Recently picked up the demo of Shadowgrounds.
It's a single player game in an isometric 3rd person perspective. It reminds me a little of Alien Swarm or Alien Breed and so far I've played the demo through about four or five times. That should say something for my interest...
So, first things first, you can download the demo from one of any number of mirrors. You might also want to read a bit more about the game.
Still here?
The demo has two levels. The story, in brief, is that aliens suddenly attack a fledgling colony on Ganymede where your character is a mechanic. I get the impression that he wasn't always a mechanic... 'specially as it doesn't take long before your toting pulse rifles, flamethrowers, even a grenade launcher to fight back these alien hordes in simple-yet-amusing missions.
On moderate difficulty the first two levels were a walkover, for me, but it does get a bit tougher on hard. I think they're going for an older arcade feel to the levels, where the mid-level baddies come in a variety of shapes and sizes but ultimately you can beat them all, then there's some big end-of-level boss that is harder to beat, and you have to fight off the critters too. I found this approach to give the game good pace and you certainly get enough ammunition to rampage forward.
A lot of the areas are dark, so you get a flashlight. Of course it suffers the same problem of all flashlights in the future -- its batteries run out over time... but at least it does cast a good cone of light, for once! The flashlight is shoulder-mounted so you can shoot and see at the same time.
The weapons are upgradeable. This means that there are three add-ons for each weapon, only some of which are available in the demo. For example, the starting pistol (which has infinite ammunition, but only a small magazine) can have a larger magazine, higher damage and an alternate fire mode that launches tranquilising darts (hey, you can tranq the aliens... then blast 'em!) I believe all weapons get two upgrades and one alternate fire, but I can't be sure. The flamethrower gets this nifty ability to drop fuel on the floor to be lit by a mere brush of fire to create a burning wall of death. The minigun, unsurprisingly, gets higher damage and faster spin-up. And the shotgun gets the "keep firing until it's empty" alt fire, which is great when they're all in close.
Oh, and you can blow stuff up. There's the usual explosive barrels, but normal crates are destructible and that can be part of your strategy if you choose.
The game looks quite pretty, though the character models are a little cartoony. Still, explosions are suitably flashy, the character model is amply animated (even though he's really quite small) and the weapons feel suitably punchy and look well cool, 'specially the flamethrower. Mmmm, fire. I spent one game just playing, as much as possible, with the flamethrower and the shotgun.
There's also some an NPC who joins up with you and helps. In true arcade stylee you can't hurt the NPC with your bullets, which detracts a little from the game but I can ignore this. Pathing on the AI seems okay, though another NPC often gets left behind (and then the voiceover still provides his lines later on... ).
The biggest "missing" feature is multiplayer. Well, okay, there is a sort of multiplayer if you all want to crowd round the same keyboard on the same machine, but I think we're probably all a decade past that... maybe real LAN multiplayer will be included later? Who knows.
Either way, as a fun singleplayer alien blasting game it works well. This one's gone to the top of my "to buy" list. Release in the UK in April and March in the US/Canada. Other release dates posted on their website.
It's a single player game in an isometric 3rd person perspective. It reminds me a little of Alien Swarm or Alien Breed and so far I've played the demo through about four or five times. That should say something for my interest...
So, first things first, you can download the demo from one of any number of mirrors. You might also want to read a bit more about the game.
Still here?
The demo has two levels. The story, in brief, is that aliens suddenly attack a fledgling colony on Ganymede where your character is a mechanic. I get the impression that he wasn't always a mechanic... 'specially as it doesn't take long before your toting pulse rifles, flamethrowers, even a grenade launcher to fight back these alien hordes in simple-yet-amusing missions.
On moderate difficulty the first two levels were a walkover, for me, but it does get a bit tougher on hard. I think they're going for an older arcade feel to the levels, where the mid-level baddies come in a variety of shapes and sizes but ultimately you can beat them all, then there's some big end-of-level boss that is harder to beat, and you have to fight off the critters too. I found this approach to give the game good pace and you certainly get enough ammunition to rampage forward.
A lot of the areas are dark, so you get a flashlight. Of course it suffers the same problem of all flashlights in the future -- its batteries run out over time... but at least it does cast a good cone of light, for once! The flashlight is shoulder-mounted so you can shoot and see at the same time.
The weapons are upgradeable. This means that there are three add-ons for each weapon, only some of which are available in the demo. For example, the starting pistol (which has infinite ammunition, but only a small magazine) can have a larger magazine, higher damage and an alternate fire mode that launches tranquilising darts (hey, you can tranq the aliens... then blast 'em!) I believe all weapons get two upgrades and one alternate fire, but I can't be sure. The flamethrower gets this nifty ability to drop fuel on the floor to be lit by a mere brush of fire to create a burning wall of death. The minigun, unsurprisingly, gets higher damage and faster spin-up. And the shotgun gets the "keep firing until it's empty" alt fire, which is great when they're all in close.
Oh, and you can blow stuff up. There's the usual explosive barrels, but normal crates are destructible and that can be part of your strategy if you choose.
The game looks quite pretty, though the character models are a little cartoony. Still, explosions are suitably flashy, the character model is amply animated (even though he's really quite small) and the weapons feel suitably punchy and look well cool, 'specially the flamethrower. Mmmm, fire. I spent one game just playing, as much as possible, with the flamethrower and the shotgun.
There's also some an NPC who joins up with you and helps. In true arcade stylee you can't hurt the NPC with your bullets, which detracts a little from the game but I can ignore this. Pathing on the AI seems okay, though another NPC often gets left behind (and then the voiceover still provides his lines later on...
).The biggest "missing" feature is multiplayer. Well, okay, there is a sort of multiplayer if you all want to crowd round the same keyboard on the same machine, but I think we're probably all a decade past that... maybe real LAN multiplayer will be included later? Who knows.
Either way, as a fun singleplayer alien blasting game it works well. This one's gone to the top of my "to buy" list. Release in the UK in April and March in the US/Canada. Other release dates posted on their website.
