'Budget Price' Review: Project Sylpheed (X360)

"Project Sylpheed is a space shooter/sim, and it surprised me"

I wasn't honestly expecting much from this game, and at first the controls felt awful and way too arcade-y for my tastes, but after couple of evenings, I really started to enjoy the game. Yes, it does get repetitive, as the only thing you really do is shoot down spacecraft of basically four variety: fighters, attackers (think of bombers), small spaceships and large spaceships, with a few special ones mixed in. However, it's no more repetitive than any average shooter, like quake or unreal tournament against AI opponents. If you're fine with battling against AI, then that's not a problem with this game.

The story is fairly short and simple, cliché but entertaining. You're playing as Katana, a cadet flying a new type of special fighter on a training mission, when some rebel forces attack, and the whole affair turns into a galaxy-wide war. I hated the last mission, but everything else until then is great fun.

The flying physics are semi-realistic. You can float around on inertia alone, but there are some special moves that break this rule, like a 180 degree sharp turn, which is pretty much the only way to avoid collission if you're heading towards a giant ship while on afterburners. You also slow down quickly after using afterburner, rather than retain the gained speed. There's also quick side-rolling to dodge fire or collissions. Fighters can't seem to collide in each other though, but rather go through each other. Such occasions are quite rare though.

The thing about the weaponry in this game is that it favors targeting multiple fighters at once, as well as very heavy weaponry that can take out huge battleships in couple of attack runs. It's more arcade than dogfight. I learned to adapt though, even though I'm more fan of space sims like Conflict: Freespace (on PC). Special maneuvers allow firing with multiple weapons at once, slow motion aiming and quick ramming attack. There's a good variety of weapons, but many of the new ones you gain are just improved versions of the old ones.

Missions consist of basically attacking, defending or escorting, but the difference is simply just where and when you apply your attacks. For most of the game you also have a wingman, and 2nd flight consisting of two fighters, which you can give a few different kinds of commands. Nothing genuinely effective though, as even such a simple command as 'defend that target' doesn't exist. The commands don't make much difference except if you send your buddies in the center of an enemy fleet. Then they can get shot down. Normally they all survive. The only thing that really sucks about missions is that they have a time limit. Even if you've just eradicated 99 out of 100 enemies, and the time runs out, it's game over. Very frustrating artificial difficulty factor until you've learned the controls well enough to not run into the limit so easily.

It took me about 4 or 5 evenings to finish the game, but I enjoyed playing it over for a second time, to collect the remaining weaponry. Achievements in this game are medals granted after missions if certain objectives were met. They're pretty easy to gain on the second playthrough at latest.

Music is decent, sometimes even great. Voice acting varies. Announcers in battles are good, but some plot characters sound shallow.

All in all, doesn't last for very long, but is a surprisingly fun space shooter/sim.

Scoring:

Visuals: 8/10
Audio: 8/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Lasting value: 7/10

Overall: 8/10

'Budget price' review: Blue Dragon (Xbox 360)

Blue Dragon is a very traditional JRPG.

This is the first RPG I played on my 360. After a few hours of playing, the first impression I got was that the game felt a lot like Final Fantasy V, as to how the character development works. Just like in FF5, where you assign jobs for the characters to learn skills that you can equip for the character, in Blue Dragon you assign classes for the Shadow creature of each character, and can then equip certain number of skills learned from them at a time. The difference is that in Blue Dragon you can ultimately equip more skills, and many of the attack skills have a large area of effect, meaning that in later parts of the game, battles consist of nothing but attacks on all or half of the enemies. Basically, if you don't avoid random encounters, the characters will become so powerful that there's no challenge in the battles at all, down to the last bosses.

Another thing lacking a bit is the story. With the toy-ish and silly character and villain designs, the story doesn't feel serious until the latter half of the game. The monster designs are imaginative, but not very interesting.

Music is a mixed bag. Definitely not one of Uematsu's best compositions. Piano tunes were nice in the few places they happened.

Graphics look ok, though a bit too simple in some places for the current generation of consoles. Framerates dropped quite heavily in many battles too, probably because of the shadow creatures. Too much small detail in such simple designs, I guess.

Not an easy game to score gamer points in either. I finished the game with level 70 characters and had gotten less than 100 points. I sure hope maxing out some levels or shadow ranks will grant a lot more, because I doubt I'll be playing the game much more than that.

With the current low prices though, this is an ok purchase if you're not tired of JRPG's yet. Just be prepared for a very retro, old-school game, which feels like something from early 90's, with modern graphics.

Scoring:

Visuals: 8/10
Audio: 7/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Lasting value: 7/10

Overall: 7/10

'Budget price' review: Eternal Sonata (Xbox 360)

Eternal Sonata is a JRPG, about a fantasy world the famous composer Chopin dreams of on his deathbed.

I have to admit, I wasn't expecting much out of the game, but it managed to surprise me a little. I can understand that some people can't stomach this stuff, mainly because it has its share of clichés, like repetitive battles and very linear story progression.

The game plays very much like for example Star Ocean games, except in battles the characters move one at a time, for a few seconds, hitting and slashing the enemies, performing special attacks or using items from a limited item bag. It's a shame that the battles are turned into a button mashing event after about 1/3 of the game. Until then, you can spend time planning your moves before executing them. Later on you have to act right away. What could have been a tactical battle system with emphasis on character positioning and approach, is actually just a pure action fighting system. Quite repetitive, but satisfying if you're used to this stuff. For a challenging experience, I recommend skipping some battles, so you fight with lower level characters. In many JRPG's that would be a suicide. In this one, it's actually possible.

What I loved about the game is the music. I'm a big fan of Motoi Sakuraba's works. It's not overly epic, but still gives this grand feeling to everything that is supposed to seem big and meaningful.

I played with Japanese voices, which were quite nice. Can't comment on English voices. I always choose Japanese over English if there's a choice. I've got too many bad experiences with English dubs, so yes, I'm biased.

Graphics are a mixed bag. I really loved the graphics throughout the first half of the game, but later on you get some repetitive corridors and psychedelic stuff. I guess it's supposed to go together with Chopin's feelings as he progresses through the world he's dreaming of on his deathbed, or something like that. It's not horrible, but I liked the first few locations better.

Characters are shown in a somewhat cel-shaded type look, with outlines of the body and items in a pencil-like way, and strong shading for surfaces that are not lit. Works ok, I think. Character and enemy designs are mostly cutesy stuff, so don't expect terrifying monsters or stuff like that. There is no blood, even when people die of wounds.

Each chapter of the game has a moment where the story is quite crudely set aside, and a brief slideshow of photos with Chopin's life story start playing, along with his compositions playing on the background. I actually went through with all these slideshows, but couple of times I thought they broke the story a bit. Like playing right after a dramatic event.

Almost everything in the game seems to be named after instruments or musical terms or styles of music. In a way it seems a bit cheap solution, but hey, it's supposedly a musical genious' dream. I think it fits ok. The whole JRPG world approach actually works nicely when it's a dream world. Under normal circumstances, you wouldn't find treasure chests littered all over the place, but in someone's dream... it's at least a bit more credible.

The game is of average length. Playing through the main story takes about 30 hours. There's at least some extra to explore though. I doubt I'll be playing this again anytime soon, but with the low price it's sold at right now, it's a bargain if you like JRPG's even a little bit.

Scoring:

Visuals: 9/10
Audio: 10/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Lasting value: 7/10

Overall: 8/10

'Budget price' review: Star Wolves (PC)

I've been doing a lot of bargain bin scavenging lately, and have been purchasing games that look interesting, but have not heard of before. Purchasing games developed by independent small studios has taught me that sometimes you can find awesome games that rival even the latest of popular releases in depth or innovation. Star Wolves is one such title. I had not heard of it before, but picked it up from a bargain bin, and managed to have a good time with it for a good couple of weeks.

If I'm not mistaken, the developer is from Russia, which wouldn't be surprising, since some other good Russian sci-fi titles have been released in recent times as well. Space Rangers 2, to name one. Star Wolves is not a perfect game, but for its price it's excellent. Now to the actual review.

Star Wolves
The game itself can be classified as a real-time strategy game (or RTS), but it has much bigger emphasis on tactics than your average title. However, it's hard to put the game under just one genre, because it also has elements of roleplaying games and adventure in it.

If you haven't guessed from the name of the game, everything takes place in space. The player commands a large mercenary spaceship called Star Wolf, and up to six fighters that can be deployed or docked at the Star Wolf (usually referred to as 'Mothership').

"War in space. Are you ready to pay its real price?"
Star Wolves takes place somewhere couple of centuries in feature (I forgot the actual year, but I think it was 23rd century). Mankind has colonized many star systems, and everything is governed by an Emperor. In turn, everything in space belongs to three corporations, each with their own agenda. For example, one of the corporations (The Triad) is basically mafia. The whole concept of mankind separated in such simple factions is a bit silly, but it provides a good base for conspiracies and alliances. At the beginning of the game, there are two additional hostile factions that are mostly at war with the corporations. Pirates, and Berserks. Berserk's are basically the same as Cylons in Battlestar Galactica. Artificial Intelligence, created by humans, gone rogue. The latter parts of the story introduce additional enemies, but I don't want to spoil anything.

The player's story starts at the newly-established mercenary unit Star Wolves. There's no deep history preceding the beginning. All you really need to know is that the main character (referred to as 'Hero'), and his good friend Ace are the founders of the Star Wolves, and currently looking for jobs to take on. The game progresses mission by mission, so there's no free flying from system to system. It feels restrictive at first, but most missions provide alternate paths and bonus objectives, so you'll always feel like you're playing at a brand new sandbox. There's normally 1-3 missions to choose from. Sometimes you can only choose to accept one, and it has a slight impact on the progress of the story. For example, you may choose to assist the mafia or to defend another corporation from the mafia's attacks. Everyone wants to hire the Star Wolves at some point though.

Along the journey you'll meet several characters that you can choose to recruit in your team. Some join automatically. Up to six characters can join, so opting to not recruit a character can allow another character to join later on, that you otherwise wouldn't be able to recruit. This provides a little replayability, as you can form a slightly different team each time.

Birds
While on a mission, every character can pilot a fighter. Each fighter has a certain amount of armor and shield capacity. Naturally, when taking damage, shields are depleted first, then armor. Once armor hits zero, the fighter is destroyed. If a fighter from the player's team is downed by enemy fire, the character doesn't die. Instead they float in the space in an escape pod, and can be picked up by the Mothership and be deployed with another fighter (provided that you have spare ones). Losing a fighter is not a big deal in the early stages of the game, but later on ships become special, and it's extremely hard to get good ships sometimes, because of their price and availability on the market. The Mothership on the other hand is vital. Its destruction means 'Game Over', and can happen fairly easily too. Even with additional equipment, the shields and armor are limited, so it's a good idea to keep the Mothership away from large battles, and only bring it in to assist in decisive attacks.

Weapons are divided in four types. Small guns (basically rapid-firing), Large Guns (Lasers, Plasma, Heavy cannons, etc), Missiles (guided) and Rockets (dumbfire). Each fighter can house a number of weapons, but only either small guns or large guns. Each character has a weapon speciality, which often dictates the choice of ship and weaponry, but with good tactics it is possible to neglect the speciality in favor of having more of a certain weapon type.

Fighters and Mothership can also have additional modules on them, with various effects, such as shield boosters, anti-missile systems, emergency and active repair systems, etc. Some roles in battle require certain systems to be fitted on a fighter in order to be performed.

Wings
Battles in Star Wolves can be extremely hard at times. How well your characters perform in battle largely depends on their fighter configuration and the correct usage of special skills. Each character has a set of special skills that can be enabled for a set amount of time, for certain number of times during each mission. It is extremely important to not waste skills when not necessary, because they often win battles. Most skills either temporarily boost the fighter's capabilities (ie. higher accuracy, faster fire rate, more damage..) or mess with the systems of either friendly or enemy fighters (shield restoration or depletion, for example). Some skills almost completely nullify damage for a period of time, or completely disable an enemy fighter for a short moment.

In addition to skills, the characters can form teams, also referred to as wings. Being a leader of a wing, or a wingman can increase the wing's performance if the characters have learned proper skills. For instance, it is a good idea to have an anti-missile specialist in a wing. Some tasks, like anti-missile defense and repair on-the-fly prevent a fighter from firing weapons at the same time though, but are necessary to survive under special conditions.

All characters have a traditional skill tree, from which they can learn skills after they've gained enough experience in battles. Some characters have multiple roles available, so specializing can be most effective.

The loot
After a succesful mission, the team receives a reward, and can sell or keep the leftovers from enemy ships. Selling the loot is usually much more profitable than the mission reward itself. You can also purchase new fighters and equipment between missions. It is a good idea to keep the fighters up-to-date, but it's just as important to still rely on the old ones if needed. Sometimes a battle goes horribly wrong, and the only thing you have left is that old fighter you used early in the game, and that fighter can be your ticket to completing the mission.

The space
Graphics in Star Wolves are quite nice for its price range and age. You can zoom in on the action, pause the game at any point and gaze at the battles from different angles. You won't probably find yourself doing this much though, since every second can count in a battle, and activating a skill or changing the battle plan at just the right time can make a huge difference in the outcome. Background look really pretty though. The space feels deep enough, even though the maps are fairly small in size, and moving from a location to another takes often less than a minute in average game speed.

The quality of the music is debatable. It's a combination of rock and light trance/techno. Gets a little repetitive at times, but if you like this type of music, then you'll feel at home. I rather enjoyed some of the tracks.

Sounds are pretty subtle, and you don't hear them much when you're zoomed out on the map, viewing the battle from a manageable distance.

Voice acting is... quite horrible, to tell the truth. There isn't much of it though, so it's not a big issue. And the grammar can be silly sometimes. The translations were not paid much attention to, but it didn't ruin the experience. Just sounds a bit silly sometimes.

The good and the bad
Now that I have explained the game in fair detail, it's time to evaluate it as a whole. Star Wolves is first and foremost a fairly slowpaced game, and can be extremely difficult at times. For a casual gamer this can be a huge problem in the beginning of the game, but as soon as you learn the correct pacing and usage of skills and equipment, the game can become a real treat. Missions are often full of surprises, and it can be tons of fun to react to changes and observe the outcome. Game can be saved at any point, allowing safe step-by-step progression through missions, if you don't like being under constant pressure. It is not necessary to keep all fighters intact through missions though, so I recommend accepting the losses if you manage to complete a mission. It can make things harder for the next mission, but it also adds a level of challenge that can still be overcome, which I haven't seen in any other game in quite a while.

The game is also relatively stable. During the entire two weeks I played, the game crashed only twice, and I came across only one bug (broken saved game file).

Scoring
Visuals: 8/10
For the game's price, the graphics are very nice, especially backgrounds. Ships at close range can look a bit blocky and weird.

Audio: 7/10
Horrible voice acting for the most part, rather subtle sound effects at normal viewing distance, decent music.

Gameplay: 8/10
Challenging game. Maybe even too much at times, as correct usage of tactics, skills and equipment can make a huge difference. If you're up to it though, the game offers lots of interesting scenarios.

Lasting value: 8/10
It is possible to get frustrated with the game at times, and the mission-by-mission progression of the game can feel repetitive at times, but overall the game is worthy of being played to the very end at least once. Alternate story paths and team member selection also provide some replayability.

Overall: 8/10
A solid strategy-RPG title. Provides a unique take on tactical space battles.

'Budget price' review: Arc the Lad 3 (PSX)

Here's another 'budget price' review, this time of an old release, rather than an indie game. Since it's an old game, the scoring is quite forgiving, and concentrates on the fun factor and playability, rather than visuals or audio, as those are obviously outdated by today's standards. Anyhow, here goes.

Arc the Lad 3
Arc the Lad series has always piqued my interest with the fact that it's a TRPG (Tactical Role-Playing Game), in other words, the battles are done on square/grid -based fields, where position and approach matters, unlike in most other Japan -originating RPG's, where the party and enemies are in rows and exchange attacks. Not that I have anything against the traditional setup, but adding a tactical aspect to it is always a bonus in my books.

Arc the Lad games 1-3 were released on the original Playstation, while the next two were released on Playstation2. At the time of typing this review, I'm already working on the next Arc the Lad title, Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits.

Let's start with the story...
The story in Arc the Lad series continues, and at least in case of the first three games, some characters appear in multiple games. The main adversary most of the time seems to be the Evil One, who is about to be resurrected. The classic way of banishing the Evil One seems to be sealing it inside a magical ark, but other methods have been applied as well. To not spoil everything, I'll let you speculate what the case is this time.

In this part of the Arc the Lad story, the world is recovering from The Great Disaster that happened in the previous title. Much of the world is in ruin, but a handful of towns on various continents have survived, and are trying to rebuild the society again. Some groups are researching the lost technologies, others getting rid of monsters and bandits that are still plentiful in all areas.

Alec, the main protagonist, along with his extremely annoying friend Lutz are living a peaceful life in a village on a relatively small island. However, one day bandits raid the village, and while the villagers are being helf captive while the bandits loot the village, Alec and Lutz manage to sneak out to call for help. In this case, the only help they could rely on is the international Hunter Guild. Hunters are people that take on almost any kind of work, mostly specializing in monster extermination and bandit bashing. Our duo finds their way to a nearby guild, and hires a hunter to take down the bandits, which he does in matter of seconds upon reaching the village. Alec, impressed by the hunter, now wants to be one too. He decides to leave the village and become a hunter. Lutz insists to tag along, and off they go. To become a hunter, one must pass a test at the guild, which is basically the first task ahead.

On a mission
Once Alec receives his hunter's crest and is officially in business, he starts to take on jobs at the guild. Unfortunately for all you battle enthusiasts, half the jobs are basically about running errands to people and attempting to complete mini-games. While not all of these need to be accepted, some of them may have unexpected rewards in form of items or weapons.

In addition to jobs, each guild has six 'wanted monster' posters up, and these monsters can be hunted down in nearby locations for extra cash and experience. These are completely optional, and I personally think that they should be skipped, should you want future battles to be challenging. You'll level up plenty while searching for these monsters.

Once enough missions have been completed on a continent, special guild jobs become available. These jobs, upon completion, or for the job itself, grant transportation to a new continent. Along the way new people tag along Alec's group, up to a total of 7 characters, of which one is optional. Occasionally you get special guest characters, from previous Arc the Lad games to temporarily join. I was delighted to see Tosh and Shu again, who I liked a lot before. Sadly, the main characters in this game are mostly quite boring folk. Arguing teens and clueless youths. Alec is also way too optimistic about everything. Goes too easily with the flow, I'd say.

Eventually the party encounters a special group, that is bent on restoring some old technology by any means necessary. Even with the 'Warning: Evil Energy' sign plastered all over everything, they still just have to do the same mistake as other people before. With no real motivation, other than blind ambition, this group is hard to take seriously. I wasn't really very interested in the story, and that's a shame, as I liked the story in the previous game a lot. It's like everything has been simplified and made compact this time around. It's just too small in every aspect to be really compelling.

Swing and Bang
Battles are, unfortunately, short and easy. What makes them easy is the area in which the characters can inflict damage upon. Quite soon on the first continent already, both Alec and Lutz have a special skill that does damage to an area of 13 squares in size. Take into account that the battle fields are usually less than 20 squares in each dimension, usually closer to 10, and there are only 3-7 enemies per battle, these skills are overkill. And if that's not enough, you have two characters that can equip guns. A machinegun does damage to 4 squares and shotgun to 8 squares, just to name two common weapons. Add to that a spell caster with 13 square spells aplenty, standard attacks, other than guns, become obsolete very quickly. One character has the ability to capture and then summon monsters to do damage or inflict status penalties or bonuses. Quite often capturing a tougher than average monster means that when you unleash it, it takes out all the enemies on the field. They're just that weak and unchallenging. Only boss battles have some challenge to them, though even so, I don't think I ever lost one.

In towns, after you reach a certain point in the game, you can start synthesizing items and weapons, by combining two or more items with each other. You can learn recipes for this in special Society offices scattered in towns, or you can just experiment by yourself. Experimenting is pretty useless in the early parts of the game though. You don't have much materials, and when you fail at an experiment (which you WILL, 99% of the time), you lose the items you used. All useful synthesizable items require expensive or rare ingredient to be made, so you're better off saving that one special ingredient for a recipe that will actually work. Synthesizing does provide access to some weapons, like shotguns and special swords and amulets, but other than that, it's not necessary, and not really worth the time and effort to be casually explored.

Old is gold?
The game looks old. Even for being a PSX title, and even for being a third title on the same console, the graphics aren't really impressive at all. Enviroments have been mostly updated to 3D, but with the camera looking at everything in a fixed angle, the 3d apect is quite pointless, and I liked the environments in previous titles better. Characters are still 2d, but somehow I think they don't look as good as before either. Some CG movies are included, and they're ok. Just not impressive or anything.

Music is... mediocre at best. I've heard tons of better soundtracks on even older games. The music gets repetitive and is simple, and there's very limited selection of it. To me, music can sometimes make a game. In this case, it doesn't. It's way too forgettable.

The conclusion
The game lasts for a solid 50-60 hours if you explore most of the jobs in guilds, and hunt down most of the wanted monsters. Usually I like it when an RPG is long, but the scale in which the story is presented, as well as the simple and overkill battles, could've been better in form of 20-30 hours of playtime. The story simply drags on for too long, and is accompanied by too many jobs that include running and talking to people for very limited rewards. It's not a bad game, just average at most. If you just like RPG's for their stories, and can ignore overly simplified battles and cliché story, this is a very playable game. To someone like me, looking for a purpose or goal in a game, this was a chore to complete.

Scoring
Visuals: 7/10
For a game of its age, the graphics are rather unimpressive. The 2d style of characters can be appealing, but in this case even that lacks fine-tuning. 3d graphics are pointless in a game like this, on PSX.

Audio: 7/10
Repetitive music, poor selection of tracks. Everything's forgettable.

Gameplay: 7/10
Battle skills are overkill, and battles require very little planning. It's fun at times, but there's hardly a challenge at any point in the game.

Lasting Value: 6/10
It does last, but for too long. I'm quite sure that very few would play this game twice, and I'm sure many people never finished it at all.

Overall: 6/10
I like Arc the Lad games, but this one just didn't feel much fun. Even though the previous title had some tedious jobs to do as well, this time it felt like completing them took ages, and they were not as interesting. It's playable, just not very interesting game.

'Budget price' review: Shadowgrounds (PC)

Budget price games are always a great alternative for gamers who don't care so much about graphics or latest tech, and independent game publishers sometimes release very interesting and unique titles at low prices as well. At times I'll be reviewing such games. The games will be scored to match the expectations of games from the said price range. Here's my first review.

Shadowgrounds
I've been neglecting the games made by studios in my own country (Finland) for the past few years. Lots of popular games have come out, Max Payne and Flatout to name two that come to mind. When I noticed Shadowgrounds, a game by Frozenbyte from late 2005, sold as digital download on Totalgaming.net at an affordable price of $9.95, I couldn't resist purchasing it. One reason why I bought the game was because it was promised to have a co-operative mode, and I wanted to enjoy it with a friend. This review is based mainly on the co-operative experience, which luckily seems to be pretty much identical to the single player game.

Shootin' aplenty
Shadowgrounds is an action-packed arcade-like shooter at heart, though it also has a hint of adventure and RPG in it. You play as technician, situated near a space colony New Atlantis, which is about to be under attack by aliens. There's not much story to tell, which is a good aspect for anyone looking for pure action. Only minutes from the start you're already picking up your first pistol and making bullet holes to hordes of spider-like aliens. Interestingly, the only item you start with, the flashlight, is also useful against at least two types of enemies, which becomes evident as you rush through the first corridors by pointing a flashlight at the spiders that apparently hate light. Throughout the game you'll be picking additional weaponry, up to ten different types. The RPG element I mentioned earlier is mainly evident in the guns, which you can upgrade with upgrade chips that enemies often drop. These upgrades are usually pretty significant too, with benefits like larger clip, doubled damage, faster fire rate, etc. The weapons are mostly much fun to use, and you often find yourself switching to a weapon better suited for the situation. Grenades and rockets against large monsters, minigun against a row of incoming aliens, pistol against the weaklings, and so on.

Hey, I'm up here!
The game is viewed from top-down perspective, so you have a good view of the surroundings most of the time. You move the character with keyboard, and aim with the mouse. This works quite well.

What surprised me most were the graphics though, or more exactly the lights and shadows. Pointing flashlight around in a dark room creates some rather eerie shadows, that constantly twist as you move about. Rails and pipes can sometimes have a startling resemblance in shape to certain types of aliens, though in light you wouldn't mistake them for one, obviously. All in all, the structure of the game is very simple, but the textures look great and detailed. My favorites parts were levels where there was both interiors of buildings to explore, as well as outside roads and alleys that connect them. Enemies could be coming from any direction, including from underground and air ducts.

Intel on the opposition
There are several types of aliens, some with varying types and weapons or abilities, but overall I felt that there could've been a few more. Spiders and dogs (as my friend liked to call the armadillo-like creatures) are everywhere for a good part of the initial game. Some more unique aliens start showing up later on though, so you never get to play for a long period without seeing something new. The creatures behave quite nicely, though they all have only one objective, get to the player and shoot, smash or gnaw him to death.

The game offers various difficulty levels, and I'm looking forward to trying the harder ones again later. The normal difficulty was entertainingly intense in co-operative mode for the latter part of the game. I managed to die couple of times during the entire game. In co-op mode this means both players respawning again at the level entrance. Medikits are luckily plentiful in all levels, so if you survive a wave of monsters, you'll be healed up again behind the next corner. It sounds a bit easy, yes, but also makes the game less frustrating to progress.

Leftovers and co-op inspected
There's something I need to mention about the co-op mode. It's only possible on the same computer, with both characters on the same screen. The second player is controlled with a joystick/gamepad, and it is highly recommended to have a gamepad with two analog controllers, one to move with, and one to aim, though the official site claims that any gamepad should be enough to control a character. I played the co-op with a Playstation 2 gamepad, plugged in an adapter for PC. For a pc gamer, this might sound horrible, but I have to admit, I was surprised by how well I was able to perform with the gamepad, considering that I have hardly ever played any games that require usage of both analog sticks. The gamepad hardly made the experience worse.

Shadowgrounds is unfortunately a very short game. In co-op mode, it was over in less than 6 hours. I wouldn't complain about the length much though, as the price was fitting for this title, and it has replay potential with its easy access and straightforward action.

Scoring
(Please note: the scoring is scaled to budget releases.)

Visuals: 10/10
Some people will most likely disagree with this verdict, but I think it's true that for a $9.95, you're getting some impressive lighting work and very nicely textured areas.

Audio: 9/10
Audio is very good too. Weapons make some nice sounds and the music, while being a bit repetitive at times, has a very fitting arcade feel to it. Only voice acting could've been better. Slightly lacking in emotion (The character portraits are also slightly to blame for this), they're a bit... whatever-like.

Gameplay: 9/10
Surprisingly solid controls, even with gamepad. It's common to get stuck in some corners of tight corridors at times, but it's usually only momentary, and you'll be free again in seconds.

Lasting Value: 8/10
A bit short, but has replayability potential. If nothing else, it's got content for both a single player campaign and a co-op experience. Should provide you a nice 10 hours of entertainment at minimum, even more if you really like arcade shooters.

Overall: 9/10
With more multiplayer options and slightly longer campaign, this would be a perfect game in its price range. Even now, I highly recommend the game to anyone who enjoys blasting some aliens to pieces, preferably with a friend even.

Lastly, I want to inform you that the sequel to Shadowgrounds, titles Shadowground Survivor, has been released this week. According to screenshots and info at the official website, it looks even better now, and should also have option for co-op with multiple keyboard and mice, so you don't need a gamepad. I'll possibly purchase and review this game in future as well. For more info, screenshots and system requirements on the original Shadowgrounds, see the official website.