Shadowgrounds

Whether it's innovation or just improvement, when thriving upon overused recipes a game needs something to make the difference and show it's worthwhile. Paradoxically, Shadowgrounds, although bearing a name that seems shrouded in mystery and exhibiting a close relation to dark meanings and bad omens, wins the day through an almost complete series of familiar elements and old-school stereotypes.

Who would have ever imagined that themes from Half Life (the combat engineer), Alien (the Geigerish design of the bad dudes) or Doom (the level setting and light/shadow fiesta) will ever work together in a traditional arcade shooter? To one's surprise, they work together pretty well, providing the "audience" with one of the most hardly-unique-but-familiar game experiences.

Concept

What more is there to say about Shadowgrounds besides mentioning its key element: familiarity? With a somewhat standardized storyline built through a series of plain cut-scenes assorted with equally plain voice acting, the game's progress isn't bogged down in the slightest. A certain "je ne sais quoi" entangles you to the screen for the entire span of the game (a reasonable amount of time).

How does it work? Shadowgrounds is exclusively action focused, something that has a major drawback: it wears the player down through a repetitive set of seemingly meaningless actions (push buttons, fire weapons). However, the game makes use of a simple but valuable trick: a tad of briefing for every so often to help you catch your breath and resuscitate the motivation to keep you going. With all the alien butchering, a human voice or someone to team up with definitely saves the game from an otherwise inevitable feeling of boredom.

Story

Working with the same "stubborn-reluctant hero" and human colonization of the known space (this time Ganymede, one of Jupiter's moons) themes, the narrative feature of Shadowgrounds shows a futile attempt to fill the gap left between you (the mass murderer) and the critters whose polygons you have to blow to smithereens. Thanks to a series of unconvincing dialogues and rather bombastic depictions of the situation you are confronted with, there is no way on Earth someone in his right mind would dive into the plot. But like I've mentioned before, the story has a different functionality: it allows you to recover and secures a constant flow of reasons for you to carry on.

The time-up system furthermore adds tension to the overall weighty atmosphere of Shadowgrounds. People struggle to survive and you are always there to observe their progress in failure.

Similar to AvP, stumbling across a torn body, a blood stain, a scene of struggle or some empty quarters always reveal a PDA or such conveniently "planted" at the scene so you may try a moment of sadness to save you from the typical attrition of the "shoot 'em up" grunting. Talks about one's daily routine, his simple existential dilemmas, or disappointment to an event's postponement provide an unexpected weight to the storyline thanks to the delicacy of their intrinsic meaning.

Gameplay

You, the tireless dude with the flashlight and the wrench find yourself - stupid as you have ever been - caught in the middle of an alien invasion across the terraformed surface of Ganymede. Stereotypically, the boundless ignorance saves your sorrowful behind. The predicable consequence is a flashlight-equipped dude with his finger clenched on his fire arm's trigger. And blood flows in seemingly inexhaustible springs.

Humanity does not need a savior, the link between you and them being weaker than that freshly born with your "eager-to-die" Geiger-Doomish beings. The perspective is much more individualistic: you meet people keen to die from tender alien bites. Of utmost importance is your making several friends in the process, thus purging your gamer soul from the lone-wolf curse. Your godlike comrades - stereotypical typologies of the game universe: she, the "Amazon type", the scientist and the redneck high-ranking officer - prove to be the finest of companies, talkative and overrated.

Without the aforementioned elements, Shadowgrounds would have never succeeded to set up a winning formula. Trivial as I might have left them to be perceived, these actually enhance what the game is all about: a gory arcade shooter.

To one's indignation, assuming the game might become monotonous and repetitive is rather harsh. I stand corrected; you will get sick and tired of all the nonsense talk about saving the already dead Ganymedeans (with just a minute before your arrival). But this is exactly why your appetite for destruction won't be dented a bit.

With two thirds of the whole level-setting covered in utter darkness, killing under the cast of your flashlight with shifting shades and rear unidentified pounces is a rare opportunity these days. And although it isn't the familiar first person view, the top-down angle of view manages to catch with the same distinct breath the feel of groping in the dark.

With your back whooped at an alarming rate, fending off with a matching arsenal is a major issue here. The weapons encapsulate the very traditional: pulse rifle, shotgun, rail-gun, mini-gun, or the rocket and grenade launcher. I guess I get the idea: anything that derivates from rifle gun or launcher, plus a tad of napalm on top.

The kitty cats, by their nature bright as your main character, will come show their presence both in polygonal form and blips on your Alien-like motion detector: pretty cool.

And to keep with the fast pace of the game, every weapon has a tactical upgrade. You might laugh at my overhauled term, but I swear it is the naked truth. Imagine biped hogs armed with dual 3" lasers and thick frontal energy shields. The solution for these nasties comes in the form of a poison upgrade for your grenade launcher. Swarming drone-typos would better be checked with a barrage of shotgun shells (another upgrade).

To upgrade one must kill. Killing is finite; therefore upgrades are finite - another value-adding element in the game. Not much I might add, but enough to separate it from the bulk.

To sum it up, shoveling the narrative techniques, the Frozen Byte's baby shows a wondrous care for detail, even if it is destined for something as simple in design as the entire genre.

Video/Sound

The same principle applies for the technical element. Although, modest, the sound effects, the dynamic music themes and the lightning festival were joy to my senses. If one wants easy entertaining value, Shadowgrounds is the answer.

If there weren't for the shifting techno beat assortment coupled with the heat trails of weapon projectiles and the dynamic shadows created by your light emission, I really do not know why one would bother to name it this way.

The interface is simple and intuitive, preserving the classic key shortcuts. The camera view is forever nailed to several given angles - not that I ever yearned to analyze the textures in detail.

Model animations are not always as sharp as some of the grand SFXs of the game, and it tends to contradict the overall sensation of care behind its development. Broadly speaking, the programmers did a thorough job with the game and the outcome is not in the least unremarkable.

Multiplayer

To multiply the fun - well, if you are into this genre - four players may gather with their own gamepads in front of the same monitor screen. A real multiplayer option would have been even neater. In coop mode the lot can only advance together, confined to the limits of the screen, upon the rugged rocks and shattered human bases of Ganymede.

Conclusion

In other news, we are looking at an unexpected surprise from Frozen Byte, a game studio that has kept itself in the shadows for sometime. What can I say? A "thumb up" for their efforts to revive a bygone genre, and for doing it with art. Even if you never had the chance to try out old school, I believe it is worth the time. If you thought that isometric arcade shooters are a little better than commercial pop-ups, Frozen Byte has managed to cast a different pixel-shader-boosted light upon the problem.