Shadow Complex

While downloadable games are usually the ‘bite size’ type, this one is as long as any retail game, longer if you decide to dig deeper. I’m talkin Shadow Complex, another title off the Xbox Live Arcade, it’s goes for 1200 points AKA 15 dollers….and I’m just gonna put it on front street here, this game sucked up most of my weekend, so a 9.5/10 for me as I had an incredible time with it.

The Good – More old sschool channeling happening, in the spirit of a Metroid/Castlevania. It’s a side scrolling action platformer(also with up and down scrolling)…in a nutshell, lots of shooting, lots of jumping, lots of searching for goodies. The graphics take on Unreal Engine 3 to do it’s dirty work, so we got silky smooth animation and a nice 3D sheen goin on. Good voice acting, some may recognize the star’s voice as the guy from Uncharted and the latest Prince of Persia, the dude just comes off as a likable hero. The gameplay is easy to pick up and is tight and responsive, as long as your timing is on point, your guy will pull off everything you want him to. Shooting is a ton of fun, headshots make your enemies fly back in a satisfying way that doesn’t get old. Going in to some rooms, you have options on how to handle situations, such as sneaking in and dropping explosives, or just guns/grenades blazing, this adds tons of depth to the battle system. The real hook for me here is how the game doles out upgrades and abilities, it’s simply addicting and fun. You start the game as a camper with a flashlight and by the end you are one bad-ass soldier with a super gun, grenades, missles, a hook, armor, etc. It’s a long game and well worth the money, I finished the campaign in about 7hrs, and decided to go back and find all the hidden upgrades for like another 5 hrs, I found it to be that fun.

The Bad – I think it’s pretty obvious that I love this game, so there’s not much I feel I can put here….but, since not every gamer is the same…Some may not like having to go to rooms multiple times to get things that were out of reach before. A ton of spots will be locked or just a too far jump away, it’s not till you start upgrading that you can go back and grab all the good stuff. Some items are a little too hidden, some crawl spaces suffer from that as well. Being a downloadable game, texture map quality of the graphics isn’t the best when the camera zooms in for cut-scenes.

The Ugly – How addicted to this game I got….seriously, when I finished the campaign, I said what the heck, let’s go back and try to get some more stuff…every time I found an upgrade, I just HAD to find one more.