N-Philes

Shadow the Hedgehog

Posted November 29th 2005 by Stephanie DeSiena.

If there's anything Sonic Team and Sega Studios USA have proven time and time again without fail, it's that neither of these two development houses make games that appeal to the entire video gaming audience. Sure, they may say they are, and they might even think they are, but they aren't. Take Sega Studios USA's most recent offerings into the world of hedgehog, for example. These games are not for everyone. Lately, they seem to be intent on cashing in on the pseudo-success of the Saturday morning cartoon Sonic X, which follows Sonic and friends in their day-to-day adventures for the greater good of the world. It goes something like that, anyway; I haven't seen much of it. Thanks to the advent of this animation straight out of Japan, it's becoming more clear with each succeeding release that Sonic games are just for Sonic fans. Be there many or few, it's at least not nearly enough to make up the opinions of the gaming public as a whole, or appealing enough for those who have never been interested in the series in the first place. Many Sonic fans today have been a fan since at least Sonic Adventure 2, as it was the last somewhat well-received Sonic game from critics and longtime fans.

Sega's latest byproduct of Saturday morning success comes in the form of Shadow the Hedgehog. Shadow follows this now-familiar formula more than ever. The entire voice cast of the previous games has been replaced with the Sonic X crew, and 4Kids Entertainment handled the recording of all of the game's poorly-scripted dialogue. The game follows Shadow as players work towards finally figuring out who he is and where he came from. When he was first introduced in Sonic Adventure 2 he was played off as this dark, mysterious minion from Eggman's vast army. His situation is further explained through certain events in Sonic X, but from what I understand it isn't conveyed very well and still leaves much to be desired for those of us actually following his story. Sonic Heroes attempted to further his tale with moderate success. However, this time Sega finally decided to go all out and let gamers in on what Shadow truly is, and I for one found it fairly interesting to learn about him even though the way his story was told is extremely cheesy and poorly conveyed.

There's not much depth to Shadow as a character. He appears to be some sort of evil clone of Sonic on the outside, although we know by playing Sonic Adventure 2 that he isn't. Sega tries to script him off as this bad-ass hedgehog that does things his own way and listens to no one, but after following him through the course of Shadow the Hedgehog it's kind of hard to believe that. The game opens up with a rather impressive computer-generated movie that shows Shadow watching over the city of Westopolis as it becomes encumbered in darkness. Suddenly, a new villain going by the uninspired name of Black Doom appears before Shadow informing him that the "day of reckoning is near" and that these pathetic humans don't stand a chance against his alien army. He instructs Shadow to collect the seven Chaos Emeralds and without a second though our renegade hedgehog is heading towards the doomed city to meet his fate. The game suggests to the player that Shadow isn't necessarily going to even help Black Doom, as you're quickly paired up with Sonic who tells you to help friendly soldiers fend off the alien intruders. Should you help Black Doom the game progresses to the Dark Side, but if you help Sonic you're one step closer towards your goal of good-doingness and peace for all. Of course, you could just ignore them both and gather the Chaos Emeralds for your own sake.

This aspect makes for a much more open-ended experience than Sonic games of yore. Shadow plays out like a "choose your own adventure" book. There are twenty-three stages in the game, but you only play six stages every time you go through the main adventure. Each stage has a number of missions to complete, and completing certain missions give you certain outcomes depending on who you sided with in that stage. The game gives you a lot of freedom when it comes to this; if you start off on the Dark path that doesn't mean that you can't turn things around and end up on the Hero side by the end of the game, and vice versa. Branching off into different paths gives you a different storyline each time you play the game. There are eleven different endings for you to see, ranging from interesting and informative to bland and pointless. The game also ranks you on how well you completed each mission using a letter score, in true Sonic Team fashion.

Once you get into the actual game, the action picks up fairly quickly. The intensity of Shadow is heightened by the action and sense of speed you get right from stage one. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I still feel it's important for games to have an opening stage that goes out of its way to attract the player and keep them absorbed in the gameplay. This has always been a huge strength for every Sonic game since the days of the Genesis. Shadow's opening level takes place in a city where G.U.N. Soldiers (the good guys) are waging war with the invading aliens (the bad guys). This level is fast with little obstacles in your way, aside from the enemies themselves. Sega Studios USA put in a lot of work to draw you into Shadow's charm right off the bat with tons of explosions, loops, falls, and weaponry in the first stage. However, where Shadow succeeds previous Sonic games is in the progression through whichever adventure you take, but luckily this early adrenaline rush is revisited many times throughout its abundance of levels. This is thanks to a very new and obscure element added: guns.

I experienced my first Sonic game about thirteen years ago on my newly acquired Sega Genesis. To me, Sonic was about two main things: jumping on robots and saving cute forest animals (and a few animals from the arctic, which now that I think about it, was a little strange). If you had sat me down on your knee and said, "Steven, in thirteen years Sega is going to release a game starring a black hedgehog that says "damn it" and shoots aliens, and it's going to be a Sonic game. Also, it's going to be on a purple Nintendo system shaped like a block," I would not have believed you. In fact, I probably would have cried because aliens are really frightening. However here we are in the 21st century and a black hedgehog shoots down aliens with guns alongside the blue hedgehog with whom I spent most of my childhood. It works just as I expected it to, which was very well. The game combines the speed of Sonic with the fire power of Omega. Shadow can shoot enemies down on the fly, or he can pause himself in midair and pick off enemies one-by-one. It works wonderfully, and it helps bring the game's sense of speed to new heights as you're no longer restricted to stopping in order to take down enemies. Shadow's familiar attacks are also here, such as the spin dash and homing attack, but you're also able to punch and kick your enemies if you're unarmed.

An important feature new to Shadow is the inclusion of Dark and Hero meters. Basically, when you commit a deed such as killing an alien or putting out a fire, your Hero meter increases a bit, whereas if you cause harm to soldiers your Dark meter increases. When either meter reaches its max Shadow gets a burst of power that gives him unlimited ammo on his gun for a short amount of time, and allows him to use one of his special powers - Chaos Control or Chaos Blast - depending on which side he fills up. The enemies in the game take notice to your alignment and will either attack you or not depending on which side of your meter is filled up more. However, this system is highly flawed. If you decide to go down the good path and the soldiers take note of your filled Hero meter, they wont fire at you, but you will still be hurt if you touch them just as you would were they your enemies. What's more, your meter disappears completely once you've exhausted that boost of power, which will cause soldiers to fire at you regardless of whether you're trying to help them or not. This makes things especially frustrating if you're speeding down a road and you're suddenly stopped dead because your ally was standing in your path, and will usually cause enough frustration for you to kill them. Luckily, killing one of your allies here and there isn't going to sway your mission objectives much, and in many cases it won't at all.

After certain stages you'll be thrown into an arena with one of the game's many boss fights. In most cases these are among the easiest boss fights since the original 2D Sonic games, with very little strategy involved. However, they're usually fun because they just require reflexes appropriate to the enemy's predictable patterns. I've also made the striking revelation that many of the fights are played out kind of like a Virtual On match, thanks to the restrictive square playing fields and the inclusion of projectile weapons on both sides. For those of us who don't know about AM3's classic Model 2 game, I suggest you Google it.

Visually, Shadow tends to be middle of the road at points, while stunning at others. Some of the lighting effects are truly impressive, especially in the techno-futuristic Mad Matrix and Digital Circuit. The neutral second stage, Glyphic Canyon, is brightly lit with equally mesmerizing effects. The character designs for Sonic and crew are much more varied and, dare I say, more impressive than previous Sonic fare, with various new distinguishable enemies and a few improved main character redesigns. Eggman in particular looks vastly improved compared to his former self. For a game as fast as Shadow, the backgrounds are very detailed and add great atmosphere to the action in the foreground. The textures, while not as sparse and muddy as those found in some of Nintendo's own games for the system, still leave a bit to be desired, however, and some of the destructible objects (particularly the vehicles) have strikingly low polygon counts. Sometimes it looks like I'm driving around in a brown box with wheels, and it's really supposed to be a tank or something.

As I mentioned earlier, the full motion video cutscenes are rendered beautifully, obviously with a very high attention to detail. Unfortunately, much of the game's cutscenes are actually conveyed using in-game graphics, and the choreography in these sequences are less than competent. Some of the human actors don't so much as walk from one place to another as they slide while their feet move out of proportion to the amount of distance they're traveling – a technicality that should have been fixed after the Nintendo 64's demise. This mostly has to do with the human character designs being very poor and awkward. The commander of the G.U.N. Squad looks just like the President, but he turns out to be a very tongue-in-cheek character (he shouts epic quotes like "Finally, after all these years – Justice will be served!" and then cocks his glock). The President himself isn't any better, with a personality as forgettable as his "forced nobility" attitude. Virtually all of the main human characters have large, skinny heads and dangerous skinny bodies. However, the G.U.N. Soldiers themselves were made to be portly, which somehow makes them less clunky than their leaders.

To pick up where the graphics drop the ball, Sega's internal audio department has composed a fantastic, high-octane soundtrack to complement the on-screen action. The music is very catchy, with sporadic pianos accompanying electric guitars and darker riffs as reoccurring themes in some levels. The style is very different than normal Sonic music. While you'll still hear synth pads gliding along with distorted guitars, these pads are often harder and grungier than usual. Actual genres are varied greatly this time around, as well. One stage might have a pulsating rock rhythm while the next might be melodic drum & bass. There's also some pretty catchy ending themes, a trademark of Sonic Team, although they weren't stingy on the licensed music this time around. Fortunately most of these tracks hit their mark perfectly and are from fairly unknown artists, with the exception of a truly terrible and misguided inclusion of a Powerman 5000 song. Crush 40 are back with two new themes that are sure to please fans.

As mentioned earlier, the voiceover cast has been changed completely. Some actors are an improvement and sound suitable for their characters, such as Amy, Vector, and Espio. The other side of the coin is that Knuckles, Tails, and Charmy Bee deliver some of the most terrifyingly horrid voices ever heard in a Sonic game. Yes, even worse than Charmy and Tails' original voice-overs. Sonic's actor is different but is Ryan Drummond's equal, but even he misses his mark at some points. The President and G.U.N. Commander's voices sound like they should just be background characters screaming for help, and Black Doom is your standard subnormal being intent on taking over the world. Shadow's voice is passable like Sonic's – strong at some points, confused and weak at others.

Since we're already in a conventional review format, I'm going to talk about the controls now. The traditional 3D Sonic system was clearly fine-tuned for Shadow's character. You'll notice that he slides a bit thanks to his hover shoes, which takes a bit to get used to for seasoned vets. These buttery controls offer much less freedom in movement when Shadow is running at full-speed, so the player might occasionally have to slow down in order to make a quick turn. Luckily, getting Shadow to his top speed is easier than ever, and this is also how it works in real life so there's no real discrepancies here. The action buttons are mapped out comfortably so there's no serious trouble executing a light-speed dash or firing your weapon in mid-jump. They've also been fine-tuned so that Shadow now has an easier time speed-dashing to collect rings, as opposed to curling up into a ball and flying off the side of a platform.

The camera has been improved since Sonic Heroes and has become much more bearable, in general. You're able to zoom out to get a better view of the action, and it moves manually at a comfortable speed. It also tends to stay put in mid-jump over hazardous situations, the opposite of which is quite possibly the most frustrating nuisance since the advent of 3D adventure games (I'm looking at you, Super Mario Sunshine). I do notice that the camera locks up at times, even when I should be able to look around, but otherwise I usually always get a clear view of the action. And thankfully, Shadow is also improved in terms of glitches. I haven't run into any seriously frustrating glitches in my extensive experience with Shadow such as getting "stuck" in the graphics or falling through floors.

Most importantly, the game is fun. This is what I've been alluding to, so I hope you've stuck with me. The levels are a true testament of modern platforming design, the controls work well, the game challenges you, and the actual gameplay engine itself is a blast. Collect missions are usually fun and well thought-out, and not just spliced into the action to make the game seem longer. Should you decide you don't like certain objectives you can always just skip them and have fun beating your times. You wont find many 10+ minute ventures like you did in Sonic Heroes, so Shadow is easier to get into if your attention span isn't so great. If you've got a friend, the game's only two-player mode is so much more fun than any of the previous 3D Sonic's competitive adventures, as token as it may be.

You can keep coming back to Shadow's many unlockables and branching story paths. It takes a few stages to have the gameplay click, but it does come together nicely and then provides great entertainment. What's even better is after seeing any of the game's cutscenes once, you can skip them the subsequent times you encounter them. The challenge can be high at times but it's always fair, and you'll never be encountered with an obstacle that will make you want to turn off the game in disgust. All that, and the unlockable guns (and another difficulty) are worth the effort for true Sonic enthusiasts. Again, if you're not a big fan of Sonic you may be turned away by its terrible story and the initial learning curve for the controls, but if you're already accustomed to the blue blur and his antics then you'll feel right at home with Shadow.

This game gets an N-Philes score of B.

Shadow the Hedgehog proves that terrible marketing doesn't necessarily equal a terrible game. At its worst, Shadow is a solid platformer with enough fun to keep hardcore Sonic fans in one place for a few days. At its best, it's an engaging gameplay experience that isn't jaded by its otherwise glaring storyline-related setbacks. But who cares about the story, anyway? This is a Sonic game!

Posted in: Reviews

Comments (0) | Permalink | Digg | Reddit