Shadow Complex: Remastered Review

Before indie games became the massive force to be recokoned with. One of the early games that helped play a role in that is Shadow Complex. It was a XBLA exclusive for a while until it eventually came over to PC and Playstation with the Remastered version. This game, Guacamalee and Strider 2014 were the big 3 metroidvanias that I got into that weren't Metroid and Castlevania that made me a fan of the genre. Before AM2R and Samus Returns, this was the closest thing to a new 2D Metroid game post Zero Mission. Shadow Complex is a far better game that borrows from that series than any of the Axiom Verge games. Some of the gameplay ideas found in this game can later be seen in the modern 2D Metroids.

Anyways with that out of the way, I'll first talk about the story and it's not good. There's a terrorist organization that wants to attack San Francisco, the protagonist is a pacifist but still kills many people with no reflection on it, his girlfriend is a double agent or something. It has the hallmarks of dumb action movie that takes itself seriously. The main villain looks like Cobra Commander from G.I Joe. The prologue barely has much of anything to do with the overarching narrative other than be an intense opener to the game. It's bad but not enough to annoy me due to how sparse it all is. When there is the occasional cutscene however it's hard not to groan at the head scratching twists and turns.

The gameplay is the star of the show and it's mostly good when it comes to movement, exploration and moment to moment level design. Combat can be frustrating on anything above easy.

Moving and platforming feels fast, responsive and smooth. Chaining jumps can feel very satisfying. The free aim also feels reliable in the moment being able to freely aim that wasn't just up, down or diagonally in either direction was novel at the time and is well executed here. You'll need it to take out enemies from above, below or at your level. You'll need it to aim grenades, foam and rockets. It rarely felt it got in the way more often than not the physics with grenades did.

Exploration is also handled well. The game get chastised telling where to go but I often prefered not to use map rooms so the objective won't get marked on the mini map. Solving the game's various traversal and environmental puzzles can feel very satisfying in the moment like knowing to active a mine cart to launch yourself to another part of the map or flooding an entire floor of enemies for you to swim past.

The power ups while can be similar to Metroid can look more visually appealling especially the Speed Booster. It feels so satisfying to pull one off due to the visual effects of the animation and the amount of destruction happening as you are crashing into thing. It's like you got access to the speed force. You can also run on water with it too. It also feels great to get foam so you can finally stop relying the grandes' bouncing physics will align to where you want it to land. Double jumps feel great to chain with the wall jump and ledge grab. Being able to swim for unlimited amounts of time can feel great too. It can feel pretty impressive considering this was before indie games and the metroidvania genre would blow up in popularity and before Metroid would get another 2D outing.

There is however a major weak link and that is the combat. It's not terrible but there are strange design quirks. Moment to moment combat is more or less a 2.5D version of the hitscan cover shooters of the 7th gen and the late 00s. So you got hitscan weapons but you also have finite health which is fine but the problem arrives when health drops on normal difficulty feels far too miniscule. Add that with the hitscanners and explosions doing a lot of damage and it's easy to get into a firefight and then die very quickly. Due it being based around cover combat and everything else I mentioned means waiting for enemies to pop up and then shoot them, if you die, you got to do all that tedious waiting again as a result death can feel like, "I got to do all that AGAIN!?" It's often better to get a decent way into the game get some powers and a fair share of XP and then raise back up to normal since on easy, it often feels like I can be playing on autopilot. The scripted melee takedowns do look fantastic and feel great to pull off.

The boss fights are also not very good and almost feel very glitchy. They will attack sometimes, other times they will just stand around you just whail on them with grenades and missiles then you could just randomly get one shotted.

It culiminates with the final boss where it isn't even a battle but a puzzle boss. Imagine getting all the upgrades and you do is shoot down a background airship where the goal is to activate 3 switches to activate 3 warheads and all you got to do is wait until all 3 of them hit the ship and then final cutscene. You are just overprepared by that point.

Overall, great game in spite of the weak combat.