Last week we brought you an in-depth look at the single-player and garage modes in Chromehounds, Sega and From Software's giant-robot action game for the Xbox 360. We subsequently got to take our newly acquired mech skills online in a preview multiplayer session to find out how the game's methodically paced shooting gameplay will translate into a competitive environment that supports up to 12 players per match. We were pleasantly surprised to see that getting some real, thinking human opponents into the game, each controlling their own powerful and fully equipped hound, exposed a different sort of gameplay than we encountered while battling it out against the computer in the story mode.

　　During our initial time with the campaign portion of Chromehounds, we played through a number of missions specific to several of the game's hound classes: soldier, scout, defender, sniper, and so on. The missions designated for each class generally provided objectives and challenges that were uniquely suited to the abilities of that class, so we found the gameplay to be generally satisfying throughout. Yet we never ran up against enemies that could even come close to rivaling our own armament and durability. In fact, all the enemies we encountered did only minimal damage to our own hound, and we were able to destroy any of them with just a few bursts of our heavy weapons. The difficulty simply came by way of their numbers, which frequently approached overwhelming.

　　Thus, even the basic deathmatch mode of Chromehounds' online play felt like a more intense, heated sort of combat, simply because our human enemies had weapons as tough and skins as thick as ours. We had to play much more defensively and with a greater focus on strategy than we ever did in the single-player, where we usually just trudged in with guns and rocket launchers ablaze. In the free-for-all matches we played, the action was far more fast paced and intense than we'd encountered previously, and of course, we found ourselves dying a lot more often. It was somewhat eye opening to find ourselves on the business end of the same weapons we'd previously been using to gleefully dispatch the campaign's waves of lesser enemies.

　　We found the online gameplay to be much more tactical than that in the campaign mode.

　　What's more, the lengthy multiplayer session really underscored the importance of Chromehounds' garage mode, more so than our single-player experience did. That's partially due to the fact that we played online with some lousy, cheating Sega reps who were running around in tricked-out hounds built from advanced components, so we got to see how a custom-built mech could really dominate against the stock designs the game offers by default. But again, we didn't really see the need for extensive customization and creative mixing and matching of weaponry and support systems until we had to go up against tougher, heavily armed human opponents. We then started experimenting with different generators (for increased energy output), weapon configurations, and more, to see what kind of performance gains we could cook up. We found that you can chain more than one weapon together--something that isn't immediately obvious in the campaign--so for instance, we assigned our cluster missiles and machine gun to the same slot for a truly withering attack that decimated some of our lightly armored opponents.

　　Some of the more strategic elements of the single-player experience are also optionally available online, and we found the multiplayer to be more tactical--and as a result, more interesting--with them enabled. For instance, in our last preview, we talked about the communications network you'll have to maintain--through the capture of COMBAS towers--and then remain within so you can keep contact with friendly forces. In the offline game, straying from the network (which is indicated on your tactical map) simply means you won't hear the preset radio chatter of your computer allies. But in a team-based multiplayer game, you'll actually lose headset voice communication, preventing your team from coordinating its attack strategy--which, from what we saw on a handful of the multiplayer maps, will be crucially important to victory. So making sure you stay close to your team, and keeping tabs on all of your active COMBAS towers, will be an important part of multiplayer games in which this feature is enabled.

　　Online or off, these robots blow up real good.

　　The strategic possibilities in team games aren't just limited to random headset chatter within matches--your team will also be presented with the in-game tactical map before a match, and you can annotate the map with numbered and color-coded markers that will let you map out a battle plan based on terrain, placement of COMBAS towers and bases, and so on. Once you're in the game, those markers will remain on the map, so it's exceedingly easy to pull up your map and verbalize your plans to your teammates to ensure rapid response.

　　Between the in-depth hound customization and the battle planning and strategic features of the gameplay itself, we could see Chromehounds evolving into an online game with a considerable degree of depth that diehard players will really take advantage of. So if you're the sort who likes to spend endless hours tweaking out the perfect racing machine in Gran Turismo, this looks like it'll offer that same kind of replayability--except with giant robots instead of sports cars. Luckily, it seems like the basic deathmatch gameplay with the stock hounds is pretty entertaining, too. The game is due out in early July, so we'll have a final determination of Chromehounds' lasting value for you then.