As I stated in my preview for Shadowgrounds: Survivor, I assumed that it would simply be more of the same - and was highly anticipating it nevertheless. The preview was rough in some areas but showed a great deal of promise - there were already notable improvements over the original Shadowgrounds in terms of graphics and gameplay. My thoughts at the time were that if those improvements were sustained throughout the game it would be a really fun experience. Well, they were - and it is.

Shadowgrounds: Survivor is a top-down 3D sci-fi shooter that takes place on Jupiter's moon Ganymede. You get to control three different characters - you start as a marine named Luke Giffords and eventually take on two other characters with very different personalities and skill sets. The first is a maintenance worker named Bruno Lastmann (yes, subtle naming I know!). Lastmann is a crazy old Russian who drinks flamethrower fuel and loves heavy weapons such as the flamethrower. Finally you control Isabel Larosse, who is a special-ops sniper and also on the brink of going crazy; she maintains a tenuous hold on her mental state the entire time you control her. These three share a goal given to them as they progress - get to the New Atlantis colony and shore up the defenses before the enemy hordes arrive - then engage them in battle and pray for victory!

The story in Survivor runs parallel to the original game, which is in itself a great idea. The characters you control join up with the remaining forces against the alien invasion, using many familiar and plenty of new weapons and attacks to rain destruction on the massive assault of alien monsters. Two cool new weapons are the Sentry Turret and the Mech. The turret is a standard device, but the way it is used in the game adds considerable excitement during pitched battles, while the Mech is basically a walking platform of rampant destruction - and if I have to explain why that is cool then perhaps it is better for you to skip this game!

Survivor has a nice action-RPG-lite feature that allows you to gain experience by killing everything in sight and progressing through areas. There is a limit to the experience you can gain with each character in each mission, which you will generally bump up against all the time. That isn't an issue though, as the game is simply about making sure that everyone will have access to all of the unlockable skills you can 'buy' with your experience. You also collect upgrade parts as you wander around and those can be used to add upgrades to the weapons; things such as a bigger clip, more damage, secondary fire modes, and so on.

Graphically the game has improved considerably from the original Shadowgrounds and looks even better than the preview build I played a few months back. Everything you see is extremely detailed and stylized, from characters to buildings to monsters to the overall environment. FrozenByte did a great job of paying attention to small details and the physics engine brings things to life. The weather effects are very realistic - you can almost feel the driving cold rain and wind at times, while other effects like explosions, fire, bodies getting thrown around and so on, are also handled extremely well. And all of this happens smoothly, regardless of how many enemies there are onscreen at any given time. The area loads are pretty quick, but I have heard complaints about the performance under Windows Vista.

Alongside the great looks and nifty effects are the booming sounds and driving music, both of which are very well done. There is something fundamentally wrong when you see a cool looking explosion onscreen and don't get a sound effect that matches. The original Shadowgrounds did a good job in terms of delivering quality sound effects and the sequel improves upon it in every way - better sound quality and more intense effects contribute to you constantly wanting to blow stuff up! Fortunately the game obliges with plenty of chances for destruction - and when you enter one of those pitched battles, the music swells behind you and adds to the intensity, making it a perfect fit for the gameplay.

As I mentioned in the preview, I struggled a bit with the control scheme of the original but I found that the subtle changes in Shadowgrounds: Survivor make all the difference. The combination of WASD to move and mouse to aim still took me a bit of time to adjust to, but after a short while I was cruising around areas without a second thought. The big difference is that the mouse interacts with camera control at the edges of the screen - this is a fairly subtle change and something that is common in action RPGs. - but it makes a big difference in playability, especially since the core of the game is all about fast-paced action and foes coming at you from all sides. Also, the game features extensive customization for the controls.

One thing I didn't discuss was where the 'Survivor' subtitle comes from: it has a double meaning. First, each of the three characters awakes finding nothing but death and destruction around them; they cannot communicate with anyone and each assumes that they are the sole survivor of the attack. Second, the game features several 'survivor events', where the music really starts pumping, the area is sealed off and the enemies start pouring in. The better you do during these onslaughts, the greater your 'survivor bonus' - and you can then replay any of the survivor events you have unlocked through the main menu. These are excellent fun - but also quite challenging!

My original understanding was that Shadowgrounds: Survivor was going to be longer than the original. However, I completed the game in under ten hours, making it a bit shorter than Shadowgrounds. Adding on the co-op mode and replaying some of the survivor events helps, as does the ability to locate secret items and areas that unlock special features, but these unlocks are only available during replay, so the message is clear - look everywhere, blow everything up, and play again! Fortunately the game is so much fun that you will enjoy replaying it; it's an instant classic and the perfect slice of fast twitch, shallow fun to give your gray matter a break from all that civilization building and warmongering.

Reviewed by Michael Anderson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).