Shadowgrounds
Review
Although repetitive, it is an entertaining salute to old-school gaming neatly wrapped up in a pretty package
by CrazyCanuck
reviewed on PC
The eleven steps of Ganymede...(cont.)
Ammo is scattered throughout the levels and it's done cleverly so as to force you to use multiple weapons to complete your objectives. You may find that you prefer one or two of the guns but often aren't given enough ammo to use just those weapons alone. Having to switch between weapons (some of which are more effective against certain alien-types than others) adds another welcome dimension to the game. One last important piece of equipment worth mentioning is Tyler's motion sensor which reveals any object in close proximity that is moving. Refreshed every couple of seconds, the motion sensor itself adds tension to the game and performs very much like the sensor the marines used in the movie Aliens.
The aliens you're fighting come in a number of forms. The ones you'll first encounter start out simply enough as poisonous crab-like critters but quickly evolve into fast-lunging lizards, gun-toting baddies and cloaking snakes among others. You'll run into boss creatures at various points in the adventure who bring their own style of pain. Enemy artificial intelligence (AI) is really pretty good and the enemies will take advantage of the environment to circle around you and gang up on your position.
You start each level with five re-spawns and there is no option to save while in the middle of a level - it saves automatically as soon as you complete each one. As a gaming dad who is often interrupted while playing I'm never a big fan of games that make the decision of when to save for me, but I do think it was a good direction for Shadowgrounds to take. If I had been allowed to save anywhere in the game it would have been too easy to simply reload and continue playing through. That being said, I did have problems with the game crashing (it happened five times) and I also got trapped in a force-field at one point so the lack of an in-level save option was a little frustrating. I evaluated my system configuration to make sure that audio/video drivers were up-to-date but the crashes continued. Crashes aside, Shadowgrounds was entertaining enough to make me want to continue all the way through to the end which, due to an interesting plot twist at the game's completion, made it worth-while.
Two is company, Three is better, Four would be great!
Shadowgrounds doesn't offer any online multiplayer options (which is disappointing) but what it does provide is a 2 to 4 player co-operative mode. Adding up to three gamepads to your system you can play the adventure in split-screen mode with friends. In this mode, weapons are shared among players but ammo is not so it's important to work as a team. As well, when one player dies in co-op mode everyone re-spawns at a previous location on the map. It's a fun variation but allowing for an online co-op mode would have been a better direction.
Closing Thoughts
Shadowgrounds really handles like a throw-back to old-school shoot em' up game-play and in that regard is fun! However, the mostly linear levels do become quite repetitive after a while and it would have been nice if Frozenbyte had added more variety to them. With the suspense they were able to create with the environments, lighting and the aliens themselves, designing a greater range of scenarios to keep the gamer on the edge of their seat would have allowed Shadowgrounds to rise above the typical shooter. An upcoming level editor tool is planned for release which will allow Shadowgrounds' fans to build their own levels and environments for distribution. It remains to be seen how the Shadowgrounds community will adopt the tool, but additional entertaining content would help extend Shadowgrounds' lifecycle and provide another reason for gamers to pick up this atmospheric budget-priced shooter.
7.0
fun score
No Pros and Cons at this time
