Chili Con Carnage Review

I remember receiving weekly press updates about Chili Con Carnage from Eidos and never quite knew what to make of it. The name alone is something that will draw attention. But when you open up the package and get it in your hands, the gameplay will be doing all of the attention drawing. This is a game that prides itself in its insanity in terms of its weapons, action and storyline. It took me until the introduction where the hero’s father dies in a freak combine-harvester collision and where you start shooting guys in bird suits, that this game doesn’t take itself too seriously. Surprisingly, that’s the alluring thing with the game.

Chili Con Carnage essentially is nothing more than a third-person action shooter. You have various challenges that you can complete throughout the storyline, but the meat and potatoes is all-out action. The ways in which you can kill people is the fun part of the game. Not only do you have a number of vehicles at your disposal to run people over with (and fire at them with your weapons at the same time), but you can perform melee kills, lethal shots with a number of guns and of course, create large explosions with barrels.

The controls and targeting system are unquestionably the weakest part of Chili Con Carnage, as is the case with most PSP games these days. The lack of a second analog control stick means that you have no control over the camera. It’s not horrible and the shooting system seems to work even better than some PS2 games like GTA III, but it could use some work. You jump with X, fire with square and cycle your weapons left and right on the control pad. You can climb objects simply by moving up on the analog nub and target people’s heads by pressing the right trigger.

Most of the action will require you to make good use of the game’s shootdodge feature. Simply press X and any direction on the analog nub to dodge enemy fire, and return it with square. Your pistol will give you unlimited ammo without needing a reload, while others like the shotgun will require you to hunt and conserve ammo. You can also collect various power-ups, health and items, such as my favorite, the pot on the head.

White trash hillbilly shooting has never been so much fun. Yeah, the game will get stale after a few hours of repeating the same mechanics, but there’s a good amount of content to tackle, as well as local area multi-player. You don’t even need a friend with a PSP, as you can take turns in the Hangman mode to see who gets the highest score. Generally speaking, Chili Con Carnage is an interesting arcade-style shooter (in that you kill things endlessly) that I would recommend to PSP owners once it reaches the $20 mark.