Shadowgrounds
A modern top-down shooter? Bold, but is it appealing?
Tags: Shadowgrounds Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Aug 6th, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Shadowgrounds (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
In college, I had a roommate who loved videogames in the arcade setting. One of his favorites was a slaughterfest known as Smash TV. The basic concept of Smash TV is you’re this guy who’s a contestant on a futuristic game show – a game show in which you have tons of monsters tossed at you and you have to wipe them our or die. The longer you last, the higher the TV rating, which boosted your final score. It was interesting for its time, though by today’s standards it would probably be considered as lame as any other 8-bit arcade top-down shooter. It’s also just about the only other top-down shooter I can think of, at the moment.
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Did I say “other?” Yup. The game I’m comparing Smash TV to is Shadowgrounds, the recent top-down shooter from developer FrozenByte and publisher Meridian 4. Shadowgrounds isn’t a lot like Smash TV, but it is an attempt to get back to that genre of game, the top-down shooter. That genre pretty much died off after the era of 3D gaming came into existence, but there’s little denying the frantic, frenetic fun that Smash TV provided; an overwhelming number of enemies, coming at you nonstop as your character spins and shoots, spins and shoots to keep the hordes at bay.
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Yet that thrill seemed pale after one of the first similar 3D shooters, Area 51, appeared in arcades. Developers realized it was a lot more thrilling to see creatures coming at you through a first-person perspective, rather than from a detached top-down view. Meridin 4 wants to try and make the Smash TV approach more appealing again, reclaiming some of the ground that’s been lost from the time Area 51 hit the arcades well over a decade ago, onward.
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Shadowgrounds as a concept, however, is closer to the movie version of Doom, starring The Rock. You’re cast as a worker on one of the moons of Jupiter and you’re basically just doing your job and minding your own business when suddenly aliens attack the base and you have to defend it. The graphics in Shadowground are eye-catching, though not as spooky and moody as one might hope for. The game, rather than overwhelming you with enemies in the manner of Smash TV, would rather throw a small number of aliens at you at any one time, with the goal of making you jump in your seat. Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t jump in my seat much, though I would have been closer to the edge of it throughout the game had there been than old Smash TV thrill over overwhelming odds to overcome and play against.
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The label “RPG” has been attached to this game in the marketing push, but don’t believe it; while there are some minor upgrades to acquire, this game bears no resemblance to Oblivion, Final Fantasy or any chocobos, living or dead, which is purely coincidental. No, Shadowgrounds is a pure top-down shooter that just doesn’t seem to come together to achieve the effects it was going for. Spooky games are spookier in first-person than they are top-down, so Shadowgrounds isn’t spooky. It could have been thrilling, but didn’t throw enough enemies at you at once to really achieve that Smash TV effect, either. And when you consider the story is almost a non-factor and the voice acting about as convincing as Pamela Anderson’s dramatic acting skills, you just have an end-product that disappoints. If the top-down shooter is to ever make a comeback, it’ll be in spite of, not because of, Shadowgrounds.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
| + The graphics aren’t bad. | 6.2 |
| What Doesn't | |
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– The graphics aren’t atmospheric, though. – Story is MIA and voice acting varies between wooden and comedically overwrought. – Not moody enough to scare, not overwhelming enough to thrill. |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Shadowgrounds needed to stay in the shadows a while longer. | |
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Tags: Shadowgrounds
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Aug 6th, 2006 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
