In today’s modern gaming climate several different genres are very well represented on the home consoles.  If you’re looking for a first or third person shooter, sports, racing, rhythm, or role playing game, chances are you’ll find something that suits your tastes.  On the other hand, if what you’re looking for is an old-school two-dimensional action/adventure game in the vein of Super Metroid, you’ve had very few choices.  Most of them were on the handheld systems, and for whatever reason publishers seem to feel that these types of games are better suited for a smaller screen.  Thankfully, the folks at Chair Entertainment felt that this was a genre that has been ignored long enough and have done something about it.

Shadow Complex is set in the world created by Orson Scott Card for his 2006 novel ‘Empire’.  It is not a direct adaptation of the novel, but rather a side story to compliment it.  You play the role of Jason Flemming, a former soldier who’s out hiking in the woods of Washington State with his girlfriend Claire Duncan, and while exploring the cave, Claire is captured by some mysterious soldiers that have seemingly set up shop in the area.  Jason immediately takes on the task of rescuing her, only to find that things are not quite as they appear on the surface.

As noted earlier, Shadow Complex is a two-dimensional action/adventure game where your main goal is to unravel the mystery of what Claire has fallen into.  Jason will need to explore the Complex and collect items that will help him deal with the underground threat.  Along the way he will come across areas that he is not equipped to access and the items that he’ll need to proceed are all stored somewhere in the Complex, so exploration is the key to success.

A game like this can be ruined by bad controls and nobody will want to spend hours exploring if they have to constantly fight with their controller to do it.  Shadow Complex manages to provide a very easy control scheme to both learn and use, but there is one option that you may want to look into altering for the controller setup.  Your secondary weapons are chosen using the directional pad on the controller, and pressing left or right will cycle through your available secondary weapons.  You have the option to change this function to use a different direction for each secondary weapon, and seeing as there are only four buttons, it’s a mystery as to why this isn’t the default setup.

Unlike Super Metroid which played exclusively in 2D, Shadow Complex does something unique and clever.  Everything in the game is rendered in full 3D, however the game locks you on a two-dimensional plane of movement.  Not all of the enemies you’ll face off with will be directly ahead of you though.  Since the game world is three-dimensional, enemies can appear in the background and Jason will have to fire into the background to take them out.  There are also a handful of scenes where you will need to man a turret, and while these scenes play out in full 3D, by and large Shadow Complex could be considered a 2.5D game.

Having enemies in the background is a nice touch, but it also is responsible for one of the game’s few problems.  It’s sometimes difficult to get the game to realize that you want to shoot into the background and not directly ahead of you.  That said, as you level up your character gets better equipped to handle this situation, but it still isn’t as intuitive as it should be.  The other key problem that Shadow Complex suffers from is related to the game’s AI.  Sometimes the enemy soldiers won’t respond to your presence until you have literally run into them.  It’s possible to stand right in front of a soldier and he will be completely unaware that you’re even there.  There are also the game’s clipping problems which occasionally cause Jason to go through parts of the game’s environment.

Shadow Complex’s main Campaign mode can take anywhere from four to twenty hours to complete depending on how quickly you’re able to navigate the Complex and how many of the hidden items you try to find.  The game isn’t very difficult in its Normal setting, but it does offer four difficulty settings so you can tailor it to suit your style.  When you’re done with the Campaign you can go through the game’s Proving Grounds, which are a set of timed challenges that will test your 2D platforming skills.  All of the skills and techniques that apply to the main game will also apply here, but the Proving Grounds have scenarios that are far more difficult to get through.

Though Shadow Complex is a downloadable game, it has presentation quality that rivals that of many retail games.  The game uses the Unreal Engine to great effect, and features outstanding water effects, excellent lighting and nicely detailed characters.  Shadow Complex looks great as it is, but it does have slightly muddy textures.  If Chair had used higher resolution textures then it would’ve looked even better.  Despite that minor flaw, Shadow Complex still looks better than a lot of retail games that have come out recently.  The game’s audio doesn’t fall flat either.  As you explore the complex you’ll hear all sorts of environmental sounds, be it humming machinery, security sensors, or soldiers conversing with each other.  The music only comes in at appropriate times as well, either when the action picks up or when you enter an enemy filled room, and instances when you are under water and are in remote silence, the game beautifully plays a soothing ballad to fit the scene.

If Chair had only included the above features, Shadow Complex would still be a terrific game.  They decided to go the extra mile and add in some online ranking features that make playing this game with friends a lot of fun.  While the game is a single player game, it keeps track of your stats and compares them with your friends as you play.  As you do things in the game, such as earning head shots, kicking bombs or dispatching soldiers with melee attacks, you’ll occasionally get a pop-up on the right side of the screen comparing your stats with that of the person on your friends list who’s directly ahead of you.  It may be a small detail, but it’s one that will hopefully become standard practice.  This sort of real-time feedback adds a more social layer to what would’ve normally been a strictly solitary experience.

Shadow Complex is an excellent example of what is possible when you blend modern technology with traditional 2D gameplay.  Not only does the game do a great job of presenting itself, but it proves that a game of this style can be done well on a modern console.  We hope that we will see more of this style of game come out in the near future.

Score: 9.4 | Suggestion: Don’t Hesitate, Buy It!

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About This Author: Filippo Dinolfo

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