Shadowgrounds Survivor

Better voice acting, more playable characters and customizable weapons than the first game. Shame it couldn't of ended in sastifying resolution for any of the playable characters. It feels like this is a set up for a sequel that never happened, oh well.

The game is great, if you have half an hour or so to kill here and there. Good graphics for an oldie, good choice of equipment and characters, and each offers unique playstyle. Combat is fast paced, as expected, and I can see how a lot of people would be pleasantly surprised by this game. The thing that really kills it for me, is how much potential this game could have had if multiplayer was included. No need for servers or anything fancy - a simple peer to peer connection would have made this game infinitely better, as it feels like something you would really be able to enjoy with a few friends. The other thing is there seems to be a lack of proper hardcore or epic boss fights - which again would compliment this game. Add these two things and you have an immensely fun gem of a game. Would give 3.5 stars, but can only chose between 3 and 4 - and while this is definitely a better game than a good portion of AAA crap that's thrown at us nowadays, and I recommend everyone tries it, I just don't see - after the initial couple of hours - many playing it for any extended periods of time. maybe booting it up once every few months or so for an hour here and there.

This game have potential to be something better than ShadowGrounds, sadly that was killed by too short campaigning and unstable (this game have crashed on my PC few times). Compared to its sequel it added more rpg elements, three characters with own weapons sets (sadly only 3), some perks for level and uncomplicated story. Practically I fought only with one boss who was reality easy to beat (on normal), on ShadowGround I must really save admonitions in that game you will find it plenty on ground. To end that game I needed no more that 10 hours , compared to 32 hours...

Shadowgrounds is a pretty straightfoward top-down shooter, and while it delivers rather well, it's quite short. The game ramps up very nicely but blows its load a bit too early and without a good bang at the end. Perhaps drawing the experience out would've hurt the game, but as it stands, it may not be worth paying 5€ for about the same number of hours of gameplay. The gameplay is self explanatory, but I'll go over it in case you're on the fence. You play as different characters, each with different weapons, blasting away loads of enemies of a good fistful of different types with wonderful ragdoll physics. It's one of the earliest games I remember that makes use of Nvidia's PhysX, to great effect IMO. You can upgrade each character's weapons, and I believe part of their gear too, with the results of the upgrades feeling decently impactful to the gameplay. There's a couple of turret sections, and all in all the game manages to keep a respectable pace and offers a good feeling of challenge, even though it's not really very difficult. The graphics have aged well, and the sound is serviceable. The story.... is there, I guess. All in all, it comes together quite nicely to deliver a very fun action game, but the experience is a tad short and has a mediocre finale. Pick it up for a couple of bucks if you want to spend an evening blasting away at stuff, if you're crafty you might be able to do so alongside a friend.

This game is pretty fun to play, but it manages to become repetitive even though it takes litteraly less than 4 hours to complete on hard settings. There is a replay value (new game+), but still, it feels like 1€/hour is a little expensive. Few ennemies, few weapons, few skills, little storyline, shabby voice acting, nothing really original. But as I said, it still manages to be kinda fun, so I guess it is not a scam nevertheless. If you plated the first, you'll notice they did add some neat things, like experience, skills, two "vehicles" and few characters, even though it's not really deep. The experience is less "survival" and more "arcade", less dark and more punchy.