoot a rocket from behind a corner before accidentally blowing yourself up; Yeah guys it's really cool that you managed to put 3D details in your janky engine, but it makes fighting enemies a pain in the butt.
It's just not fun to play for the most part, and that really sucks because I wanted to go into this loving it for the adorable Slav jank underdog it is.
It really is too bad because the game's iconic gameplay element of shooting an enemy's limbs off is actually really fun and easily its most stand-out feature. To this end, I also feel like the game's weapon arsenal could have been better catered towards this feature. Instead the load out feels rather stock, with the most notable standouts being a laser crossbow and a throwing shield. Most of the time you'll be using your shotgun, though.
There's also a BFG-like weapon, but it sucks because it hurts you if you're within range of its projectile - Come on Chasm, you had one job; At least give me a proper room-cleansing end-game weapon! It's not rocket science.
What would have saved this for me is the addition of a modern expansion pack, like they did with the Quake 1 and 2 remasters. This game would really benefit from modern level design principles, and since the game already runs on a newfangled Vulkan engine there really is no excuse this shouldn't work. Unfortunately, as it is I can't recommend this game in good faith to anyone looking for a fun old school shooter, not with what's currently on offer.
I don't wish to trash the efforts of the remaster guys as I'm sure they put a lot of work into this. They did a great job and I don't think the game ever ran poorly or crashed, so that's definitely a huge point in their favor. I just wish the underlying game itself had similar quality control.
I personally think Vivisector (another Action Forms FPS) holds a lot more potential for a proper remaster, but seeing as that game is even more obscure than Chasm I doubt anyone will ever be crazy enough to make it happen. One can dream, though.