Shadow Complex Review

Shadow Complex is a summer action movie game. It came out on XBOX Live for a summer of arcade years ago and got an 88% on metacritic. Do I agree with this scorage? No. It makes me question the unhappiness that characterizes most games critics' lives.

And now I'll talk about the game. Shadow Complex is a Metroid/Castlevania style side-scroller in which you're given a shadow-filled complex full of high-tech terrorists preparing to assault San Francisco. You play as a less annoying version of Nathan Drake, and what begins as a date in the woods ends up being a mission to save your girlfriend, and America. Although for some reason the developers, Chair, decided not to make this a comedy, the game's backed up with decent action-movie dialogue, good voice acting, the Unreal 3 engine, and well-placed ominous music. It's intellectually bankrupt but it doesn't attack your brain.

So is it fun?

Yes, if you just stick to the main quest, and maybe pick up a few powerups on the way to the end, and maybe do the speed run achievement on your second playthrough, if you actually want a second playthrough, which you probably won't since the game's fun surprises will be gone.

The game definitely isn't fun if you decide to retrace your steps, scouring the entire complex for powerups you couldn't pickup when you first passed them. (Some "entrances" to powerups can only be blown apart by weapons you get later in the game, thus encouraging you to go back through the base with your new "entrance-opening" weapons, like the rocket launcher) Again, if you like happiness, don't do this. There's an achievemnt for it; do not go for this achievement. Getting the vast majority of the powerups makes you so overpowered that, unless you're terrible at games, even the final battle will be a cakewalk. Also, going back for those items, retreading old places over and over again, is such a chore, with almost no surprises; worse, most enemies and all destroyable "entrances" respawn; this probably has something to do with the level up system, which goes up to lvl 50.

The other gameplay issues involve the camera and the sorta-auto aim system. The camera has a tendency to not show the people shooting you; you'll soon find that you and your enemies can shoot rounds into off-screen land and that you'll often need to rely on enemy bullets to know where their originators might be. And then, when you can see them, you might have to suffer the sorta-auto-aim, usually when there are enemies both on your 2D plane and in the background; this background and hereground enemy situation makes it so that if those enemies are towards, say, your left, you'll need to do some praying to quickly aim at the target you want to first. This can make the early game seem impossible on hard and insane difficulties without lowering the difficulty level (which you can do at any point).

In Short: buy Shadow Complex if you want an above average summer action movie in video game form, and stick to the script (and maybe do the speed run achievement).

★★★☆☆