An underwhelming game, that isn't quite welcome inside my disc drive...
And it's only now, after playing this game for two days [not endlessly, though, I DO have games like Call of Duty 2 and Civilisation IV to get one with] , I can officially declare what I think about this game. And, as you can see from my score, it's not a particularly good impression. And now, I'm going to tell you why...
Shadow the Hedgehog cleverly follows the story of Shadow. Duh. And, again, he's moaning about not being able to remember anything, the usual "Who am I? How did I get here?" And again, he has a generic, depressing voice a la the one he had in Sonic Heroes. Then, some freaky aliens start invading in the city of Westopolis, and Shadow is debating over whether or not to get involved where a figure of evil appears in front of him, called the Black Doom, and apparently he knows a bit about Shadow, and tells him that he must find the 7 Chaos Emeralds. So, nothing imaginative.
The gameplay, which you're forced into right after the dull intro, is again, a bit dull. The city has been overrun and you can either take the good side or the bad side in this battle, either way it's guaranteed you're going to do a lot of running forward fast. And running forward fast isn't that bad; it's slick and enjoyable, but it's actually when you have to execute moves and press buttons when the horribleness comes in; the controls aren't very well designed, the correct word for them is clunky, and everything feels so half-hearted in this game. Some of the controls are the same as Sonic Heroes, and the actual gameplay is pretty much the same, but there's one major addition, one that everyone is gloating about: the gun.
The guns and weapons are just a new mechanic that nobody is really going to bother with. Basically, you pick up the weapons from your fallen victims and fire their remaining bullets at some more. The aiming system is awful and you can never really get a clean shot at an enemy and there's no satisfying feeling when you gun down an enemy, whether good or bad. Ammo is pretty thin on the ground as well, and when there is a gun lying on the floor it's unlikely you're going to stop running forward fast to pick the bloody thing up. Frankly, the gun mechanic is pathetic, when it could have been quite good.
And what makes the gunplay and combat doubly annoying is the camera. If ever this website had a Worst Camera of the Year Award [which it probably did] Shadow the Hedgehog would have been a dead cert to take the biscuit. The view mindlessly swings around when there's clearly no point in it, and has a tendency to do so in the worst moments, like when you're shooting a giant grey worm sticking up from the ground. It's fiddly getting it back to normal as well, you have to endlessly tweak the right thumbstick to see what's ahead of you and can get very infuriating at times.
So there's the annoying part out of the way, let's get onto the graphics. While they're not exactly groundbreaking, they aren't particularly bad. The animation is a bit rubbish and the cutscenes are crap, but to balance that out there's a few motion blur effects, flashy moments, and some decent character models. In the end, though, it all looks disappointingly Dreamcast.
And the audio. There's some good music in there, but then Sonic games always have a half-decent soundtrack. But the voice-overs are trash. That Charmy bee guy, he really gets on my nerves. It's like Sega purposely put in a voice almost as annoying as that bloody Crazy Frog, just to annoy the hell out of me. Like the rest of the game, the sound, on the most part, is not much of an effort.
And, probably for your own good, the game doesn't last that long. One thing I'll give it credit- it does have a bit of replay value, as it takes pride in its alignment system. Each level has multiple paths through it and in the end, a would-have-been-measly amount of stages adds up to a more substantial 22. But to be honest, there's better games than this to play and you will get fed up with how lame this game can get.
So in case you're one of those people who automatically skip to the last paragraph of every review they read, just to get the grips of what the reviewer thinks, I'll just highlight that Shadow is a disappointing game. Sega should be ashamed of themselves for what a lame effort they have put in to this game, and hopefully next time, when Sonic hits next-gen, they can actually make a charming, intense ride, instead of the sad, lame ride they have provided us with here. The needless new features they've put in this game have turned Shadow into one of the most hated characters of the franchise in my book. Just to clarify, a mediocre game.