Review: Shadow Complex

Admittedly, I haven’t played any of the Castlevania games except for about twenty minutes of Symphony of the Night. One series I have played to death, however, is Metroid; Super Metroid is definitely in my top 10, if not top 20, games of all-time. So Epic and Chair’s announcement of Shadow Complex and the immediate comparison to Super Metroid had me excited. Even though I wasn’t familiar with Chair’s previous works, I trusted that Epic would never release a subpar title. My expectations were set: a great tribute of sorts to Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night with better graphics. Surprisingly enough, it was far more than that.

Shadow Complex is based on the world of Orson Scott Card’s Empire. While I don’t know enough of the novel to explain its connection, the game, which apparently takes place after Empire, stars Jason Fleming and his date Claire who are backpacking somewhere in the Northwestern United States. Unfortunately for Jason (or perhaps fortunately for the world), Claire is kidnapped by a group called the Restoration which just happens to have a base where they are hiking. This organization is bent on creating civil war and taking control of the United States, so it’s up to you, the typical ordinary guy who just wanted to date this girl, to save her and the world. Although the main bits are given to you through short cutscenes, a lot of additional information is presented through eavesdropping on enemy soldiers having conversations.

If you’ve played a Metroid or Castlevania title before, you’ll be familiar with how Shadow Complex plays. It’s uses a 2D side-perspective, although everything is rendered in 3D, so your movement is limited to left, right, up, and down. You’ll run around, jump to ledges, shoot enemies, solve a simple puzzle, grab a new upgrade, repeat. Although it sounds monotonous and boring on paper, in practice it’s a lot of fun as you slowly build your arsenal and plow your way through enemies. The entire game world is connected together, but sections of the map are blocked off by doors and areas that are inaccessible with your current abilities. As you progress through the game, you’ll get grenades, missiles, foam guns, thrust packs, a hook shot, and scuba gear to reach those rooms previously unavailable for you.

The game controls fairly well. The left analog stick is used for movement, the right analog stick is used to aim your weapons, and other actions such as jump and reload are mapped to the buttons. What’s interesting about Shadow Complex is that despite its 2D plane, enemies can still be present on a perpendicular plane, meaning while although your character is facing the left of the screen, there can be someone shooting at you from your character’s immediate right. To aid with shooting, Shadow Complex implements a form of auto-aim which will generally guide your gun’s laser sight to a direction of an enemy or explosive barrel. In most cases, this works out fairly well, but in certain situations, you’re given limited freedom in your aiming which could result in your death as a soldier is able knock off a good amount of your health while you awkwardly try to make Jason aim at him.

The full map is rather large and appears complex (no pun intended), but as far as the main game progression goes, a blue line will guide you to your next objective, making the game seem fairly linear. In the latter half of the game, you’re not exactly limited to the blue line, however, because most of the map will be available for you to make your own path to the objective. Backtracking is a must in this title, as you’ll constantly revisit rooms to enter adjacent ones that you couldn’t enter before. Traveling from one end of the Restoration base to the other seems a bit tedious toward the end of the game, but there will usually be so many upgrades to get along the way that it’s not actually boring.

It’s not heavily used, but there is a level-up system in Shadow Complex. As you access new areas, kill enemies and obtain more equipment, you earn XP. Leveling up will result in accuracy and precision improvements as well as the occasional health upgrade. More experience is given with headshots, melee takedowns, and bot kicking. The level cap is at 50, but it’s unlikely that someone will reach even level 30 during their first playthrough.

The pattern shooting of regular enemy soldiers and basic exploring is interrupted with puzzles and boss and turret battles. Shadow Complex‘s puzzles don’t exactly require a lot of thinking; much of the time it will require you to shoot something with a specific gun, such as your foam gun, which more or less acts as an ice beam of sorts. The same goes for the boss battles. You will encounter large mechas that seem very threatening due to the presence of a health meter, but these usually only require an endless hurling of grenades and missiles to defeat. Luckily, these mecha encounters are still satisfying. Sometimes you’ll be able to utilize a turret to mow down a few waves of soldiers, also a fun method of killing them.

For some gamers, a six-hour campaign and the lack of cooperative play and multiplayer wouldn’t be worth it for $15. Fortunately for them, Shadow Complex has enough to keep you playing again and again. In addition to the mess of achievements that constantly challenge you, such as playing through the hardest difficulty in under 3 hours with 100% item completion, there are leaderboards to compete with your friends for the most headshots, most points, etc. The game will also periodically let you know the number of melee takedowns, headshots and other statistics and your next target, whether that is for achievements or to beat the closest friend on the leaderboards. And if that’s not enough, the game offers “Proving Grounds,” a series of tutorials and challenge levels in which you try to obtain the fastest times. There’s a lot to do after your first playthrough.

Other than the aiming, there are only a few annoyances, including the enemies that shoot you from far off-screen (which is more of a personal issue than anything) and awkward moments in which the camera pans out to the next room when you’re between two in the vents, and you can’t exactly navigate very easily. Possibly the greatest issue is the enemy AI. It is possible to stand in the doorway between two rooms and pick off the enemies in the other room. While the enemies will shout as if they acknowledge your presence, they won’t actually do anything. It makes the game easier to play, but it’s obvious that it wasn’t intended.

Chair did an outstanding job with the game’s presentation, with fitting sound effects and music and actually decent voice acting. Visually, this looks like a full retail title with the exception of the large amount of and noticeable object clipping and the slightly ugly character models in cutscenes. It’s surprising what Unreal Engine 3 can still do, and this is a testament to that. Ragdoll physics, motion blur, bump-mapping, it’s all there.

Shadow Complex really sets a new standard for other downloadable games to match, in terms of both content and presentation. When a $15 title matches the amount of playtime and visual presentation of something such as Mirror’s Edge, it really makes one question some of his purchases. Chair really proves that the 2D side-scroller genre is still alive and kicking and that downloadable games can offer as much or even more than retail titles. There’s achievements, “Proving Grounds,” leaderboards, and the possibility of speedruns and sequence breaking; it’s plausible that someone can spend at least fifteen hours on this game. The best part of all is that the game is so satisfying; every time you gain a new weapon, every time you level up, Shadow Complex really makes you feel accomplished and good. And that’s not something every game can do.

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