Quick Look: EX: Shadow Complex Remastered

I feel like this game is pretty much the epitome of zeitgeist. I first played it at the end of last year when it was free, and I have to say that I was pretty disappointed. But I have to imagine that, at the time, something like this would have been astounding - especially given the underwhelming state of the metroidvania genre, and downloadable games in general.

It was pretty great at the time, but I don't know that I feel the need to revisit it. Lots of other new Metroidvania games that I haven't gotten to yet if I feel the itch.

I played it for the first time when it was free on the Epic launcher and I still thought it was great.

The most interesting part about the Steam release is that it doesn't require the Epic Launcher.

@beachthunder@danglingman

I had a different experience: I really liked it back then and had been itching to return to it for years. I recently revisited it and was just struck by how poorly it had aged visually and control-wise. Maybe the remaster will hook me. It's much nicer looking for sure.

I played it for the first time back in February since I didn't know it would be out anywhere else. The story is pretty bad, poorly written, and definitely a product of its time, but the game itself was super solid.

I found I had to completely rebind the controls for the gamepad. Like binding jump to the right trigger and shot to the left so I could jump, aim, and shoot at the same time and in different directions. It felt great too!

I have to go to work, but can someone tell me if the remaster does the thing where every single enemy in a room will immediately shoot you a million times the nanosecond they notice you?

I tried playing the Epic Launcher version on Hard and I got destroyed at the first turret sequence because of how accurate and aggressive the enemies were. When I toned it down, I immediately noticed that they were slightly slower to react and much easier to deal with.

Is this quick look edited too?

What's dude's shirt mean?

Punch Warning Talk

I don't usually like these EX Quick Looks, but this was pretty damn good.

Donald Mustard is cool people. It is super refreshing to hear a studio head talk so openly about the possibility of a sequel, and even the work that had previously been done then put on indefinite hold. I really hope they do that sequel eventually, I think this genre, even with more and more games coming out for it, is still relatively young and and maybe the most popular its ever been. 90% of games in the genre are doing little more than trying to emulate the quality and style of games that came out 20 years ago (Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night). There is still plenty of room for new ideas.

Donald Mustard is a great fucking name. That is all.

I loved this game, got so sick of Infinity Blade about an hour into the sequel. The grilling is correct.

Awesome feature and awesome story about the Quicklook of the original game.

This was a great QL.

Fantastic video! Love the format and Donald Mustard is a great personality.

Haha that story about the original QL for Shadow Complex is nuts. I didn't realize that had happened!

If you want to hear how he told it on a podcast.

Crying out for a sequel, with lessons learned. I replayed on PC, still a quality game

I never played this when it was around the first time. I played and finished it on PS4 just this week, and thought it was fantastic.

@amyggen@vargasprime: And then they proceeded to revisit it that Friday (1:12:09, 1:17:40) with Drew's side too~

Actually Donald's video feed was corrupted. Brad had to painstakingly recreate his speech and facial movements using FaceRig.

Had no expectations coming into this back in 2009, but goddamn did I love it.

At that time metroid-vania was Castlevania and metroid lol, this was also one of the first 2.5d games as we know them now

It's just occurred to me that is the UPF that made me revisit this lunacy and finally start editing it. Thanks, Brad(?)

Yeah, right!? Such a well-loved game, I imagined it would be pretty sweet, but it actually has really awkward controls and looks super funky.

I love the reference to Brandon Sanderson. I was just looking him up again today as a recommendation to a friend, because I really enjoyed his most recent series, the Stormlight Archives. I did not know that they worked with him on Infinity Blade!

A quick look ex for a remastered game what a weird thing.

@allodude: lmao, nice

I've bought this game 3 times already lol. Always worth it.

I appreciate Donald Mustard being so honest/open about things as much as he can here. Interesting video.

This also made me want to play the game. There have been other Metroidvania games since SC but none with the same combat and GI Joe vibe that I like so much.

@beachthunder: I played it when it was brand spanking new because of how glowing GB was for it at the time and I was super disappointed.

Henceforth, all Quick Look EX's should end with awkward phone call goodbyes.

Seeing Donald react to Brad and Jeff explaining the whole original video thing to him, was awesome to see. Donald seems like an awesome dude, really glad to see SC back again (and on PC!) and really hope to see SC2 now :)

@beachthunder: Yeah, I'm kinda with you. At the time I played this I was getting pretty deep into the DS Castlevanias and I ended up thinking Shadow Complex was not that good next to those.

I'm less harsh with it now, though. I almost feel like we got too many "like Metroid but with a gimmick" games that this thing being as straightforward and slight as it is almost went the other way and became cool again.

The floaty jump still kinda sucks, though, and the years haven't helped the passable-at-the-time graphics any.

In general I seem to have had a very skewed perception of early 360 games. I thought Dead Rising and Geometry Wars were the only good things there, and to this day I can't see the appeal of Gears of War and think this game was just alright.

I's always great to see a QL with a game that Jeff actually has a high opinion of.

lots of cynicism on this site lately, which is fine, so it's refreshing to see a game played with enthusiasm.

Never bought this game because the developer never was clean about their business relationship with OSC, and shut down threads on their forum about the issue.

Contrast that with the (admittedly not very good) Ender's Game movie, where the staff actually responded, clarified that OSC wasn't invested in the success or failure of the film, and asked people to remember that there were other people involved in the production who didn't agree with him either.

That was a real cool quick look. I got this on the Epic launcher when it was free though I haven't played it yet, but I should really change that.

Fantastic Quick Look, I need to play this game again

Aaaaand... now I'm rewatching that original video with all its behind-the-scenes wizardy.

It's right up there with Symphony of the Night, and just a hair behind Super Metroid as the best "one of these" ever. I fucking love this game.

I liked playing this when it was free, but godamn was this Nolan North insufferable or what? He's spoilt most recent games for me now because he's had that ubiquitous period where you couldn't get away from him combined with 90% garbage writing. Uncharted 4 seems like it may break the pattern for me. Troy seems to have more range.

Also the final puzzle (gold?) room irritated me as it was obvious it was a secret as the explosions z-buffer showed behind the wall panel. I spent ages as a red herring trying to open it up close by, and of course that didn't turn out to be the solution. Oops.

14:37 I see what you did there.

I'm pretty immune to the typical ways games "age" so I've been eager to go check this out for the first time.

It isn't so much that this game has aged as much as it just wasn't ultimately that special. It was a cool little game that surprised people, and it rightfully carved out a little niche for itself because of time and place, but I've played a ton and a half of these, and it really is just another one of them. I tried playing it on PC and man, it's just about as bland as you can get. Not a bad game, it just doesn't have much that sets it apart beyond a couple cool moments.

Awww, what a great EX. A nice little retrospective on a game that I remember being pretty big on the site.

Not a fan of an EX QL when the game has been released.

"We could have made the game better but we left it alone because speedrunners wouldn't buy it otherwise." I'm sure the millions of speedrunners wouldn't even touch an HD edition of a game and even if you could convince me that they would I couldn't buy this explanation. They either didn't have time or they didn't have the resources to update the product. Not sure why they feel like they can't just say that.

What a great video! This is the type of content I really love from Giant Bomb. =)