Shadow Complex
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Published in Xbox 360 | 5 Reviews
You’ve entered the mysterious world of Shadow Complex. Now you must save Claire and stop the Restoration! Discover game-altering power-ups and weapons, plus more than 100 other items. Use new abilities to infiltrate the secret underground base. Defeat legions of enemies and battle futuristic bosses throughout the huge game world, with hours of intense gameplay unlike anything on Xbox LIVE Arcade! There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see www.xbox.com/live/accounts. (Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB)... More >>
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December 14th, 2009at (#)
The creators of Shadow Complex weren’t lying when they said their main inspirations for creating the game were Metroid and Castlevanie SotN. When all things are said and done they accomplished what they set out to do. A solid 2d/3d game with fun power ups and heavy exploration game play. Unfortunately the game comes up short when it comes to plot. If I had to do it all over again I probably wouldn’t have paid 15 dollars for it, but it was a decent way to kill 4 hours on a Sunday. There are alot of things to do in the game, and one play through probably isn’t going to get you anywhere near 50% completion if you power through the story like I did.
Rating: 3 / 5
December 14th, 2009at (#)
I really enjoyed this game. It plays like a 2d game but it has modern looks that are in 3d. Id recommend this to anyone who enjoyed 2d games. I hope there is a more games like this on the Arcade. For 15$ this is a great deal, and is what Id like to see more of for DL.
Rating: 5 / 5
December 14th, 2009at (#)
This game is a must own, pure and simple. They probably could have sold this as a stand alone game for double the asking price!! Kudos to Epic for making yet another killer 360 title, this time for the Arcade!!
GO GET THIS TODAY!!
Rating: 5 / 5
December 14th, 2009at (#)
Shadow Complex is a “Metroidvania” game. Simply put, you start off extremely weak exploring a large map. Over time, you slowly get more powerful and unlock abilities that allow you to gain access to areas that you couldn’t have otherwise accessed earlier in the game. This type of game is best suited for OCD gamers who like to collect 100% of the items in a game, although I’d imagine it’s fun for people who’re playing it for something called “fun”, a term that many gamers aren’t familiar with.
The game itself is based in Orson Scott Card’s “Empire” universe. I believe the game takes place after the first book, and segways into the upcoming sequel. You play as Jason Fleming, an average “Joe Sixpack”. At the start of the game, you begin after his girlfriend, Claire, is kidnapped after mistakenly wandering into a top-secret compound while the two of you are spelunking. From there, Jason enters the compound to rescue his girlfriend. But honestly, none of that really matters, because no one is going to play this game for the story.
This game goes far beyond what is expected for the weekly Xbox Live Arcade Game. Since the console came out, almost every Xbox game is released with an starting price of 60 dollars for roughly six hours of gameplay, if that. Shadow Complex puts them to shame. Fifteen dollars and 800 Megabytes free on your hard drive is all you need to entertain yourself for dozens of hours.
I highly recommend this game.
Rating: 5 / 5
December 14th, 2009at (#)
I’ll say it right now that Metroid along with Legend of Zelda are my 2 favorite game franchises ever, mainly because of their consistency. I can’t outright say there’s been a bad Zelda or Metroid title; Pinball was kind of fun and I’m one of the few that would defend Zelda II but Shadow Complex is looking to combine 2 mainstay franchises with one being Metroid while the other is actually Castlevania. Both feature slightly open-ended worlds with hidden passages, item collection and a massive map so if one were to say Shadow Complex is a love letter/homage to those 2 franchises, part of me feels that it’s more like a copy without understanding what made the original so awesome. It’s kind of like somebody trying to copy somebody’s apple pie recipe down to the letter yet everyone prefers the other pie because yours just doesn’t have that “thing” that makes it so delicious. Now don’t take this to mean that Shadow Complex is a bad game, actually far from it but as a “Metroidvania”-esque title, this isn’t as good as anything in the Metroid or Castlevania archives, it’s just good.
Story: You play as Jason Flemming, just a regular old joe (and as bland a superhero if I ever saw one) who’s out backpacking with his girlfriend Claire in the woods. She decides to go into a cave and explore while he lags behind; however she gets captured after she stumbles upon a huge military base and it’s up to you to bust in and rescue her and figure out just what exactly the base is doing and what it’s goal is.
Graphics: Graphically it uses everyone’s favorite repeat offender, the Unreal engine which powered everything from Mass Effect to Gears of War to even Mirror’s Edge. As far as the look of the game is concerned I will say that it does a superb job at a whole range of looks from the realistic lighting from your flashlight to the detail when there’s a closeup, the cutscene transitions from 2D to 3D. Only problem I found was that unlike Metroid with its eerie, isolation-creating atmosphere or the gothic overtones of Castlevania, Shadow Complex I felt doesn’t really have that immersion where I really FEEL like I’m there, it feels more like I’m in a game level more than anything.
Sound/Music: Fresh off Prince of Persia and soon to be in the sure-fire hit Uncharted 2, Nolan North does a good job at making the otherwise uninteresting Jason a likable character but other than that, the voice acting is serviceable and never anything really bizarre but it’s nothing in terms of Metal Gear Solid caliber or for that matter, Lunar and Half-Life 2 games. The music is sparse but interesting enough but again, the music doesn’t really set the tone for the levels I felt in the way Metroid or even Mario games can do whenever there’s ice levels or lava levels.
Gameplay: If you’ve played any Metroid or Castlevania, you’ll know what to expect. Hell it might even feel a bit too familiar from the color-coded doors to the health and missil…sorry, grenade upgrades to the map layout but guess that means the formula works. The game does well enough with the exploration and the amount of stuff you got to find and locate and the puzzles but then there’s some bizarre moments as well. One save room (not a big S on the map, how surprising) is opposite one room with enemies that respawned after you just cleared the room which would be alright, other games did it too….only there’s a turret-holding enemy staring directly at the door you come out of plus the at least 5 normal enemies.
Anyone who’s played Gears of War knows how fun it was to shoot stuff and in this game it’s good but some flaws. Targeting can be a little frustrating trying to shoot at someone on an upper ledge and missing despite auto-aim yet you’re taking damage is never fun but strangely, the more you play, the less you care rather than it being a constant annoyance. It’s almost like you go “eh, oh well, so I gotta deal with so and so”, no big deal. One thing I quite liked was that the guns in the game act in a similar manner to the guns in Corruption (um, Metroid Prime 3) in that the guns stack onto each other so finding an assault rifle gets rid of your handgun so more you find, better your firepower whereas most games of this type allow you to switch. Oh and boss battles, if you can call them that, are really just dumb big enemies with more health that you just gotta take cover/throw grenade to death. So much for strategy.
If it sounds like I’m badmouthing the game, I’m not since I actually played it for quite awhile but Shadow Complex taken on its own is a very ambitious and worthwhile XBLA title; taken as an homage to Metroid and Castlevania lets you see just how better the other guys do when they were doing it.
Rating: 4 / 5