Shadow Man

"Shadow Man, Shadow Man, I flushed your game down the pan"

Shadow Man on the Nintendo 64 is an excellent game. Shadow Man on the Dreamcast is a good game. Shadow Man on the PlayStation one is an appalling game. Shadow Man on the PlayStation one is a conversion too far - game that requires far more than the poor old PlayStation one could give it in terms of graphical power. Shadow Man on the Playstation one is a wretched, shoddy attempt to squeeze as uch money as possible from a license, and one which makes every mistake there is when it comes to programming a game, and even invents a few new ones!

The actual game has a great concept and superb plot. Based on a popular cult comic series of the same name it tells the story of Mike LeRoi an Undead hitman who is hired by a voodoo witch called Nettie who wants him to be the new Shadow Man to replace an older one who died in the 19th century. She plunges a voodoo mask into Mikes chest and this allows him to switch between his existence as Mike in the Liveside (our world) and the Deadside (a twisted and hellish dimension full of tormented souls and evil beasts). A bad guy called Legion has recruited several of histories most notorious serial killers (Jack the Ripper amongst them) to build the Asylum. A huge evil fortress in the Deadside. Legion plans to use this as a base from where he and the five can wreck havoc in the Liveside.

Mike’s job is to use his power to switch between both dimensions and hunt the serial killers down. He must then ensure they stay trapped in the Deadside for good. His link to the Deadside is a small teddy bear that belonged to his dead brother (Mike has a tragic past himself). This is used to warp him from one to another. The action is viewed in the over-the-shoulder third person perspective and his abilities change depending on who he is. Mike is physically stronger in the Liveside and can use weapons, if he gets killed he automatically goes to the deadside. Shadow Man is weaker, but has kore magic based attacks and can’t be killed (though you can run short of energy and have to restart the areas). Various powerups, weapons and new abilities can be gained as you explore the massive levels in the typical third person adventure style.

Sound pretty good right? Well when all this appeared on the N64 and DC is was great. A spooky, atmospheric, long lasting and unusually dark (for Nintendo) adventure could be had. But on the poor old Psone it all goes horribly, horribly wrong. On the old grey box you may expect that occasionally you’ll see some texture warping, scenery glitching, slowdown, poor AI or other such example of its frailties. What you don’t expect is to find all of those faults and more all in the same game!

The game areas are constructed around huge levels made up epic sized swamps, huge stone towers and rusting cavernous tunnels. The gameplay areas are simply too vast for the psone to cope with. What should be gothic halls or lush marshland are rendered with bland slabs of brown and green polygons. This scenery has an unnerving tendency to slide, warp and shake as well as bend and flicker with black lines if the camera swings to close to them. The scenery is also dangerous! It’s eats you! Stand still and the scenery will slide up to you and poor old Shadow Mans arm or leg suddenly disappears inside it.

You can try and jump out of the wall, or sidestep away from it. Due to the idiotic animation of the main character you may find yourself slipping and sliding straight into another wall. If you are really unlucky you might fall through a wall into a grey area of what I like to call NID. There is no way out of NID, you must reset your game. (NID appears in quite a lot of these games, Tomb Raider Chronicles and Soul Reaver both had points where Lara and Ralziel fell through the scenery into the grey area of NID. But I have never seen as much NID is there is in Shadow Man).

Then we have the slowdown and amazing artificial stupidity to contend with. If you wander up to a baddy then it will throw itself at you. Hang about a few feet away and you can shoot it repeatedly without it reacting to you in the slightest. When they do notice you they will drag their sluggish bodies over to you where you can give them a right good kicking. Sadly as the framerate shuuders dwon to about 10 frames per second the more things that are one the screen you may find this less than satisfying.

Added to this, with the game now moving as quickly as one-legged tortoise, Mike or Shadow Man stop responding to your button presses. Well it does respond, but about thirty second later when you have got annoyed and slammed ever button on the pad. So you end up praying for less enemies. Of course their non-existent AI can be funny (well you have to find some silver lining). If they spot you, but can’t reach you (i.e. if you are standing on the other side of a ravine or maybe have just fallen through the floor), they will moan and scream and flap about running through each other (great collision detection there!), walk though the bendy walls, but not actually use the bridge nearby to come and get you.

And there’s more. Needless to say the camera stinks, often swapping between first and third person mode at random. The cuts scenes stop animating the characters about halfway through and are very woodenly acted (mind you the DC and N64 versions suffered that as well to be fair). There are far too many leap of faith style sections and overall the cut down textures of the environments renders the whole experience as gloomy and suicide inducing as the Deadside would be if it were real (which it isn’t..I hope).

Overall Shadow Man on the PSOne is a waste of time. I’m not sure why the good people at Acclaim thought they could get away with converting this ambitious and complex title onto everyone’s fave 32 bit console without cutting down the size a bit, but the fact they allowed this rotten conversion to be released speaks volumes for the cynicism and contempt these companies have towards the average gamer. If you can play the PC, N64 or DC version then do so. It’s a real treat for the platform gamer after some dark and literate thrills. Give this version a miss unless you are a masochist. If you are, do play it, you’ll never have more fun.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 07/11/02, Updated 07/11/02