Shadow the Hedgehog

"This game was really looking up, if only they spent more time tweaking and fine tuning it."

Yes, I did not much enjoy this game. Slightly above average in my opinion. But before you go down to the bottom of the screen and give me a 1 rating, hear me out. Shadow the Hedgehog is probably the most deserving Sonic character to get his own game, as he's pretty much the only one with any depth to his back story. I mean sonic is just your typical protagonist, Knuckles protects a master emerald as he is the last of his clan, Tails is Sonics friend who invents stuff, and Dr. Robotnik (I would rather not call him Eggman) wants to conquer the world. Shadow however, has a lot of depth that was never revealed in Sonic Adventure 2. And then they threw in all this stuff about him having clones made after him, and your mind starts to boggle. So, like it or not, Shadow was the most deserving character to have a spin-off, not even considering the fact that he's a major fan favorite (fat chance we'll ever see Big the Cat get his own game). It's really too bad this game wasn't all it was hyped up to be.

Graphics: 5/10
I'm not normally too picky about graphics, as long as they are serviceable. However, this game's graphics are almost unserviceable, it makes me wonder why they didn't just stick with the same graphics used for Sonic Adventure 2, or even build off of it? They used the Sonic Heroes style of graphics, for what reason I don't know. The character models themselves are actually quite jaggy if you look closely at them. Then they gave them this gloss look which makes them look tasty if you ask me, not realistic or cartoony. Hell, cell-shading would have been awesome too in my opinion, in fact, I think I would have appreciated that more then the realistic (yet cool none-the-less) look of Sonic Adventure 2. Even after this though, the characters animations aren't good at all, which I thought were one of the best things about previous Sonic games, well animated characters. The non CGI cut scenes (which is pretty much every cut scene save the intro, and two more) animation looks very stiff, it's like characters take turns moving, and they could not program more then one character to move at a time. I'll give you an example, Shadow's walking down Westopolis Streets (Westopolis? Really, creativity anyone? Station Square was at least an alliteration, and not so obvious) when he stops randomly, because two guards start talking (no, he's not eves dropping, he doesn't even make eye contact, they are somewhat to his right). As soon as they stop talking, he starts walking toward them saying “Out of my way”, but then they guards start talking to him and he stops. Then as the guards stop talking and take aim, shadow realizes he is capable of moving again and knocks them out by randomly appearing behind them (it's obviously Shadows Chaos Control, but to those who have never played a game with Shadow in it would have never guessed at this point in the game) and hitting them in the neck in a way that looks more like a slap, then a karate chop. However, despite all this, it does look like they put effort in it; they just weren't skilled enough to make this effort worthwhile.

Sound/Audio: 9/10
I have no idea how they did it, but they managed to make the 4Kids Cartoon Voice Actors (who sound a bit lame in the cartoon) sound really good and Sonic-esque. I still would have preferred the original actors, and that the voice of Vector (the crocodile for those new to the series, or never played Heroes or Chaotix) be put to death, however these are still top notch. Some may argue they aren't fitting for the character, but there's no denying effort was put into this (and this time it was worthwhile). The music is also catchy. However, am I the only one who misses vocal music playing during the cut scenes and in stages? Now the only time you hear any of the vocal tracks is during the credits, depending on what ending you got. It's true that about half the reason I even bothered replaying this game more then once was for the music in the credits (the other half was for the sake of making this review, and learning little bits of shadows past, no matter how shoddily this information was presented to me). Anyways, kudos for getting it partly right Sega.

Story: 6/10
The story in this game is unique to the sonic series, but it just does not compel you at all. Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 compelled me, but this game reminded me more of Sonic Heroes in terms of story telling, most scenes take place at the level your located in and give you a short explanation on why you're here all the sudden. Basically, these Aliens called Black Arms invade earth, for no real given reason (at least, not until the very, very end of the game which is only unlocked beating the game 10 times differently), and attack the people. The leader asks Shadow to find all seven Chaos Emeralds and bring them too him, as well as several other missions as you progress through the dark side missions if those are the ones you do so choose. That's the one good thing about the story mode, you can choose whether your good, evil, or neutral throughout the game. But that's where everything hits rock bottom. Every time you play through the game, you get about one or two cut scenes that actually progress the story, every other cut scene just informs you of what your doing in that current level. This leaves about 10 scenes worth watching, but you have to beat the game 5 times to see all of these, and then you have to beat it 5 more times to get all 10 endings (every ending pair is very similar however) so you can play “The Last Story” part, which is the only part of the story that is even Canon (part of the official series story). I'm sorry, but that does not cut if for me. I want good 3-4 minute long cut scenes that are well thought out that compel me through the game, or I want a game that has no in depth story line at all because the game play isn't heavily affected by it (i.e. Super Mario Brothers, Crash Bandicoot, Kirby). To be fair, the story line parts it does give are somewhat what us Shadow fans are looking for, it's just all of this is way too few and far between. It's like eating a boiled peanut that has a deformed peanut inside. After working it out of it's shell, you get something that's good but so small it was almost not even worth the effort. Not sure if many of you actually have had boiled peanuts before, but it is aggravating when that happens.

Game Play: 6/10
Shadow the Hedgehog is by no means a horrible game, but the only time I really found myself enjoying the game was playing on neutral, where your only goal in each level was make it to the finish. Hero and Dark missions where very frustrating. Defeating either every single good guy or bad guy in the level (which is frustrating because it's easy to miss some), collecting nearly every coin from the stage, finding things or activating things through the level (these are usually the least annoying of the missions, as there are only five or so, and they almost always are on the main path, almost as if you were doing a neutral mission). They become very tedious. And this is not helped with the fact that the controls are horrid. You mode two feet and shadow is running off at the speed of light. This makes accuracy of any sort near impossible. It's hard to even recollect a ring or two after you get hit, as you jet past them. I've died several times because of this in boss battles.

Then there are the weapons, which are really hard to aim and hit enemies with properly. I like to conserve my ammo, and therefore only like to shoot things in games when I know I have my enemy dead on. That's impossible in this game though, you just have to look at the enemy and hope your bullet makes contact, or you can go Rambo style and not worry about ammo at all and just wait until you run out of it. Well this may be fine for some, but for those who conserve their ammo, this puts them out of a big portion of the game. The alternative to shooting is the homing attack, which is heavily flawed. After hitting an enemy with it, you're not sure if you can land another attack in, or if you'll be sent flying away from the enemy as Shadow decides not to home in. It's completely random after the first hit. Even if you don't try to home in again, as you land the enemy is likely to attack you nearly instantly. This becomes especially frustrating with enemies who take about 10 attacks to kill. I ended up avoiding killing many enemies, even if it cost me getting only a neutral mission completion (which again was the only time I had fun in the first place, so I ended up liking having hard enemies, ironic isn't it?).

Finally, there are the vehicles, which I actually did not notice on my first play through, they're that unnoticeable and unannounced. Sometimes you will see cars, tanks, and motorcycles in stages and you can ride them. However, this is rarely necessary (hence why I never noticed them until my second play through, where Black Arms told me I could board this “human vessel by pressing a button”) and often times not preferable. Vehicles are very hard to control, kind of frustrating in the same sense as shadow. You go way to fast. You can hardly turn, and turning around is a twenty second process. And turning around is necessary sometimes, not all stages are straight forward, sometimes you need to find all five bombs or something in a vast city environment that looks the exact same on every block so you can never tell where the heck your going. Unless it's necessary, vehicles add nothing to the game. I just avoid them. I will say, as a small consolation, the game has fun bosses, which I haven't seen since they Genesis Days, not even Sonic Adventure's 1 and 2 had good bosses, which were some of my favorite games. Clever enough with somewhat different ways to attack them, guns were actually useful against hem as they are rather large. I never found the camera to be a huge issue, but then again, I never do in video games. As long as I can control the camera, I'll never complain about the crappy angles it gives me to start out with. This game gives you right thumb stick control like most games do nowadays.

Overall: 6/10
This game will probably satisfy sonic enthusiasts, and actually is a bit of fun on neutral campaign if you're interested in a small rental period. However, this does not dismiss the fact that the modes are tedious on the other alignments, the graphics are bland, and the story is not compelling enough. Perhaps it's just a like it or not game, as there are dozens like me who share similar views on the game, but then there are even more so who enjoy this game immensely. If what I've been saying has gotten to you, maybe you should avoid it, otherwise keep on reading through the reviews to make a more educated opinion on whether or not you like the game.

Buy or Rent: Rent
Even if you disagree with me saying this game is lackluster, these no arguing it will not last you very long, at all. 4 days tops at beating the game completely (unless you work on all A ranks and stuff). Multiplayer is so sub-par that I did not even bother mentioning it, it's much like the multiplayer in Metroid Prime 2 Echoes, tacked onto the game just because they could.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/28/05, Updated 11/29/05