Shadow the Hedgehog

"Once you find out the secret to Shadow's past at the end of the game, you'll probably wish you never did in the first place."

Shadow the Hedgehog is a very interesting game. Not because of the gameplay, but because of the community's mixed opinions about it. Some love it. Some despise it. Some are just in between. I'm pretty much all three. I like it, I despise it, and I'm in between all at once. People say "It's not a Sonic game! It's a Shadow game!" which implies that the game focuses on combat over speed. Based on the level design, there's a lot of combat, but based on Shadow's abilities, he should be rushing through the levels at Sonic-speed. The thing is, Shadow the Hedgehog tries to combine shooting with speed. It doesn't do a good job of that, but the game is still okay. Don't understand? Read on.

Gameplay: 5/10
The concept of the game was interesting, but it seems like Sonic Team couldn't make up their minds. We've got Shadow here who can run really fast, grind, spin dash, homing attack, all of the standard Sonic abilities. Now it feels like he's been stuck in a completely different game. Which means this entire sense of speed goes to waste in favor of a mediocre combat system. Sonic Team obviously knows nothing about shooting games. The AI for the enemies is awful. They aim like they're blind when they shoot, but they shoot about one bullet every two seconds so there's no challenge in taking any of them out. You pretty much just mash the A button while standing in front of them. Shadow can only shoot what's right in front of him. You don't reload. You can only carry one weapon. The swords have ammo! You can't aim your weapons anywhere. You can't even lock on to enemies. This is very bad because the levels are packed with enemies that aren't all that fun to beat and weapons that aren't that fun to use. Why, then, did gameplay get an 6 out of 10 as opposed to a much lower score? This is because Shadow the Hedgehog, although is packed with boring battles, still keeps the Sonic feel. Shadow does control weird, but I thought that added a fun challenge instead of a tedious challenge. Some challenge is needed, because the game is too easy. Even simple tasks such as turning a corner requires a certain amount of effort. Some areas of the game are absolutely pointless and require you to simply watch the screen and not even do anything or do very little. The loop-dee-loops are a good example. Also the grinding, just like in previous 3D Sonic games, feels pointless because even with the ability to lean, it takes almost no effort. Another example is that in one of the levels, you're spinning around on a giant circuit and you can either move left or right, depending on where you hold the control stick. This circuit really is giant and since you have no idea where most of the important stuff is on it, finding your way around is pretty much based on luck or a really good sense of observation. The bosses don't pose much difficulty, since I've found some way to win easily in almost all of them. I literally beat one of the later bosses in about 8 seconds. One thing that raised the score slightly was that the levels are big. Sometimes levels can take 15 to 20 minutes to finish, or even a half hour!

Story: 2/10
I hate the story. It creates a lot of plotholes. Basically, Shadow is trying to find the secrets to his past and he's involved with the fates of several sides such as the evil aliens called the Black Arms, Sonic and friends, and the government. I don't like any of them. Shadow must choose which side he will take. The multiple sides system was done terribly and I felt no sense of freedom. Even in Sonic Adventure or Sonic Adventure 2, I had some attachment to the storyline and the characters. In Shadow the Hedgehog, the story feels like a really bad fanfiction that some 8 year old Sonic fan-boy/girl wrote. I couldn't relate to anyone in the game and the cutscenes have no life in them. It's like something Sonic Team had to do instead of wanted to do. The secret to Shadow's past was a huge disappointment.

Graphics: 7/10
The few CG cutscenes throughout the game are absolutely beautiful. They look perfect. The graphics in the actual game, though, aren't very good. The humans look awful and the animals look okay. The GUN soldiers look worse than Dreamcast quality. The design for the Black Arms were the most unoriginal I've ever seen. It seems like all the graphical detail was wasted on Shadow so now Shadow looks shiny and smooth and everyone else is fairly blocky as far as the graphics for current-gen systems go. I balanced the CG with the non-CG and gave it a 7.

Sound: 5/10
The music is okay. Some songs in the game are horrible, some are average, and some are actually pretty good. The voice acting was very bad. I mean Sonic Heroes bad. The only character who had a lot of emphasis in his voice was Shadow and even Shadow had its cheesy moments. Everyone else sounds like they were forced to say their lines and want to get it over with so they can eat their shrimp cocktail or whatever rich voice-actors eat. Some characters, though have so much emphasis in their voices that they almost sound like the Puyo Pop Fever characters who push the life in their lines to the point in which it sounds really stupid. The music raises the already generous score a little. Simply because I liked a few songs, but hearing good music in a bad game just makes the game feel even more stupid.

Replayability: 4/10
It's not enough. Shadow the Hedgehog was created with replayability in mind, but the game fails a lot of things it attempts to do. Since the levels are so easy, you could have the whole game finished in about a week. There's also not much to unlock so once you've beaten the entire game, that's it. You won't have much need to come back to it. The 5 keys to collect in each level don't even reveal anything cool, except a vehicle or some rings or an extra life or a weapon. There's an Expert mode, but even with challenge added there's no point at all to coming back to the levels.

Multiplayer: 3/10
There's no point to the multiplayer because with weapons, the pace of the battles moves so quick, a match could end in a matter of seconds. Also there are only 3 courses to choose from. I played the multiplayer against my friend for a couple minutes, then quickly grew bored of it. Why isn't there racing? At least racing could make it a little better, but not by much. This sort of goes to show that Shadow the Hedgehog has no singular focus, but is a constant switching between running really fast, then stopping to shoot some enemies or to climb a pole very slowly or to jump across slow moving platforms.

Overall: 5/10
I liked Shadow the Hedgehog for a while, but now I almost never play it. The game is pretty much average at best. There are a few people who actually say that this is a good platformer, but I saw no fun platforming elements at all. Once you finish the game, you could try to get all 326 endings, but since you've played all the levels by around your 4th playthrough, you really won't have any desire to do it again. Some levels are just terrible and some are fun to try a few times. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this to even somebody who just wants to find out about Shadow's past, even though once you find out the secret to Shadow's past at the end of the game, you'll probably wish you never did in the first place.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/27/06, Updated 04/26/06