Good to kill time... "Respawn" system is LAME LAME LAME

User Rating: 5 | Shadowgrounds PC
By ddlagarry | Review Date:
Shadowgrounds in general is interesting enough to keep me playing until the end. The graphics are a little dated as of 2009, the theme (aliens invading a human coliny) is a rehash, but the weapons are at least decent and the upgrade system is interesting. I can deal with the fixed 3rd person perspective, the cheesy dialog and the lame attempt at lip sync.

What really blew it for me is the save / checkpoint system. The game is loosely broken into a handful of "chapters"... each taking about 20-60mins to complete. You are given 5 "respawns" per chapter... if you die you will resurrect at the beginning of the last major enocounter and continue on from there. If you use all your respawns you must start the chapter again.

At normal difficulty this was fine until the last chapter of the game, which is the most challenging chapter, obviously. It can take roughly 20-30 minutes to make it to the boss battle which requires at least a few respawns just to figure out how to kill the boss, then several more to get the proper timing, by which time you are about out of ammo, resulting in death and a chapter restart. I was so infuriated at that point that I deleted the game from my hard drive in disgust.

Developers, please please please don't add meaningless difficulty to your games. I want to have fun and be challenged, with the emphasis on FUN.

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