Wow, I did a forum search and found no references to Chromehounds despite it being released in July. I rented it last night and ended up playing until 6 in the morning!

Right now there are multiple campaigns branches that are specific to the 6 different role types. I finished the soldier and sniper branches, the sniper missions were pretty intense, desperately trying to climb up hills to lay down some cover fire for your allies. I accidently got in a close up engagement with the boss of the sniper story (not sure if the game sets it up that way or not) it involved alot of dodging & weaving as well as from-the-hip shots of my sniper rifles.

So far I'm getting preconfigured hounds for my missions, you unlock parts you can use in the garage after each mission but the preconfigured hounds are usually better because they have parts you can't access. I did create a hound for my last sniper mission that had faster speed as well as sacrificing close combat weapons for more sniper fire-power (that made the boss fight so hard!)

All in all, it's less of a giant robot sim that most of the mechwarrior games where (I never really played them much because I didn't have any fun). Where I'm at, the only thing I have to watch when building a hound is it's weight, engine heat and energy output will probably factor in later.

Ah cool! I've been wanting to pick up Chromehounds for a while now but have been skeptical with how little feedback I've seen anywhere. Maybe I'll jump the gun on it as well, it sounds and looks really entertaining.

Does the terrain get any less crap after the first mission?

It's got some serious gameplay issues, but it's still a fun title.

I believe most retailers have Chromehounds as a playable demo in their 360 interactives.

Picked it up when it first came out, polished off the single player missions quickly, then was in a 20-man squad for the war. It was great fun while it lasted, but the squad gradually drifted away with TDU and now CoD3 and GoW. I've got all the achievements I can out of it, so it will part-exchange time for it soon.

If you can get a group of people together in it, I've not found a game that compares to Chromehounds, xbox Live-wise. Great team game.