Shadow the Hedgehog

""Two Steps Back," Indeed."

Shadow the Hedgehog is the latest of a long line of mediocre spin-off titles featuring a popular peripheral character from the Sonic the Hedgehog series. It also serves as something of a sequel to Sonic Heroes, but unfortunately a number of glaring design flaws keep this game from retaining too much entertainment value. Which is a shame, too, because there are some concepts presented here that seem like they could have breathed some fresh life into the tired "Sonic Adventure"-style formula.

For starters, Shadow is now laden with firearms and melee weapons, and rather than Dr. Eggman, the game's villain is "Black Doom," a demonic-looking leader of an alien invasion. There's an array of stages to play, roughly 20 in all, and to get one of the 10 alternate endings you must progress through 6 of them. Each mission has 3 objectives you can choose from, each of which will branch the story in a different direction. Black Doom will encourage you to kill G.U.N. soldiers and generally wreak havoc; Sonic and his entourage of do-gooders will ask for Shadow's assistance in extinguishing fires, helping soldiers beat back the Black Arms, and on occasion thwart Dr. Eggman. You can also choose to ignore both sides and complete "normal" missions that benefit solely Shadow himself, which usually simply involve retrieving Chaos Emeralds. (Surprise!)

The premise is interesting, although the character designs (particularly those of human characters) look goofy, and the quality of voice acting is mixed. The graphics are also much shabbier-looking than any 3D Sonic before it. The presentation overall seems very slipshod. The music, fortunately, remains one of the series' strong points, with most metal-influenced rock tracks fitting well with the darker atmosphere. However, I'm betting most long-time Sonic fans won't be too welcoming to the blasphemous prospect of gunplay and alien takeovers in a Sonic game in the first place.

Now for the most important (and most bipolar) aspect of the game, the gameplay itself. For the most part, Shadow plays the same as the Sonic Adventure games on the Dreamcast. The auto-positioning camera is as awkward as ever, but due to the convoluted nature of most levels it's much more noticeable. The controls feel a bit slippery, as Shadow's speed can be erratic and his homing attacks can be unpredictable. This is especially inopportune when contending with enemies with big health bars, as you'll have to pull off a number of successive attacks in order to due substantial damage to them. This at times can be all but impossible without careening into obstacles or straight off edges. With practice, though, even these uncooperative commands can be mastered for the most part.

As you already know, Shadow can pick up guns and melee weapons he finds in each stage, even by way of pilfering from the bodies of soldiers he maims. The gunplay honestly isn't as horrible as many reviewers make it out to be, and with the right timing most of them can be effective in dispatching enemies. Larger ranged weapons such as rocket launchers can be much more unruly, though.

A very annoying habit of this game is to have NPCs shooting in general directions where enemies are set to come from, as well as having your partner (whether hero or villain) constantly tossing out observations about your surroundings. Problem is, these events occur whether or not there are still circumstances that are relevant; actions and dialogue will repeat themselves again and again whenever your approach an area where such an event was first triggered. This is annoying especially for missions where you are exterminating a particular number of enemies, as not only are there no clues to indicate where that last monster is hiding, but all the chaos that accompanied the other 30 you destroyed is still present, sans the creature itself. Such happenings, accompanied by already convoluted level designs and some repetitive objectives, sucks a lot of momentum and fun from an already bland experience. They also go to show how prefabricated the levels usually are, which makes them less interesting to play through multiple times. The result is an unpleasant combination of familiar and fun traits of older 3D Sonics meshed with the shortcomings of this new mess.

I can't recommend spending $50 on this game; if you simply must try it, then rental is definitely the way to go. The more hardcore and forgiving of Sonic fans might be able to see past the copious problems with this game and manage to have some fun with it, but most should probably just stick to Sonic Heroes' challenge mode.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/08/06