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Shadowgrounds Survivor is a sequel/expansion for the popular 3^rd person shooter Shadowgrounds by Frozenbyte. Rather than taking place after the story in the original Shadowgrounds, Survivor's story takes place simultaneously in a different part of Ganymede. While the actual storyline was not divulged in the press preview copy of the game, I got the feeling it is filled with heroic endeavors, dark humour, and fast-paced action. The amount of gore packed into this game is along the lines of the Doom and Fallout series'. The gory, gooey carnage throughout Survivor created a warm, viscous feeling in the pit of my stomach. This having been said, Shadowgrounds Survivor is definitely not for the faint of heart.

In Survivor you play as one of three characters; a marine, a napalm specialist and a sniper, although the preview only allows the use of the marine in story mode. Each character has his or her own weapons and skillsets. The characters gain experience from killing monsters and level up giving them skill points. These skill points can be used to purchase skills such as increased health (5 skill points), a motion detector HUD(5 skill points), or automatic medkit use(25 skill points). Also, seemingly randomly throughout the game, monsters will drop weapon parts which can be stockpiled and used to upgrade your favorite weapons. As the Marine, as soon as I had enough parts to purchase the Auto-Lock for the pistol, I rarely used any other weapon. The limitless ammo of the pistol along with the one-hit-kill when you get auto-lock made the pistol extremely versatile. Only when there were huge masses of small enemies did I bother using the machinegun.

Gameplay in Survivor is a little different from your average shooter. WASD keys determine the direction of movement while the mouse determines direction of weapons fire. Moving the mouse to the edge of the screen causes the view to turn in that direction, although not as smoothly as I would have liked. It seemed to have been set to change in 15 degree intervals. The preview of Survivor gave access to several levels of the Story Mode which is at least Eight chapters long with each chapter taking about fifteen minutes to completion. Along with the Story Mode is the Survivor Mode where endless masses of alien scum crawl out of every nook and cranny of the level all hell-bent on ripping your character apart. You are scored on the amount of time you survive and the number of kills you achieve. The Survivor Mode seems to allow you to keep the experience and parts gained for use in the Story Mode although since the same character was not kept between each portion of the preview levels this is not absolutely certain.

The audio in Survivor was what one might expect from an edge-of-your-seat carnage-packed gore-fest. Weapons-fire is over-exaggerated but believable, voice-acting is crisp and well-done, gore is goo-ily splattered and explosions are explosive. Rumor is the audio will be even more impressive in the full release although I found the sounds and music to be more than adequate for the gameplay. The graphics are crisp and very detailed. The lighting, models, shaders, textures and particle effects are wonderfully realized. The terrain is crisp and the lighting and shadows very realistic. The models have high poly-counts making them very lively, and the weather effects, largely rain and snow, look realistic and actually seem cold and wet. Unfortunately this means Survivor will likely not be playable on older, dated machines.

Unfortunately I never had the chance to play the original Shadowgrounds by Frozenbyte. Having played Survivor's preview I am definitely intending on purchasing a copy of the original to see how they compare. I would not suggest this game for those faint of heart, squeamish, or who find immense gore and carnage offensive, but I am greatly anticipating the release of Survivor and the unending masses of aliens I plan on splattering all over the landscape with pistol, machine gun, and flame thrower.