Just a few years ago, you would not have been surprised to see a game like this getting cover treatment from the major PC game magazines. It's a nicely polished oblique-overhead third-person shooter set in a mining colony on Ganymede (one of Jupiter's moons) that is under attack by alien critters. The story line is nicely done too, with good voice acting and a real sense of tension and a colony under siege; naturally, weapons get more powerful over time, and NPCs work with you in later levels.
Warren Spector says one of the problems with the industry is that we have the equivalent of Hollywood blockbusters and the equivalent of student films, with nothing in between; while that may be largely true, Shadowgrounds is an exception. Given the quality of the graphics and the level of polish here, this is no low-budget indie title, but something that could probably be released at retail--except of course that there's little appetite at retail any more for PC-only games. Which is a pity, because this is an excellent title; we hope Meridian (the retail publisher) can succeed in getting some review attention for it, because it deserves the exposure.
