Total Chaos PS5 Review. Total Chaos began as a mod for the legendary first-person shooter, Doom 2, and it’s fair to say that a lot of great games have landed on our consoles thanks to that genre-defining franchise. Trigger Happy Entertainment attempts to do that very thing by remaking an old mod into its own game. While the concept is interesting, the execution of that concept lacks the level of refinement needed for a complete idea.
Total Chaos Review (PS5) – More Doom Than Gloom
Shipwrecked
While out in your boat, you receive a distress call on the open radio. Shortly after the call comes through, the storm surges and you capsize, knocking you unconscious. You awaken on an island called Fort Oasis, and the man who requested help on the radio pleads with you to help him. From there, he gives you intermittent directions as you progress deeper into the fort.
The one place Total Chaos excels is with its set pieces. When you reach certain points, the backdrops, scenery, and events are visual marvels. The dev team packs these points with detail and world building, and these points quickly become the things you remember the most about Total Chaos. It’s important to note that Total Chaos features some absolutely fantastic creature designs. Most of the humdrum enemies look a lot alike, but the featured enemies truly shine.
With that said, getting to the set pieces leaves a lot to be desired. In most cases, the maps are worn-down warehouses or dank caves, all of which are linear. The game features puzzles to vary up the gameplay loop, but they don’t offer much challenge. It’s also worth mentioning that I am traditionally terrible with puzzles. So, if they’re easy for me, then they are likely easy for just about everyone.
Mixing Incohesive Concepts
The real trick to handling everything that Total Chaos has to offer is juggling these puzzles while dealing with enemies. A big pet peeve of mine is needing to deal with puzzles while enemies come after you. Later on, you find more equipment to use, which makes dealing with enemies a bit more manageable. However, especially in the beginning areas, you don’t have any weapons. This leaves you evading danger while hitting switches or finding keys and figuring out which way you go next.
This issue intensifies thanks to the mechanics in the game. As mentioned prior, Total Chaos began as a mod for Doom that grew into a standalone experience. Doom gameplay is fast-paced, and Total Chaos brings that with it. Generally, enemies move slowly while you move quickly. There is an initial sense of fear when the pursuits start. However, after you start zooming around, you realize just how easy it is to avoid your adversaries.
Survival horror elements also make an appearance, mostly in the forms of limited resources, destructible weapons, and gathering resources for crafting. Resources also aren’t that limited. In fact, I ended up having a lot of resources I didn’t need to use simply because I could avoid most fights thanks to how the game presented itself at the beginning.
Getting Cornered
With that said, there are several times where enemies overrun you and you have to start over from your last save. Some sequences are scripted, and I don’t include those sequences in this example. After an hour or two, you gain the ability to craft weapons, and the game quickly presents more enemies for you to deal with. Unless you have the kind of otherworldly foresight I lack, you will likely get cornered by many enemies at once.
This is thanks to the puzzle-like sections where the game presents you with a mini labyrinth with objectives to find, and enemies keep chasing you while you search. A couple quick turns, and you can have enemies coming at you from all sides. Remember how this game began as a Doom mod? This is when you truly feel the fact that the game does not give you any high-powered guns.
If the game didn’t feel like a Doom title, you would likely feel more taken by the horror elements of Total Chaos. Instead, the game motivates you to take a fast pace to the game, which often leaves you either dodging mindless drones or trapped by them. If you put the game on higher difficulties, this issue gets even more exacerbated. This is where the game needs the most conceptual improvement. It doesn’t feel like a complete idea.
Not-So-Scary Horror
When you put all of Total Chaos’ myriad of gameplay elements together, a lot of the fear factor quickly disappears, giving way to something more akin to Doom than to survival horror. There’s definitely an audience for this game, but it’s more of a survival horror-adjacent experience. It has elements of the survival horror genre, but it leans too hard into the Doom formula. This combination creates a fun concept that needs editing to be a cohesive product. $25 is a fair price tag for what Total Chaos offers, but it may make some hesitate if they don’t know what they’re getting into.
Review code kindly provided by publisher