When a game starts as slow and simple as Undertow, a demo might not only be a bad idea, it might be downright destructive to your desire to give it a chance. Hyped for months as an underwater co-op take on Geometry Wars, the idea sounds as cool as they come. Then the game auto-downloads itself to your hard drive and you fire up the first level, only to leave you thanking the Xbox Gods for demos and feeling wise for saving your 800 MS Points for something better. Your bad, the game is much deeper than the cool concept sounds.
True enough; the first level of Undertow is an oversimplified introduction to the game. The camera makes you feel too far from your character, showing off wide-open water and not much else. In relation to how far you can see your firing-range seems puny. You cannot help but look at your character as a tiny sea monkey. You will long for a camera-zoom option, to bring you closer to the action; giving you a better look at the gorgeous underwater world. Then, you vanquish the simple enemies, take over a few control points, and move on to the next level. Level two is where everything begins to make sense, and the game shows its true colors as one of Live Arcade's best.
The basic premise of the game, both in versus and story mode, is that there are two teams fighting over several control points in each level. The team that has control over the majority of them will slowly drain life points away from the opposition. When a team's life points are down to zero, they loose. Die mid-round, and you can only respawn at control points currently held by your team. Should your team loose all their control points, you automatically loose via shut-out. While the rapid-fire pace of the game makes it look like a shoot 'em up action title, thanks to the game's smart rules regarding control points and four unique classes of characters, there is quite a bit of strategy involved.
Gamers take a control point by ensuring that no enemy ship is within a safe distance of the hub for several seconds. When gamers reach an unearned control point, they will notice a countdown timer begin to fill with their color. Once the circle is full, the control point is theirs to defend and respawn at. Overtaking an enemy control point is a similar, albeit more time-consuming process, as the same timer must drain their color before starting to refill with yours. Should an enemy ship drift along while the timer is filling, it stops and waits for you to either dispatch the enemy to continue or for you to die and returns to its original color.
Each level, save the first, is a cavernous maze of rock and water from one control point to the next. Gamers that try to fly in and pull a Rambo act on an enemy control point swarming with baddies will find themselves floating lifeless and selecting a new spawn point in a hurry. While the game's rocky surfaces and drifting strands of seaweed may look pretty, smart gamers will quickly learn that it can provide some useful cover, especially when facing off against an enemy much larger than them.
Though you start the game as a small scuba diver, you can also select to spawn at any control point as any of the other three classes. The game wisely balances the classes by making the more destructive, gigantic enemies move in a clunkier manner, while the smaller, quick enemies swim circles around them, valiantly trying to bring them down. The larger baddies might fire off missiles rather than harpoons, but it feels like a fair fight regardless of what class you choose and are battling.
