Shadow the Hedgehog

"Just because he has black fur and an attitude doesn't mean he needs a gun"

Once again, I'm sorry if my review gets a little wordy. I have to meet the word limit, and it's kind of annoying. Anyway....

In the sequel to Sonic Adventure, we were introduced to our friend, Shadow the Hedgehog, a black-furred, red-striped artificial hedgehog who was supposedly the "ultimate lifeform" in Sonic Adventure 2. Now, in that game, he was a fairly cool character, and Sega did a good job keeping him from falling into the trap of becoming an angst machine, which he could have easily become. Shadow immedietly became one of the most popular characters of this franchise, and almost everyone had at least some liking for him. Sega, of course, then decides to give him his own game, complete with guns and vehicles and evil space aliens...

Wait a minute, WHAT?!

Well, why don't we dissect this little game Sega has here? Wll Shadow the Hedgehog be a not-so-bad game? Or will it be put into the trash can along with Sonic Shuffle and Sonic Drift? Let's examine and see, shall we?

STORY- 7/10
Of course, in this game you play as Shadow for the whole game, who is trying to find his purpose and exactly why he was created. The problem is that Shadow himself ends up deciding that, because he can either go down good, evil, or neutral paths. In the good path, you help out the normal good guys from the Sonic series do various tasks, from collecting items to normal Eggman-stopping, to searching for lost persons, to beating up Black Doom's troops. It's worth noting that every single playable character from Sonic Heroes (Including the Chaotix, minus E-123 and Big) will appear along the way, following you like Tails would in previous games. The evil path usually consists of killing humans, beating up chao, helping Black Doom take over the world, and thwarting the heterochromia-ed army leader while being assisted by Doom's Eye, a tentacled eyeball who gives you advice, while the neutral path simply has you running through the level for the Chaos Emerald at the end. The plot evolves depending on what path you take, and honestly some of the story twists are kind of interesting (Maria Robotnik can actually run as fast as Tails! Who knew a girl with the Sonic Universe's equivalent of AIDS could do such a thing?). Oh, and this is the first Sonic game where the characters curse. It's light cursing, nothing worse than "damn", but still. Wait...how come no one noticed that Shadow is supposed to be dead? No one noticed in Sonic Heroes, either..Everyone saw him die, so why does everyone just go "Oh, hi, Shadow!". That's a pretty icky plothole there. It gets a 7 because though it's not great and has a few too many plotholes, it's better than I had expected it to be.

GAMEPLAY- 6/10
For what the game is, it's not so bad afterall. The running-around part is pretty decent. Sometimes Shadow will overshoot the distance and run off a cliff, but this problem has existed since the Sonic went 3-D. However, it's slightly worse in this game due to Shadow's natural lack of traction. The camera has also been improved for this game, which of course is a relief, because in the other games 50 percent of all deatchs were the camera's fault. Shadow's homing attack has been greatly powered down, which forces you to use the guns, and quite a selection of guns there are. Some guns just shoot, and some have special functions that allow you to solve puzzles or defeat certain enemies. The gun mechanics actually work pretty well and do a good job of replacing the homing attack. The vehicles, however, are not very good. They're slow and the controls are very awkward. Luckily, the game doesn't make you use them very often, so you can happily ignore them most of the time. Now following evil and good paths does have its effect on gameplay. You have two meters at the top of the screen, one for good energy and one for evil. As you do good/evil deeds, these meters fill up. If you fill up the good meter, you gain the power to teleport across the level. This actually doesn't work very well, as it often makes you miss key targets for finishing the level. If you fill up the evil meter, you get to send out evil energy to destroy every enemy within sight, which is of course a good thing and racks up a lot of points, making it very easy to finish evil missions. It's true that the first ending you'll get will probably be the evil one, for it's far easier to be bad than good. Occasionally, you will get a partner who helps you out, but, like Tails in Sonic 2, they don't do much. They'll kill the occasional baddie, they grab the occasional ring, but they're mostly just there. Sometimes they'll help you against bosses, which leads me to the boss battles. They're surprisingly good, though they only have one phrase they say over and over again. It gets annoying, but the battles themselves normally aren't. The frustration level is low, and they're actually smooth. Fairly decent gameplay, but just enough kinks to earn it a 6.

SOUND/MUSIC 6/10- Guess what? Rings and bumpers have the same sound they've always had! The music is like rock/techno mix that the 3-D Sonic games, only the pop rock from the earlier games has been bumped up to straight up metal, adding to the game's gritty, in-your-face-ness. Nothing very spectacular or memorable here, mostly just standard Sonic fare mixed in with heavy metal. The voice acting is now directed by 4 Kids entertainment, wich is both a good and bad thing. Some characters sound better, like Espio, who actually has a personality beyond robot-ninja. Other characters have been completely trashed. Knuckles has had a reputation of having a really good voice in previous 3-D Sonic games, but in this game, it's really, really bad. Same goes for Rouge, who now sounds like a...I don't know if the censors will allow the word, so I'll just leave it up to imagination. The death of Eggman's voice actor has had its toll on this game, because the new guy is very annoying and has ruined him. It sounds worse when it's described than it is. I'm actually fairly surprised at the decency, because 4 Kids reputation isn't exactly stellar. This area earns a 6, because the good and bad points stabilize the score to averageness.

REPLAY VALUE 8/10- I rated this so high because you have to play the game at least TEN TIMES to get all the endings and finish the story, and actually it's not that much of a hassle. Each time through you'll play a new level, and even if you've played it before, you'll have to take a different path or a different mission. It's actually kind of cool. It earns an 8.

CONCEPT 1/10- THIS is the single factor that kills this game. There is absolutely no good reason to do this to Shadow. It's a blatant stunt that was showing Sega's envy of fan-favorite Ratchet and Clank. The problem is that Sonic characters were never meant for that kind of gameplay. What's worse is that they used Shadow, a cool character who everyone liked before this game came out and turned him into a gritty, gun-toting badass. Yes, Shadow was badass in the beginning, but not every badass deserves a gun. If this game had the same story, but standard Sonic gameplay, it wouldn't have been such a big deal, but this...This game single-handedly lost a lot of respect for the Sonic franchise that Sega's going to have a hard time getting back. Sonic Riders was pretty good, but it's going to take more than that. Let's hope the next-gen Sonic games will be better and that Sega learns its lesson. This area deserves no more than a one, because this game has done more damage to the Sonic games than any other released. This game is a dark spot on Sega's resume, one that we will look back on, laugh nervously, and change the subject about. Yes, what its done is that bad. It's a shame, because Shadow isn't a bad game.

OVERALL 6/10- This game isn't that bad if you ignore the damage it's done to Sonic's reputation. The gameplay is decent and so is the story, not to mention the replay value is great, but overall, this game has done much more harm than good, keeping it from getting a good score. If it had been a bad game itself, this wouldn't be as big a deal, but the game itself is decent, which makes it all the worse.

Good job, Sega. Remember Sonic 3-D Blast? Stop doing things just because other games have done them successfully. Stick to what you're good at, and stay away from what you're not.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/27/06