Chaos Heat PS1 Review

Chaos Heat is an arcade-exclusive game released in Japan only back in 1998 and even though this game didn't get ported to consoles, it is a prequel to chaos break that was eventually released on the PlayStation in 2000. 

Whereas chaos heat takes on more of a unique arcade-style role where it does have survival horror-style elements but it's more arcade focused where you have waves of enemies to defeat in order to progress through each stage whereas with chaos break it was developed more into a kind of like a resident evil style survival horror game where you can move around your environment at will, unlock doors and backtrack and solve puzzles. 

With chaos heat the gameplay would be ideally similar to that of even arcade-style shooters mainly with likes of light gun games if you've ever played the likes of the House of the Dead series, it has a similar kind of gameplay style in terms of the progression system. 

So you must constantly defeat enemies that come at you to progress to the next stage. 

But the one thing to note about chaos heat is that even though it is an arcade game it still utilizes the same type of graphics and visual style of that of ps1 games and even though it never got released on consoles this game would have done quite well on the console format as chaos break even though it is considered somewhat of a flawed type classic and in a lot of respects is also considered to be one of the worst survival horror games on the likes of the playstation one but chaos heat in respect has gained a lot more praise from gamers over the years and especially those that have managed to experience it over recent years due to the simplicity of the game and how well it does play. 

And that's essentially the cool thing about gaming in the modern day through the use of emulation we can now gain access to games that we genuinely could not have played before and even from my own personal experience even going back to the early days of when i had my original playstation one, i went through a phase where i was obsessed with survival horror games and collecting as many survival horror games as i could and i remember stumbling across chaos break in one of game stores when i was travelling up to dublin back in late 2000 and the game was in the bargain shelf or more or less like the bargain bin where i was looking for any type of game really but anything at all that looked like resident evil for me was kind of a no-brainer. I would nearly buy it instantly and i just happened to stumble across chaos break and i got it relatively cheap i think i got it for like about 20 Irish pounds at the time which was really good and i just like the look of it. 

Now i enjoyed the game even though it's not considered to be the greatest game ever i have done a previous review on chaos break so i'll leave a link down in the description so you can go and check it out but straight away from the initial playthrough of the game straight away you're greeted with the title screen and the first thing that draws on to you is chaos break the sequel to chaos heat and straight away that's got your mind and your imagination going like chaos heat i've never heard of this game what is it about so that kind of started the whole journey of not only just playing through chaos break and trying to finish it which mind you it took a while because i could never get past that damn sudoku puzzle in the game for a long long time and eventually when i did i've mentioned I finished the game. 

Now i enjoyed the experience but i was always interested in trying to find out more about chaos heat and at the time back then we didn't really have access like i didn't have my first pc until i went to college so we didn't have access to the internet for quite a few years after so trying to find information around this game chaos heat was very very slim if any at all. 

You might find snippets maybe in an old magazine where it referenced it. 

You might maybe get a screenshot or two but that was about as much as you would get at the time. 

Still, luckily enough more so in recent years due to emulation and even websites now that you can play the games through your browser and even with the likes of hardware that play a lot of emulation-style games we can now access a lot of these old-school type classics or hidden gems that most people don't know about. 

And with that recently i finally got the opportunity to finally get my hands on playing chaos heat because it was always one of those games that always felt like it got away from you it always felt like that you knew you wanted to play it or you wanted to experience it and just to see what it was all about but you could never really know because you had no opportunity to play it but when they seen that i had the opportunity which i again stumbled across on a website where you could play it on a browser which if you do look for online you will be able to find it these days. 

I made sure to bookmark the website and i says right i'll go on and play it and i'm glad that i did now it was a bit fiddly trying to play it because you had to use the likes of the keyboard and mouse on the computer and i couldn't use the actual controller that i had hooked up to the computer but it didn't matter once i was getting the chance to experience the game and its glory for me was a worthwhile opportunity. 

Now it's not to say that it plays 100 perfectly visually it's fine, the audio is a bit choppy in most regards but it doesn't take away from the gameplay experience once you get familiar with the controls and how to interact with the object's, environments and utilize the weapons and resources at your disposal it's pretty straightforward and there is a vast array of differences compared to chaos break as again chaos break was more survival horror focused which meant that you had to traverse through different environments and backtrack a lot and solve puzzles in order to progress. 

Whereas with chaos heat it was just a direct approach you're going from one room to the next although you could take different routes depending on certain outcomes or sequences that you had to implement throughout the game where you could go into different rooms but if you didn't it didn't matter because the game would take you down a certain path and you just have to keep progressing and along the way, there would be hidden rooms and areas to explore along the way within the area that you're in but the majority of the game was really just to remove as many enemies as you could throughout the room until you got access to likes of a key card that you could use to unlock the next door to proceed and then every so often you'd have to fight like an end level boss which would take a while to put down. 

But luckily enough because you weren't playing essentially in the arcade and due to emulation it allowed for you to pretty much trick around so that you could have infinite lives and infinite continues so you could just keep playing so you could experience the whole game straight through and that essentially is a must because if you were to play this game in the arcade the chances are you'd waste a lot of money because you would die a lot but at least they got the opportunity to play it and from my own experience of it i have to say now my arms were tired after playing it but it was very worthwhile. 

It was very enjoyable and it is very different to chaos break even though the graphics and even the characters that are in the sequel are all pretty much there and graphically it's very reminiscent of a PlayStation one game and from my overall experience and even from other reviews that i have managed to see starting to show up online the one thing seems to remain true that a lot of people that clearly didn't really like chaos break did enjoy chaos heat and they also like myself will admit that the game would have been better and would have done quite well had it been released or ported to consoles at least. 

As it just would have fit into that category of unique type games that had kind of like survival power elements but mixed in arcade-style gameplay so this game would have done really well and the fact is it was multiplayer as well so you could play it with one of your mates so you could really have a good laugh playing it and really get to experience everything the game had to offer. 

Now it's not to say that it's perfect it is flawed in many respects but it is a worthwhile and enjoyable experience and now the fact is that we have the opportunity to play this game i would highly recommend in my own opinion that if you do want to see more of what the chaos break game had to offer in terms of what was to come before it, this is definitely a game that you really do need to try out. 

It is one of those lost kind of hidden gems in the gaming world that is only recently in recent years started to crop up and now we have the opportunity to play it so now is the perfect time to jump on it while you have that chance. 

I highly recommend it and you might be surprised you probably will enjoy it as i did now as with a good play through the longest part really is the fact is that you'll die a lot but the fact is that you have pretty much infinite continues because you're playing the true emulation means that aside from constantly dying you will be able to finish the game roughly in about 40 to 45 minutes but because of the fact that you die so much it will take a wee bit longer say about an hour or just over a little bit but again it's a good hour well spent just to experience a rare hidden gem in the gaming world so i highly recommend that you do check it out. 

And honestly, i would love to know your thoughts on this do you think that this would have been a really good game to have been ported over to the PlayStation one back in the day and if so do you think that this would have sat really well amongst all of the libraries of survival horror and arcade-style games or even if you have played it yourself and if so what thoughts do you have in the game did you enjoy it or maybe not so much? 

I'd love to hear what information you have about the game or any ideas or stories so be sure to share them in the comments below and be sure to keep watching to see more content on other games similar to Chaos Heat, you can check out the blog where we will be diving into the iconic elements of these classic video games and as always keep those gaming memories alive...