Chasm: The Rift Review (LegoRobot)
EDIT: Since the time of this review, the player movement and several other small issues were fixed.
I'm giving this a thumbs up because I wanted Chasm on Steam and now I have it, but there are some really unfortunate and easily fixed problems with this version. The most egregious and noticeable is the movement. It absolutely does not feel remotely like the movement in the original game, I think because all inertia is gone. If you stop pressing forward, even in mid air, you stop dead in your tracks and fall straight down. This feels really weird and wrong to someone who has played a lot of the original.
Another problem is that artistic changes were made with no option to switch them off. For example the grey cloudy skybox has been replaced. Does the new one look better? Yes, it does. But the shit looking original skybox was part of the charm. The devs do not seem to understand that the jank and some ugly assets are part of why people still love it. This extends to the lack of distortion when looking up/down. This is perfectly possible to simulate in a modern engine, even if fully 3D. I know because Panzerchasm did it just fine.
I will be keeping this version if only so I can play multiplayer and have it on Steam Deck, but I am not happy with the current state it's in. Please devs, prove the naysayers wrong, show you understand what makes Chasm a charming relic. Don't add new assets without an option in menu to use the old ones instead, fix the movement physics so it feels like the original, add in an option for vertical distortion when looking up/down (as well as a limit to how far up or down we can look) and one last thing, the lighting looks all wrong. Some areas are nearly unrecognizable. This was a complaint many had about the Halo 1 remaster also.
Please revisit the lighting engine or manually correct lighting in the levels, as well as adding options in the menu to use original skyboxes and visual distortion. Please please fix the movement physics, even if nothing else gets addressed. That is all, thank you for reading.