Shadow the Hedgehog

"Sega sure likes money...and fans sure love Shadow"

Sonic spin-offs are nothing new in the gaming world. Both Tales and Knuckles got their own games back years ago. Granted, those two were on lesser platforms. Shadow the Hedgehog is a unique case: not only is it a spin-off, but a sequel to the storyline of Sonic Adventure 2. As you may expect, Shadow the Hedgehog is a mixture of old and new.

What exactly is new?
Well, from the get-go, Shadow incorporates the same level design Sonic Heroes brought, but with different paths the player can take depending on which "mission" the player does during that specific level, which dictates what level will be next. This continues on for 6 levels until you either reach a boss at the end of a specific level (Depending on what path you took). Once you reach the 6Th stage, you will be able to choose between two missions (Hero or Dark) to determine the final boss and what ending you will receive. In total, there is 10 different endings, and one final "true" ending.

The missions in the levels are split into anywhere from 2 to 3 paths you can take to progress the story (Hero, Dark, and Normal missions). The main problem with these missions is some of them are a bit more unbalanced. Usually, Dark missions are either destroying all the hero sided enemies in a level, or activating a certain number of things. Hero missions usually require you to collect a certain number of things scattered across the world, or help certain people, while Normal missions always require you to get to the goal ring that is located in the level.

Some missions are fun, and some are level specific, but the main problem is how often you have to do them. To get the final ending, you have to do some levels and missions over and over to go on certain paths, which does get old after the first few endings. What is even worse is how some missions are handled with bosses: many times, helping a dark side character will give you the same dialog and boss that a neutral or light sided mission may get, which is not a very balanced story-wise.

In terms of gameplay, the game seems to use a mixture of Sonic Heroes and Sonic Adventure 2. Back are the health gages for enemies first featured in SH, while the core gameplay is similar to the speed levels in SA2. Many similar levels also seem to be pulled from the two games (Ark in SA2, Robotnik's castle in SH, SH enemies, etc). While this is a decent mixture, the camera really suffers because of it. While you do get more control then you did in previous games; the camera will often get lost or stuck when you are moving in a upward direction. Cheap deaths and glitches are also common, so not much has been improved in that respect.

Bosses are a bit more plentiful then in past 3D sonic games, although many of them are repeats. Normal bosses during the main game tend to repeat the 3D model used previously, but spices it up by giving them new moves to use. Final Bosses do not fair as well: there are a total of 3 final bosses in the game, and those 3 are repeated several times with no major changes besides the area you fight in. It does get very tedious beating a boss you faced before, and could have been handled better.

The new gameplay features added in StH is the vehicle system, weapons, and light and dark gages. Both guns and melee weapons can be picked up from pretty much every enemy in the game and used a certain amount of times against a enemy. This is varied: useless against easier enemies, useful with bigger ones and bosses. The other problems that plague the weapon system is:

-No aiming for most guns, hard to hit some smaller enemies and wastes ammo.
-Melee weapons are fairly useless and underpowered against nearly all enemies.
-You can only carry one weapon at a time.
-Weapons cannot be transferred from the end of a stage to a new one, or a boss battle.

So, in that respect, weapons are a mix bag to the overall gameplay. Vehicles are fair the same way, although a bit varied. Smaller vehicles, such as jeeps, are rare and not needed 9/10Th's of the time, while bigger ones (Mechs, flying aliens, transport platforms with turrets, etc) are usually much more frequent and useful. However, some do suffer from sup-par controls and various glitches depending on how you use them.

The biggest change is the Light and Dark gages. Depending on who you attack (and what items you break up), each gage will rise depending on who is the good and evil enemies on the stage. The dark gage will give you a powerful blast of enemy which will either instantly kill or damage everything caught in the explosion, while the light gage will give you one of two attacks. On normal stages, filling up the light gage will give you a warp ability that allows you to go forward in the level depending on how much is still in the gage at the time, while boss stages will allow you to freeze time. The usefulness of these two is anywhere from useless (Chaos Control in Boss Stages) to useful (The dark gage chaos attack).

So, how is everything else?

I must say, Shadow's graphics are some of the most varied I have seen in a Sonic game thus far. Many main character models are ported from Sonic Heroes, while textures are either brand new or ported from Sonic Heroes or Sonic Adventure 2. Levels based on Sonic Adventure 2 (Mostly ARK levels) look to be on par with SA2, while levels that use similar locations and textures (Cryptic Castle, Lava Shelter) to Sonic Heroes are a little below quality. Completely new textured levels seem to be a mix bag: Glyphic Canyon looks great in its current state, while the GUN fortress levels look sloppy and ugly. One annoyance I would like to note is the repeating level schemes. Many of them use gimmick, layouts, or even entire levels (Final Story level) over and over throughout the different levels.

Music and sound effects is a different story. Each level has its own theme...A theme that sounds like elevator music in most cases. Bosses fair a bit better, although it is the same theme each time. Some background music in cut scene is a remix of older music throughout the series, and various sound effects have been recycled from older 3D sonic games. When it comes down to music, its forgettable and not up to the same quality the rest of the series is known for.

Voice acting in the English version is...the 4kids Sonic X staff. Some voices are good, such as Robotnik and Shadow, while others sound out of character (Rouge, Tails, Knuckles) while others are average. Its tolerable, but not well done or written most of the time.

The control in the Gamecube version is fairly good. Its on par with Adventure 2 and Heroes and doesn't feel too jerky like the Xbox version did. Granted, there is no option to change it, so you are pretty much stuck with the default settings. Only major problem is doing certain actions with X when there is two weapons around, but that is not common.

What is the final verdict on Shadow the Hedgehog

"Shadow" is a interesting game, but a flawed one. It is fairly obvious by the 5Th or 6Th time you play that the game was made by Sega to be a quickly created one using graphics, music/sound effects, and even story points of other 3D Sonic games, which does show and not well polished. However, the new additions do save the same-y level design from being too drawn out, although that was also not well implemented as well. Thats not to say I had had a bad time: I thought "Shadow" was a decent game for the amount I paid for it, and offered a few days of enjoyment.

Final Scores
-Graphics: (6/10) Not too bad, but many of the later levels look pretty bad.
-Sound: (5/10) Forgetable and annoying at times
-Control (8/10) Manageable, but sometimes frustrating.
-Camera (5/10) Gets stuck far too easily in small places.
-Story (8/10) Reveals Shadow's past, but is cookie cutter in how it is presented
-Gameplay (7/10) Mix bag, but enjoyable for those who like the 3D Sonic games.
-Re-playability: Medium, to get all the endings, but not much else after that (Unless you want to get the 320 some story paths, which don't unlock anything special)
-Length: 10 hours, can be beaten in 2-5 days

FINAL: 6.5 (Rounds up to 7) out of 10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/11/06