Shadow the Hedgehog

"I was in a state of shock after playing this game."

Any Sega fan was hit hard by the death of the Dreamcast. The system had so much potential and so many amazing games that its surprise cancellation was really a huge shock to almost everyone. But as hard as it was for us to take, it must have been even worse for Sega, and this has shown in their games. Although they jumped into 3rd party support eagerly at first with some great games, lately, it's been nothing but average game after average game from a company that used to be known for its greatness. But I am COMPLETELY shocked at what happened here. Shadow the Hedgehog is the worst Sega game I have ever played, and one of the worst games I have ever played in my entire life. I'm sorry if this review comes off like a rant, but after playing a game like this I don't feel like I have much of a choice.

The first big weakness here are the visuals. Bland textures, very bland backgrounds, and bad character design are one thing, but the overall visuals are further hit hard by an overall last-gen look. At one point in the game, you re-visit Final Rush, a level from Sonic Adventure 2. It looks worse than it did in Sonic Adventure 2, which was released in 2001 on the dead Dreamcast. That's one example of many of this game's poor visual quality. Shadow the Hedgehog just looks like crap.....and yet can't run smoothly to save its life; the framerate drops so frequently that at times I felt like I was watching a slideshow. This happens when there are lots of enemies onscreen, which is pretty much all the time. There's also lots of pop-up, which I thought the Sonic series left behind on the Dreamcast. Simply put, this game looks like a mediocre-looking Dreamcast game. The fact that Sonic Adventure 2 (and even Sonic Adventure 1, in some areas,) looks better than Shadow the Hedgehog is pretty puzzling, and speaks volumes about this game's quality almost from the start.

Visuals aside, I started this game with an open mind, (or as open a mind I could have had when popping in a game that has an animated hedgehog holding a gun on the cover) but this didn't last long at all. You're immediately hit with the terrible controls. I have no idea what the hell happened here, but Shadow controls like he's running across a frozen pond. These unbearably slippery controls (some of the worst I've ever seen in the genre,) would already be the kiss of death to any platformer, but they're just the tip of the iceberg here.

There's also the camera. The camera never really bothered me in 3-D Sonic games before, but here it just doesn't work with the game they created. Shadow the Hedgehog focuses a lot on staying on big platforms and fighting enemies, (rather than quickly moving forward,) and has a huge emphasis on jumping from platform to platform. And this requires a lot of camera control. And this camera just sucks. It has to be adjusted constantly, and yet often won't even listen to you, snapping stubbornly back to its own angle. It's especially a problem when fighting an enemy. It just refuses to cooperate. The controls in this game and the camera make gameplay a complete nightmare.

And it gets even worse. The level design in Shadow the Hedgehog sets a new low for the series. Often you will stop dead in your tracks, having no idea whatsoever what to do next. You assume you should jump to the next platform, but you can't reach it, and you fall to your death. You may be running full speed down a ramp, then get to the bottom, and fly right off into a bottomless pit. Apparently, you had to turn left the second you hit the platform at the bottom. These levels practically force you to go through them slowly.

Oh, and there's more.... there's the terrible combat engine. Homing attacking on an enemy, (if it doesn't send your character right off the edge and to your death, as it does frequently in Shadow the Hedgehog) results in you losing your rings 90% of the time. You seem to lose your rings with alarming frequency in this game. It seems that every 3 seconds, Shadow enters his "slow motion" ring loss, which does nothing but cause irritation. Enemies are constantly shooting bullets everywhere, so whenever you arrive at a group of enemies, it's almost guaranteed that you'll be hit many times. If you try to homing attack them, their sharp armor (or whatever) will almost always cause you to....yup...lose your rings. The only solution to this is picking up and using a weapon, which adds yet another opportunity for this game to royally screw up, an opportunity that it takes full advantage of.

Weapons are frequently lying around, and picking one up is difficult; trying to pick up a weapon when running full speed is nearly impossible. You run through the weapon and push X to pick it up "in theory." I say "in theory" because while this was obviously the developers' intention, it doesn't work this way. Often, you have to stop right in your tracks, stand right on top of the weapon, and hold the X button to pick it up. Then there's the fact that the weapons have no targeting system at all. During a boss, I picked up a gun and fired all of its bullets at him...Not one bullet hit. They all flew right past him. The only way to successfully use these weapons is to (again) stop in your tracks, try to point yourself at the enemy (this is while other enemies are shooting and attacking you, causing you to ....lose your rings,) and then to try to fire right at the enemy, hoping beyond hope that it doesn't move while you're doing this.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, there is no sense of speed in this game. Whenever the levels offer you any chance to go fast, (like a loop or corkscrew,) it lacks any thrill, since you have no control over it. (Much like in any Sonic game.) This wouldn't be a problem normally, but it's a problem here, since these "automated" loops and corkscrews are the only time the game gets anywhere near a sense of speed. You can't run fast through these levels. When you reach a crowd of enemies, you lose your rings. If you try to homing attack an enemy, (to get him out of the way and dash past him) you lose your rings. This constantly eliminates any sense of speed. If there (miraculously) aren't any enemies in sight and you're in the mood to fight some bad controls, you can try to run fast.... only to be zooming down a fast road, reaching the end of it, and flying forward off the edge of a cliff because you didn't "turn left" the second you reached the end of the ramp. Whoops.

Wait!!! I know it must sound tempting, but don't all rush out to buy this game at once, there's more....there's also the missions you have to do. Like so many games nowadays, you get to decide if Shadow is good or bad. During levels, either The Alien or some Sonic Characters will advise you on what to do. ("Shadow, destroy all 60 aliens in this level!" "Shdaow, destroy all 60 humans in this level!" ) Either way, these missions end up further slowing down the game, since you have to search everywhere for those discs that Charmy the Bee asked you to collect, or for those humans that the Alien asked you to eliminate. (You can also choose to avoid either mission and just go through each level to get the chaos emeralds, which will get you to the end of the game in about 2 hours.) Whichever mission you choose to do doesn't seem to matter to the enemies in the level. There are the "good" GUN soldiers in the level, and the "evil" aliens in the level. If you choose to do the "good" mission, it doesn't matter. Both the aliens AND the soldiers will still attack you. Same with if you decide to do an "evil" mission. Which means that despite the fact that these soldiers are constantly shooting at you (causing you to .....lose rings, ) you can not attack them, since you are doing the "good" mission. This (again,) SLOWS THE GAME DOWN, since when surrounded by tons of enemies all shooting at you (causing you to lose rings) you can't just start blasting them. Because there might be some "good" soldiers in there trying to kill you as well, so you have to be careful not to attack them.

...I'm sure, by now, you realize how stupid this all sounds. But this is really how the game is. It just doesn't make any sense. There are reportedly over 300 possible ways to progress through the game, and 10 or 11 endings. Just blasting through a level and avoiding the missions gets you to the end quickly and you get the "neutral ending," which is one of many endings. Doing a mission will send you to another level afterwards, and another plot point, and then to another ending, depending on what other branches you take on the game's story grid. What doesn't make any sense is that you must see every ending to unlock Last Mode and get the game's REAL ending. So you see endings where Shadow's good, evil, where he's nice, where he kills people, where he teams with Sonic, etc.....then you get the game's REAL ending. ...which reverses all of these. So... were all of those other endings dreams, or what? Doesn't make any sense.

All I can say is that if you're looking for an explanation as to how this guy's still alive when he was supposedly killed off at the end of Sonic Adventure 2....you're playing the wrong game. I suppose we'll never get to see *that* ending, as it likely would consist of an FMV showing SonicTeam executives sitting in a boardroom during the development of Sonic Heroes, saying, "hm...we killed Shadow, but fans seemed to like him more than we thought they would, so you know what? Let's bring him back and milk it for all its worth." While we likely won't ever see THAT ending in video game form, it would be nice if SonicTeam would at least fake an explanation at this point, since the fact that a dead main character was resurrected without even a hint of a solid explanation is becoming more and more ridiculous with each Sonic installment.

Well....why play this? In all seriousness? The levels lack any sense of speed, you're CONSTANTLY losing rings or falling off cliffs, working with the camera is a nightmare, the controls are among the worst ever devised for a 3-D platformer, the plot's terrible for a game that's supposedly "story-driven," the cutscenes and in-game visuals look awful..... I was relieved when I decided to put this game down for good after seeing a few of the endings and then having enough. The nightmare was over......This relief was eventually replaced by the complete shock that this was from the same team that brought us the great Dreamcast Sonic Adventure games. WHAT THE HELL happened here? Those games were fun experiences with cool stories, great level design, and a great sense of speed, nostalgia, and replay value. Shadow the Hedgehog, on the other hand, is completely headache-inducing, stressful, and tedious.

I thought that Sonic Heroes was very underwhelming.....very disappointing; the sense of speed greatly reduced, complete lack of story, lame, corny, team-based combat, boring levels....But Shadow the Hedgehog makes Sonic Heroes seem like Game of the Year material...Words can not describe how bad Shadow the Hedgehog is. I was hoping that this game would bring the series back to glory after Sonic Heroes basically ruined it, but Shadow the Hedgehog further sinks this series into this puddle of crap that its been stepping into ever since the Dremacast died. Even the music sucks, something even the worst entries in this series usually manage to get right.

The idea behind this game was sort of interesting; a Sonic game for an "older audience" that only features 1 playable character. And it gets off to an almost "decent" start; enough to give you a split second to appreciate the fact that, had this game been done right, it wouldn't have been a true Sonic game...not even close. However, it would have been a decent platformer in its own right. But this is completely sunk by the amazingly terrible gameplay. Hopefully Sega steps it up next generation, especially SonicTeam. It's true that they no longer have their own console to support but that's no excuse for rushing out games and releasing crap products. If the next generation Sonic game is not an improvement on this, (and this time I'm confident that it can't possibly get any worse) then the Sonic franchise will be completely dead, and Sega will be soon to follow.

...and, (I really debated on whether or not I should add this paragraph) there are 2 things this game does right. It seems that SonicTeam FINALLY managed to get the lip sync to match the English dialogue, and the new voice actors do a good job. I was initially against Sega's sudden decision to fire their English voice cast for the Sonic games and replace them with actors from 4 Kids Entertainment, but I've got to admit, the new actors do a good job. For once, the overall voice acting in this series sounds somewhat professional. Although the new voices will take some time to get used to, and while there are some voices I thought were better before, overall, this is an improvement. I can't wait to hear these new voice actors in a Sonic game that's actually worth playing. There are also *a couple*.....very few, but they're in there....moments of fast speeds here that make you appreciate what a Sonic game should be. Unfortunately, though, this game isn't it. Not even close. Even if you've never heard of Sonic the Hedgehog, though, this is a game to avoid like the plague.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 01/04/06, Updated 09/21/09

Game Release: Shadow the Hedgehog (US, 11/15/05)