Shadow Complex

 Ok. So I got a little too exited about Shadow Complex. I also initially thought it was going to be bunk. Lets face it Gears 2 didn’t have the same spark as gears 1 and undertow wasn’t one of the most popular games on XBLA until it was given away for free after xbox live didn’t work over an entire christmas period.

Thanks for that Microsoft, seriously. Christmas (but I digress).

I was skeptical during E3, I was skeptical when news came out about it, I was pretty much skeptical until about a week before it came out.

This changed when saw a Quicklook video. Something about the collecting many things and the memories of playing Metriod and Castlevania made me REALLY exited. To the point where i left my xbox on on the day it was released so i could use xbox.com so i could tell my xbox to download it while at work.

I wasn’t disappointed. Lets get that out of the way. Shadow Complex has raised the bar (and the size) of XBLA games. It has a polish and quality that is lacking from most of what is on offer on XBLA. It’s quite obvious why it was the last of this years summer of arcade. Because it is the best of the bunch.

They tout it as a Metriodvania game, and it’s not too far from the truth, the idea that this could become a genre is fantastic. It’s a true gamers genre and it’s nice to be pandered to for once. 
Shadow Complex starts you off (after a little prologue of what’s to come) with a flashlight and the ability to jump. You and your new girlfriend go to explore some caves, and she decides to play hide and seek. She buggers of and gets kidnapped by a shady organisation  called ‘the Restoration’. You find her backpack (which has climbing gear in it) it gives you the ability to wall jump and grab ledges and the game begins. The story (as always) soon becomes about way more than just rescuing your new piece of tail but luckily the main protagonist was trained to be an assassin. A tad contrived yes, but while playing it didn’t really bother me.

Slowly as you explore you get more gear, better guns, cool gadgets and upgrades etc… Some of which is optional but will inevitably make the game easier. One example is a helmet with (if you find all the passkey components)will give you a shield which if you stand still renders you invincible. But you can still shoot. Bloody useful.

Shadow complex works in mostly a 2D plane, it’s touted as a 2.5D game (which always bugs me as a title, just say sidescroller). Sometime yes the perspective changes and you are shooting into the screen but it’s usually for cinematic effect and can be a little fiddly.

It does look fantastic, not during closeup cutscenes. Shadow Complex is Running in the unreal engine and it suffers from the low to high resolution texture pop-in frequently. but these minor technical issues and as well as the occasional weird bug are easily forgiven after you realise that you’ve been playing longer than intended and it’s 2am.

This is essentially the main joy of Shadow Complex, it always feels an accomplishment is right around the corner. Looking at the map (in all but the highest difficulty) will indicate where other items are for collection with a simple Question mark. The fact that one is just two rooms away and it will ‘only take five min’ means ‘only five mins’ becomes an hour. And now your late for work.

Fuck.

- Viewer note don’t try and squeeze in a little bit of Shadow Complex before you leave in the morning. Unless you can call in sick… mainly because you will.

Everything you do nets you experience points, every ten levels you get something special (up to level 50), however contry to what most games do. players get more experience for discovering new rooms and getting upgrades. Just smoking fools nets you next to nothing in experience. Doing it creatively gets a little more and bosses give quite a lot; but not as much as looking for upgrades and exploring. Which in turn makes you want to find everything. Experience carries over through multiple playthroughs - which is REALLY useful when you get the infinite ammo upgrade for the sub weapons.

Getting around the map is really easy, certain doors and panels can only be opened by certain weapons/devices. Gold for guns, Red for Rockets, Green for Grenades (hey these all start with the same letter as the weapons i only just noticed that) and Purple for Foam (wait never mind). THe foam gun is by far my favourite of the devices in the game.

The Foam gun is basically a ‘make you own bridge gun’ is is key to the fabled ’sequence break’ of the old Metriod and Castlevania games which you can do to finish the game in under 20 mins my best time being 36 mins odd. The foam gun bugs up funs is grates and incapacitates enemies, sticks riot shields to the floor. Oh and explodes if you attach a grenade to it. Which can lead to hilarious results.

Once you’ve finished the campaign you can either start over with your exp level intact and level up some more or you can try your hand at the challenge rooms. A series of challenges which get progressively harder and have a time limit.

Ultimately Shadow Complex is probably the best XBLA/downloadable game i’ve played all year (maybe ever) and is in my top 5 games of the year period. If a game like this came out every wednesday i’d be broke, but happy.

Here are some words of wisdom: I know Shadow Complex is 1200 points, but try it. It truly is one of the greats.
 
 Paris.