Back in 2004, Fearless Leader (aka Russell Carroll) reviewed the original Chromadrome and loved it. Well, three years later we have a sequel (Chromadrome 2, obviously) and a chance for another reviewer to fall in love with the game.

Chromadrome and its sequel are racing games of a sort. For me, the closest analogy was the seminal racer on the Playstation 1 (old school!), Wipeout. How is it like Wipeout? Well, there's no actual racing (not until you unlock it anyway), but there's speed, funky mind-bending tracks and lots of shooting action. I'll explain better.

In Chromadrome 2 you take on the role of a Chromate, a sub-atomic particle as he races through the universe. Your goal is simply to make it from point A to point B on increasingly crowded and convoluted tracks. Speed and reflexes are the order of the day as the game will have you maneuvering through slaloms, jumping from platform to platform, going through loops, skirting gaps, avoiding walls and on and on. Peppering each track are other types of Chromates that all have different effects on your main guy. Grey Chromates, the most abundant simply exist to clutter the track and slow your man down as he hits them (this is bad). Gold ones are worth big points and jump a bit forward on the track when you hit them. Huge green ones bounce you off of them, red ones cause you to overheat and speed up (as do little flames on the track), little heart Chromates will cool you down, and more. You can only shoot the little grey guys off the track, which you'll spend a lot of time doing because trust me, they're everywhere.

Suffice it to say, there's a lot to take in on each track, especially since you'll be blazing through the levels. Thankfully, you can adjust the speed you move at on a slider before you begin, anywhere from 0 to 100. This is a huge help for learning a level to iron out those tough spots. A convenient feature, you say? Indeed it is and Chromadrome 2's strongest point is the sheer bulk of features it throws at the gamer. I'm not even sure they're missing a kitchen sink, it's probably in there somewhere.

To kick things off: the game modes. You have Arcade mode, where you unlock level after level, advancing the game. There's the Time Trial, where you race against the clock on set tracks (complete with convenient ghosting feature to check yourself against other runs). There's Warp, a track where you attempt to reach maximum speed. There's Chromacing, which feels entirely different from the rest of the game and will take some adjustment. There's a 2 Player mode, a split screen romp through several other game modes. There's the Academy where you work your way through a track based around particular gameplay aspects of Chromadrome 2 through several difficulty levels. And THEN there's the Bonus Feature manager. These are features unlocked by completing portions of the game. There are 41 options in all with the ability to save up to 4 custom option sets. You can change everything from the appearance of all the chromates to the background of the game, to the screen border, to the speed of the game, to the way the track looks. Chromadrome 2 literally allows you to build the version of itself that you enjoy the most. It's really refreshing to see this degree of flexibility given to the gamer.

I'll close the main review section of this article with a quick talk on graphics and sound. The game looks great. Things are bright and bold and clear and I never got a hint of slowdown on my machine, which is critical for a game that requires your reflexes as much as this one. The “sky” in the game is a swirling music visualization that changes based on whatever track happens to be playing. Which brings us to sound, the game comes stock with some suitably atmospheric electronica kind of tracks, but has the excellent option for players to add their own music, something which can tie integrally into the graphics for the game due to the visualizer. I chose the Chemical Brothers album “Push the Button” for my soundtrack and let me tell you, it works great. Captures the feel of the game perfectly and I actually unlocked an Academy section called “The Big Jump” while listening to a track called, I kid you not, “The Big Jump”. It was a little surreal.

Graphics:
Chromadrome 2 is colorful and fast. It's important for a game that emphasizes speed as much as this one that everything be very easy to see, so the colors and crispness really help. The music visualization in the background and tons of customizable options for the graphics are just icing on the cake. Don't like how it looks? Change it.

Sound:
How can you knock a game's sound when they give you the option to make it sound however you want? Still, the built in tracks fit the game's style well enough already. There are minimal sound effects outside of this, but I imagine that's more to make sure it's not “talking” over the music anyway.

Gameplay:
Chromadrome 2 is a challenging title that has controls about as simple as you can find. Click the mouse to fire, move the mouse to move. You can adjust the mouse sensitivity, and even the speed of movement, letting you adapt the game to your level of proficiency. Oh, and you can set the fire to auto-fire. So really all you need to do is move the mouse. There are a few level elements that I think are poorly executed (a couple spots where you have to cross from one track to another where the collision detection tends to make you fall through the road and the ramp jumps that cause the screen to spiral are needlessly disorienting), but by and large the game is spot on.

Concept:
Chromadrome 2 is a race/shooter hybrid. The game is cute and colorful and packed to the gills with options. There's a lot packed into this title, but I wasn't blown away by the concept, but by the execution.

Value:
At $19.95, or at $49.95, there is a ridiculous load of features here. It's nuts, seriously. I can't think of a single thing that I would want to do with the game that they haven't provided.

Overall:
I've played a lot of good games lately for GameTunnel, and Chromadrome 2 still rises right to the top of the heap. It's great fun, and it's really well put together.