Application Review: Shadowgun

Thrilling, console quality graphics. A well known, overdone, yet compelling, story line. Action-packed gameplay. Madfinger Games has been well praised in the iOS gaming industry thus far. They may not be a big giant like Gameloft and EA, but they do have their fair share of games that are well known and loved. Even I myself have fallen in love with games like Samurai, Bloody Xmas, and Samurai II: Vengeance    

Gameplay

The storyline behind Shadowgun is one that is all too familiar. You play as John Slade who is on the mission to find and retrieve the nasty, diabolical Dr. Edgar Simon… Dead or alive. We’ve seen this storyline way too many times as many games use this story line, one example being another game with shadow in its title, Gameloft’s Shadow Guardian. 

 

Just like they can take cover, Madfinger gives you a cover system of your own. This cover system is intuitively placed into the game in the most hidden fashion. It involves no buttons; making it as simple as it gets. To take cover, walk up to a barrier or wall and John will do the rest. You can move forward to jump over some barriers or just step back to retreat from cover. The cover system in this game is one of the best I’ve ever seen. 

 

 Graphics

Like the gameplay, the graphics are also phenomenal. In this day and age, everything it’s Unreal Engine this, Unreal Engine 3.0 that. Then Unity’s engine, which has the ability to create really compelling graphics is left behind. Unity really never became big, and doesn’t get the respect it deserved. Well, today it does, through the hands of Madfinger Games.

The graphics in Shadowgun are nothing less of jaw dropping. The advanced, real-time lighting, deeply detailed textures, and picture as a whole really just come together to create a beautiful picture out of just about every screenshot. Words really can’t explain just how thorough and gorgeous the graphics are in this game. In an essence, it starts walking the line of the console gaming, where it becomes so overwhelming, it feels unreal. The animations are really fluid and smooth as a baby’s bottom. The frame rates run high. Everything really just looks splendid.

Audio

With great gameplay, great graphics, Shadowgun comes to the table with some great audio. This completes the three necessary components to create a great game. When you have all three of these aspects together, the game really just comes to live. This game is no different.

The sound effects in this game are plenty in number. Put on your headphones and you’ll hear every single sound you can imagine, even ones that you wouldn’t in real life. The SFX really give a mysterious feeling to the game as any step you take can lead you into battle. The gun fire, footsteps, explosions, doors, and everything else imaginable has a sound

Final Thoughts

With an amazing jump into the 3D shooting world, Madfinger actually pushes out a high-quality game that will for sure satisfy the end user; if only it wasn’t for the constant crashing. The gameplay, graphics, and audio all work together in perfect unity to deliver an engaging gameplay that will bring players back. The soon-to-come multiplayer modes should really fix most of the replay value problems. Madfinger Games really brought a huge punch to make Shadowgun one of the best, if not the best, third person shooter on the App Store… If only it wasn’t for one thing.