Shadowgrounds Survivor Preview

Shadowgrounds was one of those games where it was pretty much all-out carnage, all the time. Well, Frozenbyte decided that if it ain't broke, then don't fix it and decided us gamers needed another heavy dose of bloody carnage. Picking up shortly after the last game, this preview shows that there are still plenty of aliens left in which to get gooey. And gooey you will get, Shadowgrounds is easily as over-the-top rock 'em sock 'em action title you are ever going to see. Alien monsters invading from every nook and cranny while you play the role as one of three characters.

At one point I was wondering if this was really an add-on adventure or a true sequel to the game. The game appears to have really gotten a decent once-over in terms of gameplay and visuals. The game is still viewed from a dynamic fixed third-person view, but now the camera can be rotated around so you can see other aspects of the map. In the original, you played as a mechanic (with tough guy background) who was called into action in order to stave off an alien menace as it erupted underneath the base. Taking place on Ganymede, one of the moons of Jupiter, the idea was literally a third-person perspective of the Doom games. However, there were some RPG elements involved in the placement of storyline and AI assistance. Well, Survivor picks up where you left off, only now, the characters are different. Playing as either a marine, a weapons specialist or a sniper, you complete missions in order to contain the threat and save the day. Since this was a preview build I never did get the full gist of the game, but I do believe you must play as all three characters throughout the game, rather then picking one and attempting to beat the title.

Additionally, the game has ramped up the amount of death and destruction with the introduction of a controllable robot/mech that reminded me of the old robotech designs. Of course, with big robots come big guns. Thankfully the game looks much better than its predecessor with cleaner looking graphics, detailed environments and lots and lots of gore. Even though this was a preview build, I could tell that Frozenbyte really challenged themselves to make a better designed game. Most importantly, when compared to the previous title, which was a value priced title, this one requires a much beefier system to run. Not that this means that the gameplay will be better (and as far as I can tell, it is the same) but that the developers are banging out better detailed graphics, and pushing to tell their story from a more aggressive place. No longer will older machines be able to play this game, you will need a hot machine to take full advantage of the final product.

Now I still liken this title to those Fallout games, with their black humor and over-the-top gore factor, here is more of the same and I love it. The preview build did have its share of muck and yuck and if you are squeamish then you probably don't need to play this title.

More over, the game allows you to build up your character in an RPG-like fashion, points are awarded as you complete tasks and kill, kill, kill aliens; these points can be used as upgrades to unlock abilities like med kit auto-doc and motion sensor. As the game continues, I suspect there will be many other items and abilities you can apply to the characters. The point is, the game is a real whiz-bang frag fest and I am looking forward to getting gooey all over again.

Look for Shadowgrounds Survivor this fall and wear your butcher apron, you are gonna get messy.