Disastrous
Undertow released in 2007 and developed by Chair Entertainment is a twin stick shooter set in an underwater environment. Undertow can be a fun game when it works, but there are many annoying problems that really hold the enjoyment with the game back.
The core to Undertow is gameplay that we have seen before such as in the Battlefield Series. The game is essentially a group of conquest based missions where your team must capture and defend a majority of control points in each stage. The more control points in your command the faster the enemies tickets will drain, and victory will be near. Undertow similar to once again Battlefield has four different classes of soldiers which can be swapped on the fly. There is a heavy unit that fire rockets, and then rest of the units get lighter and have different weapons until you get to the tiny foot soldier who can shoot and move with great speed. Although there is a single player campaign, there is no doubt that Undertow was built for coop and competitive multiplayer. At the time of playing Undertow the online was dead. The single player campaign will last about 3 hours, and it follows a fight over the sea between an allied group or races and aliens from space. Yes, the story involves space aliens fighting underwater. The limited story is told through cutscenes that I can easily say are some of the worst I have seen in any game, but ill talk about that more later. Undertow presents a great deal of challenge playing the single player. I found the normal mode to be pretty hard, the ultra difficulty to be insane, and I ended up playing most of the game on casual where I didn't have to depend on my team AI to do anything. The teammate AI in the game is absolutely atrocious. Your teammates won't even do anything they will just sit at the spawn point and not move, it is absolutely ridiculous. On the other hand however, the enemy AI is very good and will challenge you. They will capture points at light speed. I mean come on Chair what the fuck were you thinking at least make it semi-balanced. The single player has some replayability in the form of getting better scores and medals on stages, but I wouldn't play this game more than once.
The graphics during the actual gameplay of Undertow are average at best. The sprites of your soldier and of your enemies are so small that it can be hard to even see your light duty soldier at all. Even the biggest of the heavy units are still really small, and I was straining my eyes the whole time even trying to figure out what was going on on the screen. The backgrounds look okay, but they are pretty much the same thing for every level. The cutscenes look awful in the game. They are extremely jagged and low res. For how bad the cutscenes look they sound even more horrid. The voice actors are so terrible, the most generic British sounding type of terrible. The sound levels are also really bad as you can barely hear one character as he mumbles, and then all of a sudden the character next to him will be screaming and will rupture your eardrums. The sound design in the game is truly awful, and I would have given the game a better score if the cutscenes were left out of the game.
Overall Undertow has some gameplay that can be fun, but many of the games flaws hold it back by leaps and bounds. I really cannot recommend the game to anyone, luckily I got it for free (it was free for awhile), but I feel bad for anyone who paid for this garbage.
2 stars (4.0)
Gameplay: 5
Replayability/Value: 3
Graphics: 5
Audio: 3
Presentation/Story/Design: 3
