Shadow the Hedgehog

A lot of people have dissed Shadow the Hedgehog. To them liking this game is like liking Sonic 06, Sonic Free Riders, and any other bad Sonic games Sega has made... For one it'll never be as bad as Sonic Free Riders for Kincet, nothing will. And like it or not I actually liked Shadow the Hedgehog. Now you can call me insane, retarted, or a dirty troll but the fact is that you won't change my mind. While I like it though, it isn't the best game Sega could of made. Today I'll be reviewing Shadow the Hedgehog, and showing you a look at the other side of the opinons. Now right away you'll notice that the cutscenes have very amazing graphics, while they aren't masterpieces they look at the very least decent. Let's get on to the story for now though. Shadow the Hedgehog has lost his memory and continues to have flashbacks of the death of Maria. The flashbacks involve him being chased down by gun troops and end with the fire of a gun, in other words they are telling him Maria is dead. Since he lost his memory he has no clue of who Maria is yet though, so don't let me confuse you. A few seconds later a dark demon, or whatever exactly he is, under the name Black Doom appears. He tells Shadow that he can restore his memory if he retrives the seven chaos emeralds for him. The second he disappears Shadow watches as chaos strikes Westopolis, without really caring about them he decides to take up the offer Black Doom gave to him and rushes off in the direction of Westopolis in hopes of finding out who he is and why he is here. The first level of the game has now started... Before we talk about the gameplay though let's go back to graphics. Remember how I said the cutscenes had good graphics? The actual game itself doesn't have such good graphics. I won't complain about this though as it was 2005 and it improved over SA2's graphics. Now right away you are flung into the action! You continue falling as lasers blast the city and the sky turns a dark red. As soon as you land you run forward. The lasers continue to blast, though they shouldn't be much of a problem for you to avoid yet sometimes they will hit you on occasion. If you pause the game you should notice something different from regular Sonic games. There is actually a mission select screen. There are three types of missions. Hero missions involve around you teaming up with Sonic and friends to stop the Black Arms. Dark missions are vice versa often invovling G.U.N. in some way. And then there's the neutral missions, in other words I just don't give a holy living fuck mode. The missions can sometimes be overused, they often involve destroy all enemies. The Dark missions are usually, destroy all human enemies on the screen and then we can move on. Same with the hero missions only you destroy the Black Arms instead of G.U.N. troops. Now to keep from confusing you, the Black Arms are the aliens who Black Doom commands. Some missions can be very unique though, such as activating defense systems or detonating bombs. Though if you're in it for the missions chances are you won't like it. The neutral missions involve none of this crap though and are baiscully "Get to the goal ring!" There's nothing more then that. If you simply don't want to worry about having to keep from killing certain types of enemies because they'll effect your score in the end if you attack enemies who are on the character that joins you's side neutral will suit you. Speaking of killing enemies let's talk about the special attacks of this game. Shadow the Hedgehog uses a system where killing certain enemies fills up a certain meter. Killing G.U.N. troops fills up your evil meter and killing the Black Arms fills up your good meter, when you go into levels with Eggman's robots killing them will give you evil karma since G.U.N. is not there making them the G.U.N. of that level. If you fill up your evil meter you will get the power-up Chaos Blast which is a somewhat devasting blast destroying or damaging enemies around you. However if you fill up your good meter you get Chaos Control which has two different types. In regular levels it will cause you to fly forward, if the meter runs out don't worry it'll only stop when you land on a platform so you won't fall to your death. In boss battles it will pause or slow down time. While you have these powers if they aren't used you can keep them around until the meter runs out for unlimited ammo and invincibilty. Yes I said ammo by the way. This game introduces a new feature which only appeared in this game which involves Shadow shooting guns. A lot of people complain this doesn't fit but they didn't have a problem with Gamma, Omega, or almost any of the Eggman robots using guns so yeah... Also while we are at it let me tell you this game has a lot of swearing. It isn't too extreme, but Shadow's favorite word in this game is damn and on occassion he will even say hell. So you may want to think twice before giving this game to anyone under 10 and actually follow ESRB's rating system for once unless you're sure it's okay. With these comes melee weapons but no one uses them so we can skip them, and secret weapons. I won't talk about them for the sake of spoilers but I will tell you that you can get certain weapons depending on the ending you get. The ending is determined by whether you went evil, good, or neutral mostly. There are 10 different endings in total so it has a lot of replayabilty, maybe too much... If you beat all 10 endings you can get the final ending which is the canon one. In this game there are also vechiles, most aren't nessacry at all and it's better to run then use one but some are required to ride. Don't worry though, the ones that are required are the good kinds such as riding an alien bat and FIRIN IT'S LAZORRRRRRRRRRRR! Actually it doesn't have a laser but I'm to lazy to classify it as anything else and wanted to use a meme in this review. The soundtrack is also good, there's nothing really that good aside from the ending themes but at least it isn't god awful. The game's story has a few plotholes but aside from that the story will serve as a decent experince for you. Now here comes the fun part... Bosses! The bosses in this game are well designed, however some are overused. None of the regular bosses are used twice but sometimes final bosses will appear either multiple or simply occassionly that were used in a different ending. There's also a lot of platforming, and good platforming at that. Rail-grinding also makes a return, and this time it's much easier to do so. I like what they did with it. Instead of having to be exactly on it this time you jump from rail to rail, and if you spam jumping enough you can get up to insane speeds none of which begin to appear as frustrating or too fast. Overall to say the very least Shadow the Hedgehog is a very unique game and is different from your normal Sonic game, in fact it could be said that isn't even a Sonic game. While I don't think it's a must have I think you should at least give it a try by renting it and if you like it maybe even buy it. That being said I'll see you guys next time!