Shadow Complex

DLC Review from Phil - Wednesday, 21 October 2009 @ 6:19pm

Shadow Complex is an Xbox Live Arcade game that doesn't look like an Xbox Live Arcade game. It looks like a very nice PS2 game. It plays like a very nice SNES game. It has graphical and gameplay influences from the past two decades, and becomes its own beast on a downloadable service that was once a haven for unaltered ports and a very select range of original yet small games. There used to be a maximum file size on XBLA games of 50MB. Shadow Complex is almost 1GB in size. How times have changed.

In Shadow Complex, you'll play as Nathan Drake on a swashbuckling adventure to find the lost treasure of El Dorado. It's a high-flying adventure filled with numerous twists, turns and amazing action set pieces. You'll pick up heaps of cool weaponry and, being the savvy rogue-ish bad boy that you are, start cracking wise about many people and events which come your way. And don't forget to tuck your shirt in just at the front.

The story, writing and dialogue in Shadow Complex is universally bad. Some terrorist operation (working from the Shadow Complex itself) is planning to invade San Francisco of all places. They probably just want to ride the cable cars while enjoying some wine and cheese. No need for all that violence, boys! It's a story you won't care about particularly when cutscenes are very few and far between. The worst dialogue comes from the enemy soldiers themselves - [on discussing your attacks wthin the SC] "This guy may be good, but WE'VE got weapons and training!" Hearty laughter among all the grunt soldiers. Ugh.

Bad dialogue and story aside, there's a reason Shadow Complex is such a huge download, and that's because it's all about the gameplay. In what has been dubbed the "Metroidvania" genre, you'll be exploring a massive area from a 2D viewpoint with snazzy 3D graphics. Although it's supposed to be somewhat nonlinear, I found myself shuttled from one point to the next pretty consistently for 80% of the game, with the rest of the time simply taken up backtracking to find more upgrades for my weapons and armour.

See, the main focus of collecting stuff is to upgrade your power suit with all kinds of gadgets and abilities. It's pretty cool to see that the developers haven't sat back and dusted off their hands when they finished a round of upgrades, declaring the game to be complete. They clearly just wanted to cram in as many movement and ability upgrades as possible so that by the end, you are literally a flying lighting bolt where no platform or area is an obstacle. Want a double jump? Hell no, let's go triple jump with a hookshot, hyper speed and missle/grenade launching space rifle which fires one quadrillion rounds per million called the Inertial Element! Nathan Drake is literally rocketing around the game with barely any resistance from the enemies, so eventually the entire place becomes a stainless steel playground. Which is fine, except they tried to tie in the motivations of the player to stop some kind of invasion plot. That gets lost among the running and jumping.

What a shadowy place. Also, it's pretty complex.

Combat is your standard run and gun affair, with the right stick being used for more accurate aiming if you so desire. Which isn't really necessary on most difficulty settings - all you need to do is walk into a room and hold down the right trigger. Auto-aiming takes care of the rest. I actually found most combat to be pretty unrefined, with many enemies appearing on screen at once with none-too-amazing level design. What this means is that there probably won't be much cover, so you'll just end up jumping around wildly shooting back and forth, hoping to dispatch all the baddies before your health bar depletes. However, for some reason this is still oddly enjoyable. Chalk that one up to me being a glutton for punishment.

I have a problem with Shadow Complex, and it's one very difficult to put my finger on. I think it has something to do with the overall atmosphere and tone of the game, including the way the levels are presented. The entire game feels somewhat flat and uninspired, and the environments are sterile and boring at the best of times. I came into Shadow Complex expecting an amazingly immersive experience, but then found myself playing other games and only trying SC in short bursts to offset the tedium. What I played was fun, but it never felt natural enough to really get "lost" in the game. Although at the end of the day, it's still a great game, I just have to convey that I was never drawn into the adventure. I was always looking at the clock, wondering if my microvable Johnnycakes were done.

What is that giant thing doing in that room? Defending the brown boxes?

There's not much else to it, really. There's a levelling system (in addition to the normal upgrade pickups) which feels tacked on and pretty pointless, along with some VR missions which aren't actually very fun. I guess there's a reason why I haven't bothered mentioning things like the boss fights - they just weren't that great and I've forgot most of them. Oh yeah, and you pick up weapon attachments to access new areas of the game - but again, pretty forgettable. Green doors can be opened with grenades, but RED doors can be opened with missiles. Not really that exciting.

So, hang on. I've basically said a whole bunch of this game's features are kind of stupid and not that exciting. But I also recommend it as one of the best XBLA games out there, and an essential purchase for only 1200 Microsoft Points. I've dwelled on the negatives, but the normal stuff - running, jumping, shooting - is all good fun. I have no strong feelings one way or the other, to be completely honest. It was just a game I played, finished, said "Yes. That was a game" and moved on. I really can't express it in any other way. I have no desire to play it again, but I also don't regret the time spent with it at all. Take that how you will.

It would be easy for someone to compare Shadow Complex to a game like Super Metroid, then dismiss it because it achieves nothing new for the "genre". I've actually heard some gamers ignoring the merits of Shadow Complex because they claim everyone has "played this game before". Which I believe is a mistake. Super Metroid was released fifteen years ago. That is a very long time. Not everyone has played this kind of thing before. We're in an entirely new generation, and an entirely different world of video games. Shadow Complex has its rightful place, and I'm happy to support it.

Pros

Lots of cool upgrades and a pretty massive "Complex" to play through. At over 6 hours for one playthrough, this is absolute bargain gaming.

Cons

Too many aspects of the game feel tacked on, and it never stands out as being particularly memorable or engaging.