I liked Shadowgrounds but I must admit that can be my nostalgia making it more enjoyable then it probably is.
To start with the positives, the gameplay is good enough for what its worth. Weapon variety may be basic, but it works well, plus you have additional ways to enhance them further. Weapons also have their own different weaknesses, on top of their own strenghts, so they all feel like they have their own role. For example, flamethrower is good vs groups of enemies(mostly wrenchers, 2nd enemy type you witness) but has very short range, plus without one of the upgrades, its ammo clip drains pretty fast. Or shotgun which has slow reload(reloads one bullet at a time, or minigun with slow rev up time plus no way to roll away from enemies(flamethrower and last gun also have this weakness).
Second good thing about the combat is dodging, enemies even on medium difficulty take decent chunk of your health, forcing you to constantly either side step, circle strafe them or use your roll ability. Your other method of avoiding dmg is by shooting the enemy, and then immediately hiding behind cover(for ranged enemies ofc) but one cool thing Shadowgrounds does is that, certain boxes used for cover, are destructable, which means ranged enemies can put pressure on you by slowly destroing your cover, which is a cool mechanic that isnt used too much sadly.
Besides general combat and guns, there are a few more upsides. One thing I didnt expect this game to have is a good soundtrack. Its not something oscar worthy, but its certainly not generic. Its very atmospheric, peaceful, adrenalin pumping, basically ost composer knew what to do to create a mood for the different scenes, and I very much appreciate all the effort that went into it! I can't exactly say the same about the story...
I didnt put the story in the downsides section because, while its extremely generic, to the point of just outright spamming certain dialogue cliches(like "Ive got a bad feeling about this"), I actually found it kinda endearing. In the age of ironic, sarcastic writing that doesnt take itself seriously, or lampshades how "yeah we know this dialogue/story is bad, arent we so quirky for being self aware? xD", in contrast to that, Shadowgrounds writing feels like a breath of fresh air. Yes, its a relic of its time, but I think it does help it feel slightly less bad, especially since, unlike other top down shooters where you fight aliens(alien breed trilogy and alien swarm), this game takes more of an action movie vibe, with the campy story/dialogue. One flaw story does have is lack of good voice acting. All the military personel sounds exactly like youd expect generic military people to sound, but with no flair added by the actors. The main protagonist sounds super generic "average joe that ended up in bad place", I think even deus ex invisible war had better main protagonist va. Although you do find a woman, whos va sounds like Rouge The Bat va from Sonic Adventure 2, so that was always nice to hear. Also the game sort of has logbooks with lore and... dont bother reading em, besides very few near the end of the game, most of them are generic work stuff or someone dying.
But are there any major issues with Shadowgrounds? Quite a few actually. Biggest issue I've witnessed is, lack of enemy variety. It starts strong, you see a new alien quite frequently, enemy has unique AI behaviour, like first enemy being afraid of flashlight so they cover away from you, or wrenchers who take a sec or two before pouncing at you, or worm enemies apprearing out of nowhere etc. But, the game eventually reuses them, a LOT. Especially, wrenchers. Don't get me wrong, its probably one of if not the best enemy in the game, but its used SO OFTEN! You see them just infront of you, you see em eating a corpse and you can get a headstart shooting em, sometimes they try to ambush you from behind, sometimes they crawl from underground, its all very nice, but even a good enemy can get tiresome to see so often.
Game also has weird relationship with some enemy types, where they could pose a threat, but the game doesnt use them??? You meet your first worm enemy pretty early on, it spits from afar, and if it hits you, you get slowed a bit. Fantastic enemy to support wrenchers, and put pressure on the player... You then proceed to never see em until last two chapters??? Later on you meet another worm enemy, this one being melee dmg dealer. It has a unique invisibility gimmick, but you can see em if you use flashlight on em, which WOULD make em a fantastic foe to use in amb- oh wait... This isnt Shadowgrounds, this is just WRENCHERSGROUNDS, so you'll see WRENCHERS ambush you 99% of the time, instead of, you know, enemy that can be invisible? And the game also regularly puts them in either closed off rooms, or tight corridors, so you never truly fear those buggers when map design is build against their strenghs, making em easy to deal with.
Speaking of difficulty, the game almost feels afraid of its own enemies, so it regularly nerfs them with map design almost always favouring you, or by giving you so much ammo. Granted I did play it on medium difficulty, but this still felt way too easy, so unless hard difficulty drastically changes map design, buffs enemy hp by x3 and removes most ammo bags(ammo bags have multiple ammo types inside btw), then I doubt its that hard even on max difficulty. One last way the game undermines its difficulty, is by having almost no boss fights, so you never feel like you even need to hoard ammo(I still did due to habits). You have 3 proper boss fights, and two mini bosses(two encounters with robots), they're another highlight of the game but you see so little of them. Only the first boss even poses a challenge, because by the time you meet first mini boss, you can find minigun in his chapter to melt his hp. And by the time you meet 2nd proper boss, you find a ROCKET LAUNCHER, which melts his hp, even without alt fire upgrade. Last minor nitpick is that the game feels slightly bloated chapters vise. The devs should've removed one or two of them, since the game doesnt have enough enemy variety, and you can even feel it in last two chapters, where you have 5 rooms which act like "survive the wave of enemies"
This is why I'm not sure if I enjoyed the game due to nostalgia(even if its a weak nostalgia, since this wasnt my favourite game or even top ten), the game does have surprising amount of flaws, and yet, I still enjoyed it well enough to at least recommend it to top down shooter fans(if you dont mind playing 5,6 or 7/10 game) or anyone who likes novelty of playing all kinds of shooter games
