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.
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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.