A little over a year ago, Madfinger Games released a gorgeous, cover-based 3rd-person shooter called Shadowgun ($4.99) to the App Store. As I mentioned, it was a visually stunning game, and looked like it could be the iOS equivelant of Microsoft’s Gears of War. However, the gameplay wasn’t quite up to snuff, with repetitive design and a lackluster enemy AI, things we noted in our review.
To be fair Shadowgun did improve with updates following its release, and though it never did seem to fully fulfill its potential it did attract a pretty dedicated following of fans. In addition, almost immediately after launch, Madfinger started teasing the possibilities of online multiplayer coming to the game, though there was no specific timeline for it to actually materialize.
Then things went a bit quiet on the Shadowgun multiplayer front for a while, but today Madfinger has announced that Shadowgun: Deadzone, a separate standalone version of Shadowgun with online multiplayer, is finally finished and will be launching next week. Here’s a new trailer.
Shadowgun: Deadzone will feature several different classes to play as, 6 multiplayer maps, and 2 game types: Deathmatch and Zone Control. It will be free to download and play with an IAP system, and I’m definitely curious to see how that is implemented. My instincts tell me it will probably be along the lines of Dead Trigger (Free), Madfinger’s (also gorgeous) freemium zombie shooter.
We’re definitely interested to check it out, and we’ll have more on Shadowgun: Deadzone when it launches next week. Until then hit up our forums for some discussion on the game.
