The 3rd person shooter genre is very poorly represented on Android, in fact, besides a few efforts from Gameloft it’s practically non existent. Coming soon from MadFinger Games (Makers of the fantastic Samurai series) is a game that will change this for the better. Already released on iOS, Shadowgun is an upcoming Android 3rd person shooter that’s not just content with being one of the first 3rd person shooters on Android, but it also plans to look damn good while doing so. We recently had the chance to look at the first three of the ten levels and I was quickly dumbstruck by the fantastic visuals. Now this game is an Nvidia Tegra game, so don’t expect this to run on other devices although this might be reason enough to take a second look at that Nvidia tablet you’ve had your eye on. I won’t oversell the game and say that it looks like it belongs on the Xbox 360 or PS3, but I will say that it still looks damn close and it features far more detail and lighting than even the better PS2 and Xbox games. Previously my number one looker on Android was the still fantastic Riptide GP, but with this much close quarters visuals and detail, I believe Shadowgun might just take that crown away.
As a 3rd person cover based shooter, Shadowgun has a lot in common with console games such as Gears of War, you’ll run down corridors until you encounter enemies then hide behind one of the unrealistically abundant waist high walls and start taking shots at your foes. On Android these types of games are made and broken by their controls more so than their graphics and I’m happy to report that Shadowgun’s control method is simple, responsive and accurate. Movement is controlled from the left side of the screen with aiming in the right, also when you touch the shoot button on the right hand side of the screen you can drag from there to continue aiming while firing. This solves one of the trickier issues with touchscreen shooters when you need to move, aim and fire at the same time.
The demo was restricted to just four weapons: Machine gun, shotgun, grenade launcher and rocket launcher. These weapons felt generic, with just the option to fire and reload. There appeared to be no upgrade path or alternate fire modes for the weapons, which could leave things to get repetitive by the end of the game if more aren’t introduced, likewise the selection of enemies were equally as sparse, although once again, this is only a demo.
Be sure to look for full review of Shadowgun once the game is available in the Android Market, it’s definitely going to be one to watch out for.
