Review: Shadow Complex (X360)

Those of you who follow my tweets know that I've been looking forward to Shadow Complex for...actually not all that long. I had heard something about it in the gaming press after E3 2009, but it didn't really stick. It was when my friend reminded me about its impending release and I started researching it myself that I became pretty excited. The game had the approximate look and feel of Super Metroid, making a focus of exploration and a gradually unfolding world that only the right set of weapons could blow open. When I first saw the game in motion, I was impressed with the level of quality that was being packaged into an XBLA title. And that's what really had my interest peaked here; I wanted to know if a $15 game could deliver the kind of experience I would normally pay the full $60 for. Read on to find out how Shadow Complex stacks up.

Story

You play as Jason Fleming, a bizarre mash-up of Jason Bourne (see what they did there?) and that tool from Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (note the bizarrely tucked t-shirt) [Update: Imagine my surprise when I learned he was voiced by the same fella as well], with a bad case of missing girlfriend syndrome. Your pleasant weekend hike is brought to an abrupt end when Claire goes missing; abducted, you soon learn, by a terrorist group veiled in secrecy and packing some serious technology. The plot is really just a mechanism to explain why you're invading a technologically advanced (but very well ventilated [wink wink, nudge nudge]) enemy base. There's really nothing remarkable or memorable about it and most of that is because of how poorly the story is integrated with the game; go here, watch a brief cut scene, go there, watch another cut scene. There are some “overheard” conversations during your travels, but rarely do they impart anything that can add up to a substantial story. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying this is a bad thing. It follows the same minimalist story structure found in the early Metroid universe, and I like it just as much now as I did then. There's something to be said for a game that isolates the player from all friendly contact and pits them against wildly improbably odds, a trait that Metroid and Shadow Complex share. The trouble is that while Metroid strikes a great note by truly leaving the story in the periphery, Shadow Complex experiments with story and tries to make you care about its characters, but doesn’t really succeed. The most heartbreaking part about this whole story issue for me is that I’m fresh off of reading all the material in the Ender’s Game universe, and when I heard Orson Scott Card was involved, I had some pretty high expectations for this story.

Gameplay

Shadow Complex plays a whole lot like…you guessed it, Super Metroid. The core gameplay here is that of a 2D sidescrolling shooter. The controls are simple: aim with your laser sight using the right stick, run with the left, and jump with “A.” Unlike Metroid, you have 360-degree control over your aiming, allowing for a whole lot more precision in your targeting; headshots are possible, and rewarded. As you defeat enemies, you’ll fill up an experience bar and build up levels, to a cap of 50. I’m not entirely sure, but I think you net more XP for 1) environmental kills, 2) head shots, and 3) stringing kills together. Honestly, the leveling mechanic went by me barely noticed. There are three attributes that improve as you level; Accuracy, Precision, and Stamina. I can safely say that I cannot, for the life of me, tell the difference made by any of these factors during gameplay; true, I noticed a significant difference in how well I was able to aim during the course of the game, but I was unable to separate my own improvement from Jason Fleming’s. More notable are the bonuses you get every ten levels: a health boost at Lvl 10 and a full revelation of the map at Lvl 20, as far as I’ve discovered.

While the “leveling” left me with little sense of how I was progressing, item acquisition creates the opposite effect. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Metroid style gameplay, here’s the rundown. You start the game with next to no capabilities, and are barred from entry into certain areas of the gameworld. As you progress, you’ll acquire items and weapons that gradually increase your capabilities and your available exploration area. This progression is was made Super Metroid (and its predecessors) one of the best games of its time and beyond. In most games, picking up a new item creates opportunities from that point forward; new ways to kill enemies, new ways to move around, a new indicator on your HUD. Shadow Complex and its predecessors use item pick-ups for all of the above purposes, but primarily to open up the past. Remember that glowing purple grate your flashlight (which acts like the X-ray visor from Super Metroid) illuminated in the first 20 minutes of the game? Well now you can go back and see what’s up there. This mechanic is what makes Shadow Complex so addictive; there’s the nagging curiosity every time you pick up a new item…where can I go now? And it pulls you often times into the next segment of the game, even if you were only intending to explore a little bit further, and the cycle starts again. The freedom of motion you feel by the time you’ve gotten all the game’s items is pretty amazing, as is mowing through enemies like a force of nature.

The combat isn’t without its hiccups; while Shadow Complex is at its core a 2D game, the environments are all rendered in 3D, and enemies can and will use the extra dimension they have access to. In theory, targeting these enemies should be just like targeting any other enemies, and for the most part it is. The trouble is that the game sometimes requires you to aim differently in order to kill that last pesky baddy in the background, and finding just the right angle feels a lot harder than it should be when you just cleaned out the other eight guys in the room effortlessly. It’s an irritant, but it doesn’t even come close to ruining the experience, especially after you become accustomed to shooting into the background.

Visuals

When I first started looking at screen shots from this game, I didn’t realize that it was going to be an XBLA release. The level of polish here is pretty spectacular. Explosions are gorgeous, the weaponized foam looks like a strange, throbbing, living thing, and the cut scenes are nothing like you’d expect from an XBLA title. Is it all perfect? Of course not. I had a few serious bouts of spontaneously falling through the floor (into electrified water, no less) and walking about a foot above it. I kicked Bombas into walls and watched them get stuck and distort before exploding, and saw a few ragdoll enemy corpses spontaneously launch themselves into the sky. But these are all minor (and mostly humorous) blemishes. The environments are well detailed and widely varied, and since you’ll be spending a lot of time backtracking through each and every one of them, this is definitely a good thing.

Worth the Money?

You bet your ass it’s worth the money. At $15 for around ten hours on your first playthrough, you’re already paying a trifling $1.50 per hour. And believe me, I said “first” playthrough for a reason. This came keeps you coming back in a number of ways. The first is the simplest…this is the kind of game that won’t let you sleep at night unless you’ve gotten 100% of the items and see 100% of the map. This is a completionist’s best dream and worst nightmare. Moreover, you’ll notice as you play that certain actions are being tracked; headshots, Bomba punts, melees and others are posted on Live leaderboards, and you’re compared to your Live friends in game via a pop-up HUD element. It creates a nice meta game that adds a little more punch to the typical proceedings. In addition to that, there’s a separate time trial mode with some devilishly difficult puzzles and challenges, which is also tracked on the Live leaderboards. So go drop your $15 and start playing Shadow Complex. You won’t regret it.