Undertow takes the dual-stick arcade shooter underwater and then adds an additional twist to the model. The game takes a page from online first-person shooters such as the Battlefield series and adds control points to the levels. To capture a control point you need to clear it of enemies and then hold it long enough for it to transition to your control. Once you take it you can use it as a spawning point after you die. If you take the majority of the control points you'll begin to drain the enemy's respawn tickets, and the more control points that you hold the faster they drain. The game ends when one side runs out of tickets, leaving the other victorious.

You'll start out each level as a laser-firing frogman, but if you look in the nooks and crannies around the levels you'll find power-ups and weapons upgrades. I liked the simple but effective depth charges, which let me swim above a control point out of view and drop a barrage on the unsuspecting enemies below. As you rack up kills you'll be given the opportunity to upgrade your frogman to one of three more powerful units. Each unit type has its trade-offs as far as size, speed, and firepower go, but no one is obviously superior to the others. Even the lowly frogman is excellent in fitting through narrow passageways to sneak up on enemy control points.

The game features a single player campaign that has you fight your way through a series of levels with the occasional boss battle thrown in for variety's sake - although the boss battles are lame enough that you wouldn't miss them if they weren't there. You'll take on the enemy with the support of AI-controlled teammates, but they're basically laser bait and leave you to do all of the work. There's not all that much challenge to the single player campaign and it seems best suited to providing you with a little training before heading online.

Undertow is clearly a game that was designed for multiplayer action first and this is where it is at its best. Playing an arcade shooter with a bunch of other gamers is fun in and of itself, but the control point-centered gameplay and well-designed maps bring everything up another notch. The one downside to the multiplayer is that there were times when I'd log on and could not find a game to join.

The game's graphics are developed using the Unreal engine, but there's nothing about them that will blow you away. If anything, all of the units are too small on the screen, but I guess that that was a necessary evil in order to put more players on the screen at once.

I wouldn't recommend the game to anyone who doesn't care for arcade-style two-stick shooters, but if this type of game does appeal to you then Undertow's multiplayer action definitely makes it worth a look.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 78%.Arcade shooter meets online first-person shooter and the results can be pretty enjoyable.