Shadow the Hedgehog

"Hedgehogs have never been so bad ass!"

When I first played Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, I thought that Shadow wasn't so cool, but when I saw the opening scene for this, I thought Shadow was the most bad ass character since Vincent Valentino (Yeah, I forgot his name. And no, I'm not a Final Fantasy fanboy) I got this game for Christmas, and I basically spent 6 hours on it already!

Gameplay:
The gameplay is a whole lot different then that other Sonic Games. They fixed up the ring system, making it less frustrating from the other Sonic games, such as if you run into the enemy, you lose 6 rings.

If you have never heard of this game, this is like a 3rd person shooter adventure game basically. The gun's ammo ends quickly, and thats is really annoying when fighting bosses.

They game plays like this, while in game, you run foward, meet the Doom's Eye or the Sonic Hero people, and they get you into certain missions. Some Missions include destroying 5 certain things, kill all GUN soldiers, or just run to the end of the level. Mainly, the Neutral story has it so easy because all of there missions is to run to the end of the level. The good/bad stories mainly have kill missions or fetch missions, which is why a lot of people dislike this game. The levels vary on which mission you complete, such as if you do a good guy mission, you go a different level than the Neutral mission.

They also added a Morality bar. If you kill the black creatures, you get your blue bar filled up, and if you kill GUN soldiers, you get your red bar filled up. When you press the Y button when one bar is filled up, you do a special attack.
Gameplay: 6/10

Story:
In the beginning, Westopolis (A REALLY original name created by Sonic Team) and five other cities are being invaded these black creatures. You have no memory and you have no idea what will help you. Then an Alien appears infront of you, and says that the Chaos Emeralds will restore your memories. Then your out on a quest to find the Chaos Emeralds. There are like 11 endings, so I can only rate the story on the ones I've seen.
Story: 8/10

Graphics:
Well, all I can say are the graphics really improved since Sonic Heroes. They actually got the lip-syncing down, but still has flaws. There are no framerate issues, and the background is really nice, and detailed enough. The humans in this game are... just not human, like the president! He has really skinny limbs, and a weird face (I'm not talking about Bush).
Graphics: 8/10

Sound:
All I can say here is the sound fits well with the attacks and the guns.

The music is a lot heavier than the other Sonic 3D games. Remember the music from the first level of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle? "Rollin around at the speed of sound, got places to go, got to follow my rainbow!" God that song is still stuck in my head. You can compare that song to any type of pop rock mainstream band on MTV, such as Yellowcard or Blink 182 (Without the cursing). Now The songs in Shadow the Hedgehog are like, hardcore punk, such as Minor Threat or Bad Religion. Since I like Blink 182, Minor Threat, and Bad Religion, the music is fine with me in this game. If you like catchy songs with Backstreet Boy voices and lyrics, then you will hate the music, but if you like hardcore punk guitar riffs, then you'll accept the music. If you have no idea what a riff is, it's just what the guitar plays.
(P.S There is NO Blink 182, Yellowcard, Bad Religion, and Minor Threat songs here! I was just making a comparison.)

They killed Knuckles' voice! He had such a cool voice in The other Sonic Games, but here, they killed it! The voices are acceptable, such as Rouges and Sonic's, but they totally messed up Knuckles and Charmy's voice!
Sound: 8/10

Difficulty:
The main reason people hate this game is because they like simple games where you just run to the emerald. Now you have objectives! It's pretty hard now, seeing as you have to actually NOT run around at the speed of sound. They kind of Upped the AI, making it slightly harder, and they actually shoot at you half of the time instead of one fourth of the time. The GUN soldiers shoot at wall, but the GUN Beatles shoot at you this time, and its pretty hard to kill them now, without getting hit first.

The main source of death in this game is falling off of a cliff... again. The camera man is your main enemy, but I can't think of a 3D Sonic game where he'd be your friend.
Difficulty: 5/10

Replayabilty:
11 endings... 326 different cutscenes to unlock... Get a taco, a girlfriend, and a bunch of coffee because this will take a hell lot of time to do... If you want to do it. You can still just finish the 11 endings, clocking in about 11 hours or so.
Replayability: 10/10

Overall:

Pros:
Lots of replayability
Improved ring system
Good story
Decent graphics
New moral system

Cons:
Evil camera man named Alan Nochenson
Annoying fetch quests

Only buy this game if you like killing enemies more than running as fast as you can from enemies. People who say Sonic and Knuckles is the best game ever are not going to like this at all, but personally I enjoyed it. I tried not to be biased, but you should still rent it to see if you'd like it.
Overall: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/28/05