Chaos Engine, alternately titled the Soldier of Fortune, is a shooter game from Bitmap Software that was developed by Virgin Interactive Entertainment and released for play in the early nineties. It was made for the DOS format, but also found itself ported onto a couple of other formats. Its overall design, similar to the Gauntlet arcade games, was intended originally for multiplayer play. While it can be played as a single player game, the fun is multiplied tenfold if gamers can play with a group of others.
The game plays from the point of view of one of several mercenaries from which the user can choose. Each of the different characters had unique qualities that made him stand out from the rest of the crew. They each had strengths and weaknesses that made them more or less balanced, but each gamer was sure to find a strong favorite to play.
The sceneries that the characters would blitz through will be varied. Characters will see lush green forests, enemy concentration camps, and other areas. There are four levels on each world and they are all set up like huge mazes that are filled with enemies and are very challenging. The goal in each level is to
find and activate small, lit colored nodes. These nodes will open doors to other levels, secret areas and will slightly change the structure of the level as it sits.
The computer takes over the play of the opposing character if there are no humans to play with. The play is both competitive and cooperative. The users are both trying to make it through the hordes of enemies, but there are power ups and points to be gained along the way, and inevitably greed is going to force one of the mercenaries to break…it is after all the nature of a mercenary. However, some level of cooperation is necessary because both characters have to exit through the same area, and the smooth scroll has to keep both characters in the same screen. This forces some level of cooperation if one character or the other is not going to be hung out to dry and stranded in an effort to exit.
The levels get progressively harder and harder as the game continues. Each character has one unique weapon that improves in different ways as play continues and he collects skill points. It is a fun little shooter that is made more fun by the Gauntlet style of multiplayer focus and the option of playing as several different characters.
