App Review: Shadowgun

By Swapnil Mathur | Updated: 5 June 2012 15:42 IST

Highlights

Shadowgun is a visual stunner of a game, but does it deliver the same richness in terms of storyline and gameplay experience? We find out.

Expectations run high when Nvidia decides to associate itself with a product. So when they announced their involvement with the development of Madfinger's Shadowgun for Android, many waited with bated breath for its release. Now that the game is out in various flavors (Android, iOS), we give the third party shooter a run through and here are our thoughts.

Storyline
The year is 2350 and the world is run by corporations. You play the game as John Slade, a bounty hunter who has been tasked by the Toltech Corporation to hunt down Dr. Edgar Simon. Dr. Simon is a renowned geneticist who has gone rogue and is apparently creating trouble for the corporation.

The story has apparently been written by award winning author Micah Nathan (of Losing Graceland and Gods of Aberdeen fame) and we are left wondering "what story?" The game begins on a premise (to capture Dr. Simon), but as we played along, there were no character developments, no new twists, no betrayal. Nothing about the gameplay was emotionally engaging, something we got very used to thanks to the Gears of War franchise.

Gameplay
The game immerses the player straight into action, as Slade wakes up next to a crash site. With the assistance of his personal android S.A.R.A we go through the first portion of the map that is designed to get us familiar with game's storyline and the environment.

The gameplay is based on your character having to pillage through Simon's mountainous fortress as you battle his "creations of evil genius." The initial few rounds have us battle some form of humanoids. The fighting style of the game brings back fond memories of Gears of War, as most of the fighting requires the thoughtful process of "duck-and-cover." The process of taking cover is automatic so you don't have to worry about any key combinations.

The enemies throughout the game are pretty standard; humanoids with machine guns and shotguns, turret guns popping out from the ground or the ceilings, flying drones that shoot lasers, exploding spider mines and a weird kind of landmine that will kill you the minute you step in their blast radius. An interesting part about the gameplay is the mini-puzzles you are required to solve in order to open doors or lower force fields. There are the occasional boss fights that add an element of difficulty to the game.

The boss fights were the only real area of challenge, but even there, the pattern followed by the AI was easily discernable. For example, the first boss fight is against a giant lobster-like robot. With no place to really take cover, we found dying to come rather quickly to our character, thanks to the missiles being shot out of the robot's mouth. Two respawns later, we realize that the robot only shoots in bursts of three and then takes a break for a few seconds while a nice green target swings over its back. Shooting this target kills the giant lobster a whole lot faster than just shooting it in the face.

Controls
We'd like to take some time here and talk about the controls scheme the game employs. Now we're console guys, so we're used to holding a physical controller. So when we first put out hands on the screen, nothing about it felt natural. In fact, we had our doubts about the controls being intuitive and we were pretty sure they'd be ridiculously frustrating.

Regardless, for the greater good, we put our hands to work and lo and behold! A surprise! When the left thumb sits on the screen, it creates a virtual D-Pad to control movement (analogous to the left joystick on any console based controller) and the right side of the screen is used to manipulate the look option along with shooting and aiming, using the right thumb of course. It took some time to get used to, but once we got the hang of it, all movement was fluid.

One major problem we encountered while playing the game wasn't so much with the movement, with the physical buttons on our phone. If we accidentally swiped over the home key on our Razr, the game would quit and take us to our phone's home screen. We would assume that the game developers would have accounted for the game running on devices that still have a physical home button, and would hence disable it during gameplay, but that doesn't seem to be the case. This also suggests that maybe the game is better played on tablets, as they have a larger real estate for the opposable thumbs to frolic.

Graphics
The first thing you notice when the game starts is the mind-blowing graphics. The opening scene has our character waking up next to a firey helicopter crash and the way the flames dance on the screen, affecting the shadows of nearby objects, its all so fluid! While some might say that the super AMOLED screen of the Razr makes things pop, Nvidia's influence in the visual beauty in this game is absolutely undeniable.

Soundtrack
Now when it comes to games for mobile devices, we generally try and not have too high of an expectation from the soundtrack. However, the musical score of Shadowgun left our jaw hanging, as it lent wonderfully to re-creating an environment one would normally expect from a game of this genre.

An interesting note about the soundtrack, if you listen close enough, is that it serves as a notification of sorts for when an enemy is in the vicinity. The music tends to change from its deep, mysterious tones to a rather fast-paced techno sound every time you engage in a fight sequence and then fades back to the deep mysterious tones once the fight is over.

Verdict
There is no doubt that Shadowgun is one of the most visually appealing games available today for mobile devices, but are the graphics alone good enough to justify spending money on the game?

The game doesn't offer an original storyline per say. In fact, throughout the game, we often wondered if we were playing a mobile version of Doom with some cross over from Gears of War. While the visual elements and gameplay reminded us of those great titles, we wish we could say the same about the effectiveness of the AI.

While the graphics are stunning, there's not much beyond that in this game. The gameplay is predictable and the story completely unoriginal. The game has its moments, but overall you're probably better-off holding on to your money.

Score
Story: 2
Gameplay: 3
Graphics: 5
Sound: 4
Value for money: 3
Overall: 3

Shadowgun (Android Rs.332.36 - Reviewed here)
Shadowgun (iOS $4.99)

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Further reading: android, app, game, ios, nvidia, shadowgun

App Review: Shadowgun

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