Undertow is can easily be put as simply terrible.
Undertow recently has gained attention as of late because its the free XBLA game we were promised. I suppose. Whether or not it would be warrant a purchase before/after this sale (ends Sunday, January 27th), I suggest for one you at least download it before hand. Whether or not you will play it after you grow bored of it.
Undertow deals with for one, fighting in under water. The main plot is an aquatic alien race is launching a secret attack on Earth which would melt the polar ice caps. Whether or not this jumps out at you, literally, to make it worse, it attempts to use a story.
Whether this actually makes sense to you, I'm talking cut scenes of talking and such. While this would normally be great, this is an Arcade game. Not suppose to really have a story, and/or cinematic type of scenes. But this does, and it doesn't work. Thank god there is a skip button, because thats what you will be doing. And a rewind button, if your like, crazy.
But basically back on track, a bunch of people left from a group and you have to fight off the alien enemies one Act at a time, yes! Wait, not yes. You start off learning the game, as you need to kill a certain amount of enemies per level (usually 200, goes to 350), you also need to get control points, for more of your men to respawn and so, with that being said, you will have less enemies to deal with.
Anyways, lets actually start. To begin with, Undertow is apparently ran with the Unreal Engine, and for an Arcade game, it looks nice. Not amazing, but nice. While many people have given their frustration on the controls, I think they are probably one of the highlights of the game. You move with the left analog stick, and shoot in any direction with the right analog stick. You get 4 classes to choose (Marine, Destroyer, and two other ones.) All of these classes have different types of abilities. You can upgrade these classes to a max of 3 (by earning points, killing things, getting capture points, etc), and unfortunately every level you have to do the same thing...again and again...
Before the end of each Act, you must face this Alien boss, and well...its not fun. Its the same each Act, and is surprisingly more boring each time. The thing is, after the first Act everything is the same. Boring, and well, hard. Mention hard. Unless I'm a terrible Arcade player, on the Normal difficulty I found it hard at points to win a damn match. I was winning 130 men to 20 men, they had 4 capture points and I had one, thats not the point, but all of a sudden they storm me and win...how? I have no idea, I guess its my talents, but my talents are so amazing that it might have just been a glitch. Yes, lets go with that.
There is a easier difficulty below that, and one hard above it. I cannot imagine hard, as it must be literally hell. There is a multi player aspect, in which you can face up to 16 people in a team death match or conquest like match, basically taking capture points in each. You can also play each chapter/acts in co-op, if your like into that sort of thing. There are also leader boards if you wish to compare your 'amazing' stats with everyone else. One play through got me in the top 1000 in like score/kills, so, yeah. Either I'm amazing or nobody is really playing the game. Or maybe both.
Basically, it boils down to if you want to play this type of game or not. Its free, and if you don't like it, never play it again. Go through at least one Act so you can get an achievement. Speaking of which, anybody going for the 10k kills achievement? Might be the only thing that is worth doing in this god damn game.
The Good: It was between Jan 23rd - Jan 27th. Co-op, multiplayer. Graphics are OK.
The Bad: Repetition in every level, the cut scenes suck, voice acting is definitely not great, frustrating difficulty even on the normal setting. Probably anything else. January 23rd to January 27th is long gone.
