Shadow the Hedgehog

"Shadow tries too hard to be something it's not, at the expense of the Sonic feel."

In the mid to late 1990's, Sony had joined Sega and Nintendo in the console wars. Sony's Playstation had a large library of three-dimensional games, and in order to compete with such a lineup, Nintendo started to recreate many of their franchises in full 3D to accompany the Nintendo 64. Soon, almost every franchise from every company was becoming three dimensional, and Sega's were soon to follow. With the release of their Dreamcast, Sega and Sonic Team released Sonic Adventure, a 3D iteration of the beloved Sonic platformers, with all the speed, style, and anthropomorphic critters intact. Although plagued with glitches and a sloppy frame rate, the game was a success commercially. Sonic Adventure 2 was released later to critical acclaim, but shortly after its release Sega was forced to withdraw from the console making business due to a combination of low sales and debt.

As a third-party developer, Sega neglected to make new Sonic games for years, instead choosing to re-release classic games in the series on new platforms. When they finally did make a new installment, entitled Sonic Heroes, it was not well received by fans or critics. Many gameplay mechanics had been changed, and the game as a whole was largely unpolished. Undeterred, Sega went on to release Shadow the Hedgehog, a spinoff of the earlier adventure series. But could it live up to the series' earlier adventures in the third dimension?

As the title suggests, you play as Shadow the hedgehog, one of the villains from SA2 and a playable character in Heroes. The game starts out with you awakening in a city, knowing nothing. You quickly meet a creature named “Black Doom” who promises you the key to your past if you collect the seven Chaos Emeralds for him. You head off into the city, and from there you can choose whether to help him get the emeralds, to help Sonic and friends on their quest, or to get the emeralds for yourself. You don't seem to have any motivation to follow any of the paths, but the game pretends that you do.

All things considered, this game plays similarly to earlier 3D Sonics. The worlds are mostly linier, consisting of a few paths populated with pits to jump over, rails to grind on, springs to launch from, and loop-de-loops. As always you have only two speeds at which to run: completely stopped or racing at hundreds of miles per hour. The game is extremely fast paced and forces you to think on the fly; one minute you'll be safely sprinting across a field, the next the field will have a huge gap that you'll need to instantly tap A to jump over. The realization that a pit exists will only last you a second or two, so extremely quick thinking is required. If this sounds like complaining, rest assured, it's not. This is the type of traditional sonic style that fans have grown to know and love, and thankfully this spinoff doesn't stray too far from its predecessors in this regard. The only major differences in this adventure are the ability to wield guns, which I'll get to in a minute, and the mission system.

Each level has three missions: one neutral, one good, and one evil. You can switch between them at any time through the pause menu, as well as by running into different characters that are scattered around the stage. Different goals unlock different levels, and there are ten endings you can end up with depending on which goals you do. This may sound like a lot of fun, but in actuality it isn't. 90% of the goals are either: A. Get to the end of the level, B. Kill all of X enemies, or C. Collect X amount of Y items. The first type of mission is enjoyable, and it's the same kind of thing we've been doing with Sonic for years, but since there's so little variety these same goals get boring fast. You'll soon start to wish that Sega had taken the time to put a wider variety of goals in, or at least refine some of the ones they did include. You see, many of the missions completely go against the feel of a Sonic game. Sonic games are usually fast paced, and when you're wandering around searching every corner for some kind of item while sprinting like your life depended on it, you can't help but think it feels completely out of place. With a physics engine that's perfectly suited for racing past everything, it's annoying that many of the missions force you to do the opposite.

The missions aren't the only things that can vary depending on your alignment. In each level there are two types of enemies: GUN soldiers and Black aliens. Attacking aliens boosts your Hero meter, represented by a blue gauge on the screen, and assaulting soldiers raises a Dark meter, shown with a red gauge. When filled, they allow you to pull off special moves that are supposed to help you out, but unfortunately even this idea is flawed. The red attack lets out a blast of energy that's supposed to wipe out all the enemies around you, but it has such a short range that by the time you're close enough to use it effectively you might as well take out the enemy the old fashioned way. The blue move, "Chaos Control", is even less useful. It progresses you forward a bit in the level, which works fine in the “Get from point A to point B” missions, but in the other kinds it's just a hassle because you might miss an enemy/item and have to backtrack anyway. The gauges don't actually affect your alignment, and after you realize how useless they are, they'll basically just become inconveniences.

Now, onto the gun system, the inclusion of which has been the subject of debate over Sonic fans. As always, the enemies will wield weapons, but this time you can steal them and brandish them yourself. This means that in addition to the traditional homing attack and newly added punch, you can shoot your way through the enemies that infest the cities. The problem with this feature is that all of the guns feel the same. There are single-shot handguns and massive bazookas, but nothing in between. The targeting system is pretty bad as well, mainly because there isn't one. The bullet will just fire the direction you're facing, and if there's an enemy remotely in your vision path it will aim for it, regardless of whom it is. It brings back memories of the type of targeting systems found in games like Jak 2 and 3, but at least those had a laser that gave you a vague idea of where you were pointing. A few of Shadow's guns have lasers, but most have nothing. Despite being a nifty feature for far away combat, you can't help but feel that the guns were just tacked on, and they seem completely out of place in this type of game.

So, let's say that through all of this, you get through a level. This means you get to watch a cutscene. Now, the Sonic Adventure series has never exactly been known for good script writing, but the story progression in this game is pitiful. In a poor attempt to seem more mature and edgy then it naturally should be, every character, specifically Knuckles and Shadow, have added a few more four-lettered words to their vocabulary. Almost every other sentence will contain the word ‘damn' to accompany the most minor misfortune, and Shadow will constantly do “cool” things no matter what. For example, in one cutscene that you get after several ‘good' missions, Shadow gladly sacrifices the safety of his partners for personal gain. Shadow is forced to become antisocial, which would work if we didn't know all to well that he isn't that sort of character.

Thankfully, however, these cutscenes are made slightly more endurable due to the mostly new cast of voice actors. Sonic games have long been infamous for their horrid voice acting since the early days, and while the new guys are far from perfect, you can at least tolerate the new voices without wanting to smash your television set.

As I've said, not too much has changed from previous adventures. The graphics are still cartoony, the look of it all is still purposefully unrealistic, and the same basic platforming feel is intact. There are a few minor changes worth mentioning, however. First off, for better or for worse they changed the system of losing all of the rings you've accumulated after being hit once. You will now only lose ten rings per hit, and there are a lot more of them to go around. There are occasional vehicles for you to drive, as well as gun turrets around some levels. The music is extremely forgettable, and five minutes after turning off the console the tunes will fade from your memory. Finally, the environments are a bit more destructive this time around.

This game tries way too hard to be dark and edgy, which makes it barely resemble the classic Sonic feel. The gun, special move, and vehicle parts are broken and seem to just have been tacked on at the end. The music is extremely forgettable and the missions don't have enough variety to be interesting, and Shadow's personality won't change at all through your choices, defeating the purpose of having a Choose-your-own-adventure-esque story entirely. All in all, you probably already know whether or not you'll enjoy this game: If you're a diehard fan who can endlessly defend Sonic Heroes, you'll love it. If you enjoyed the first two SA games, this will interest you for a rental or two, but you'll be disappointed at how much it tries to be something it's not. If you hated the original Sonics, this one won't make you change your mind, and if you've never played a 3D sonic before, this is not the one to jump in with.

Shadow the Hedgehog gets a slightly below average four out of ten.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 12/21/05