Shadowgrounds Survivor Review

Now this is the type of gaming that the PC platform is seriously lacking, not the first person shooters, strategy games, or role playing games, but games you can easily get into with old school mechanics – the games that don’t mean commitment when you look at the box but mean instantaneous fun, ones that actually play like games and not movies.  I was positively impressed with Shadowgrounds last year.  It was a fast-paced top-down shooter in the spirit of the classics only brought up to modern standards with precise graphics and controls.  At that time I finished my review saying I wanted more, and thankfully Frozenbyte did just that with the sequel Shadowgrounds Survivor, which tweaks the original game but keeps the feel and gameplay that made it fun.

Storyline was certainly not one of the highlights in Shadowgrounds, and it is even less so in Survivor.  As it says on the website, the sequel is a spin-off, meaning it takes place in the same timeframe as the original but is told through different perspective and characters.  In fact, the story is simply the effort of three survivors, as they are called, to get back to the main colony New Atlantis, and there is nothing else beyond that.  All you get in terms of narrative are their monologues before you start a level and a few movies here and there, but this has its own charm.  In reality there is no plot in the game, just the struggle of three people trying to survive their trek back into the city, and, surprisingly, I found this type of presentation a lot more fitting for a simple top-down shooter.  It meant a lot less conversation, cutscenes, and awkward voice acting, but just enough breaks from the action so players don’t get tired from constant button mashing, but don’t get restless listening to cheesy dialogue, either.  Despite the sparse narration, you still get a sense of urgency and strive to move forward, and to me this decision concerning story is the better option between no story or a soap opera, so kudos to Frozenbyte for finding such a nice balance that works well with this game.

Having three characters to play with must mean there is something unique about each, and in Survivor it is their loadout and special abilities.  Frozenbyte have divided the arsenal of Shadowgrounds among them in equal parts; however, it seems to me three weapons from have gone missing, or at least I did not see them in the game: the laser rifle, the grenade launcher, and the electric gun.  I can not speculate why that is, but it might have been the similarity of each to the sniper rifle, bazooka, and flame thrower, respectively, so all in all players are not losing anything too precious.  As usual, every weapon can be upgraded three times using upgrade parts taken from dead enemies, and all upgrades are actually useful and fun to use.  The sniper rifle, for example, can be fitted so the bullet bounces around walls, and since its path is traced like a laser you get a cool-looking attack which can do serious damage in close quarters.

New additions to the game are the upgrades for the characters themselves.  There are few standard for each, such as automatic use of health kits, but there are also few which are unique to each.  A form of bullet time is one where the game is slowed to a crawl for a bit, and you can run around making a massacre out of the phlegmatic aliens.  What these upgrades do for the game is to make it more diverse and less monotonous.  Each level can bring a new upgrade to play with depending on your rate of parts collection, and in the end you have in a way experienced something new at each stage. Without this system, the game would have been a whole lot less addictive.

Those are more or less the main changes in Survivor, and the rest is the same fast-paced top-down mayhem.  As I recall, I had made about 1400 kills at the end of the game, so there is no shortage of targets for you to plow through.  The tight controls and the great feel of the weapons make the gameplay a real blast.  The actual roaming around and killing Frozenbyte have nailed perfectly, the action simply feels spot on, and that’s half the juice in a game like this.  Like before, everything in the levels can be destroyed, but now there is actual physics to all objects.  They not only get blown to smithereens but also react with each other and your character.  This adds a whole new level of immersion that wasn’t present in Shadowgrounds.  Imagine the difference between Max Payne and Max Payne 2 in terms of level interaction, and this comes real close.  The levels themselves seemed to me a bit more compact and this may be due the fact that there are not really any objectives to them. The story is after all you getting through the aliens to New Atlantis, and that’s pretty much all you do.  In fact, with less dialogue and cutscenes and pressing buttons the game simply flows along faster.  I can’t tell if actual gameplay is shorter than Shadowgrounds, but the game as whole seemed so to me, which I guess is the tradeoff for getting a lighter plot.

There are thankfully quite a few things that can prolong the game’s existence on your hard drive.  You can collect secrets scattered along the levels which unlock bonus options that enhance the gameplay in different ways.  I managed to get three such options, a black and white filter for the game, all weapons and ammo, and low gravity physics.  Even though there is no multiplayer which is a shame, you can still go through the campaign in co-op mode with a buddy.  Survivor supports multiple mice, keyboards, and gamepads so you can configure it any way you want, so I’m glad Frozenbyte at least gave us a real nice alternative to multiplayer.

I usually pick medium difficulty when I start any new game, but I suggest you go straight to hard, since I died exactly two times and never had a shortage of ammo or health on medium.  In fact, there were pickups scattered almost everywhere, which is really what made the game seem easy.  I also don’t remember seeing any new monsters in Survivor, but the old ones were nicely fleshed out anyway, and each was unique in behavior and attack, so you still get a great mix of opponents.  These and the lack of LAN or Internet multiplayer are the only gripes I have with Survivor, which otherwise delivers in all areas.

As expected, the game uses the same engine as Shadowgrounds and more or less looks identical, which is great most of the time, and gorgeous the rest.  What is constant, though, is the gorgeous performance, with anti-aliasing on medium-high details with my two-generation-old system, staying absolutely smooth no matter how intense the action, and, believe me it gets intense.  The added physics and gibs make the experience even more thrilling than before.  Of course, I shouldn’t forget the wonderful real time lightning system, which, as I said in my Shadowgrounds review, looks and works better from a birds-eye view.  The levels seemed even more cluttered than before, which is a good thing since they can showcase the engine even better.  Walking around a trashed conference room through a thin misty fog with the flashlight on and seeing the shadows play around as you move can be way more atmospheric from up top than down below in the first person.

All in all, Survivor is not big step forward, actually it’s hardly even a step, but it’s more Shadowgrounds, which is enough of a reason to go and get it.  I don’t know of any other top-down shooters for the PC which are done as well, or look as good or cost $20.  You also receive the tools to completely mod the game and create additional maps.  Generally my rule is that if I feel like replaying a game right after I finish it, that’s a good enough indication of its worth, and Survivor is definitely worth it.