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Ah Chili… with carnage! On the go! What could be better? Although Eidos’ Total Overdose didn’t set the action gaming world aflame, it had enough going for it to warrant some kind of follow-up. Enter Chili Con Carnage, a re-imagining of the original game that tightens up the pacing and design to focus on what Total Overdose did right—blow stuff up.

Badges…? We don’ need no stinkin’ badges!

It’s hard to imagine any action fans not digging deep into this meaty, movie Mexican bowl of Chili Con Carnage. With no interest in anything but pure, hilarious camp, Chili Con Carnage is the love child of Roberto Rodriguez’s El Mariachi movie trilogy and Max Payne. The stage for an epic bout of gunplay is set as our hero, Ram, goes to give his cop dad his birthday present—a big box of kittens.

No sooner does joy soak through the room than Ram’s father and those sweet, sweet kittens get run down by a farm thrasher crashing through the front of the building. Hay bales and kitten (and dad) parts fly everywhere, leaving Ram with only one course of action. Revenge!

It gets worse from there. The first end boss is a fat lady named Mama who throws exploding chickens at you, and all the enemies are blatant, over the top movie stereotypes of evil Mexicans. Indeed, over the top describes the entire game. Journey though the city, farmland, processing plants, shipyards, and more! The journey of revenge isn’t a long one though, with the entire single player game lasting maybe five or six hours.

Processed Action Food Product!

The action along the way is topnotch. Chili Con Carnage is all about leaping around Matrix-style, landing kill combos as you run up walls, spin in the air, and flip over—all while shooting constantly. The game grades your gunplay for style and carnage, and the surprisingly adept, if simplistic graphics compliment the absurd action well. The audio is suitably campy as well, with humorously bad voice acting and hardcore Mexican hip-hop music, which we just don’t hear enough in video games.

The camera is consistently a problem, however, since it inevitably ends up aimed out of view of your prey when performing stunning feats of gymnastic murder. Beyond the main story, there are bonus rounds that task you with performing exacting maneuvers within a specified period… against guys in chicken suits. There is also ad-hoc multiplayer for up to four, but the game lacks traditional deathmatch and team games. Instead, you compete to get the best score by killing AI enemies. 

Mmmmm… Chili

Overall, Chili Con Carnage is short-lived, but incredibly fun. The complete focus on crazy, stupid gunplay, tons of enemies, and decent graphics and environment make it a guilty pleasure. Had the game shipped with better multiplayer and a more meaty single player game, it would have been a primo PSP title, but as it is, it’s still worth playing.

Article by: Jason D'Aprile
Video produced by: Mark Fahey