Shadow Complex Playthrough
02009, X360. Rating: 2 out of 4 stars
Shadow Complex is a decent, but shallow, game that takes the Metroidvania concept and applies it to the world of spies and action. It’s not a conceptual stretch and the developers do a decent job getting some mileage out of it. They barely have a story to hang their hat on, which is a shame since they’re going to the trouble of putting all this together without much depth to it.
The story, such as it is, involves a regular-ish guy named Jason Fleming and his girlfriend, Claire, who are exploring the mountains when they encounter a top-secret facility worthy of a James Bond lair as a group called the Restoration is preparing to start a civil war in the United States. And of course, Jason has some military training through his father and, of course, this is all the reason we need for him to mow down hundreds of hapless enemies and robots.
From a game design standpoint, the developers do a credible job building out the facility and give it enough puzzles and depth. The weapons and equipment you acquire are not far removed from what Samus Aran gets, but they are grounded in something resembling reality. Somewhat. The areas you encountered are a mix of caves, laboratories, barracks, mines and more. There’s a nice mix without too much repetition apart from the ducts and narrow crevasses. Even Solid Snake and Gabe Logan never did this much work in tight quarters.
The game has a decent enough build and Nolan North does a decent job playing a less exasperated version of Nathan Drake. I wonder if it would have been better to play up that angle, but why bother? The mooks we’re fighting against don’t have anything resembling personalities anyway. Apart from a bit about the Cubs that has no longer aged well, the characters we encounter are little more than ciphers.
The hand-holding the game does moving you from point A to point B is cloying and I wish more time was spent allotting the gamer the chance to move freely. That doesn’t really happen until the end and by then it’s too late. The game also has a weak final showdown and ending that doesn’t bring much resolution. From a gameplay standpoint, it’s also quite buggy. I know it’s part of a larger cycle involving author Orson Scott Card (novelist/comic writer Peter David wrote the script for this game), but for those not interested in going on, a little resolution would have been nice.
It's not a bad spin on the Metroidvania model, but it doesn’t bring much that’s new or exciting to the table. From a gameplay and design standpoint, it’s passable, but it could have been a lot better.