Shadow Vault isn't a bad game, but it probably should have been a budget title.
User Rating: 5.8 | Shadow Vault PC
If you are considering buying Shadow Vault, then it’s probably because you are a big fan of tactical combat games or turn-based RPG's like Fallout. If that’s the case, then you probably are willing to look past outdated production values to find satisfying gameplay. Even if you can, you still should at least wait until the game is in the bargain bin. The graphics are badly outdated, the translation is awful, the sound effects are weak, the role playing elements are shallow, at best, and the story is incoherent nonsense. What Shadow Vault does provide is some strategy and tactical combat that is satisfying, but not outstanding. Thus, it may have made a good budget game, but it’s forgettable otherwise. The premise of the game is that a group of men from the future, The Contingent, has come back to the present to take over the Earth. The Alliance forms to defend the Earth from the futuristic invaders. You learn this part of the story during the initial cutscene, which is also where you will notice this game’s first big flaw. The translation is bad, and the voice-over doesn’t match the text on the screen. We’re not talking about an occasional word or phrase being off. There is literally not one sentence in the entire game where the voice over matches the text on screen. During missions, the text regularly suffers from some blatant grammar and vocabulary mistakes, like confusing the word “locate” with “localize”. Some of them are so bad that they make certain sentences almost incomprehensible, forcing you to read them more than once. Interestingly, the website for the game is plagued with the same kinds of errors, and it still shows Summer 2004 as a “future” release date. It makes you wonder whether it’s a miracle that the game actually works. Whatever story “Shadow Vault” has also appears to have been lost in the translation. What remains makes no sense at all, and the game ends abruptly without explaining any of the weird events that occur during the game. The game occasionally changes perspectives and even allows you to play as The Contingent for a few levels, but what ties all of these points together is a total mystery. It’s as if the story were half-written and then thrown haphazardly into the game when the team ran out of money. The story can make or break a game like this, and Shadow Vault fails miserably here. Shadow Vault adopts the action point system used by most turn-based games of this type. Each character under your command has a certain amount of action points, which can be spent shooting, using special abilities, or moving. Your characters gain experience each mission, and you carry over the survivors from one mission to the next. That’s about all that the role playing elements add to the game, since you can’t select which of your abilities you wish to upgrade. Since it fails to make up for this with an interesting role-playing system or a compelling story, Shadow Vault’s core game mechanics are all that remain. For the most part, they are solid, and so are the missions that contain them. Gameplay is fairly stripped down and simple. Characters cannot run, crouch, lie prone, or use cover. The game uses a universal ammo system called “supplies”. The supply applies to all weapons. Guns, grenade launchers, and medics all use generic supply that is replenished from boxes or stores. Supply is all that the game has as far as inventory goes. You can’t pick up, equip, or remove weapons, or trade them amongst soldiers. The only way that the game reflects different weapons is with the abilities of different classes. Instead of providing the player with a huge variety of choice in classes and abilities, Shadow Vault takes the approach of having a small number of unique, well-balanced choices. This approach works well here. All of the game’s classes are useful, and as you progress through the game, you’ll find some clever ways of taking advantage of the synergy between them. The difficulty is also well-balanced. It’s hard enough to challenge you, but not enough to frustrate you. Most missions will take two or three tries to complete. Enemy AI aggressively targets your critical units, so it’s very easy to get them killed and have your game end. Most units in the game are pretty fragile, so one or two mistakes can get them killed. This leads to some trial and error, but it’s never overly frustrating. When you combine the game’s character classes with the variety of missions, Shadow Vault manages to stay fresh throughout all of its 21 levels. This is a good accomplishment, given how simple the gameplay is. Shadow Vault includes some interesting gameplay ideas that don’t pan out. You build prestige, and civilians donate equipment to you when you spend that prestige. It’s an intriguing, but unfortunately, it’s not developed. Another underdeveloped feature of the game is the attack dogs that you get, which can be combined with a soldier to form a group. This mechanic is of little use, since these dogs are fodder, at best. The abundance of grenade-like weapons makes the grouping feature useless. For the most part, Shadow Vault is an ugly and outdated looking game. The graphics are grainy and the various objects and creatures in the game are drawn with low detail. I would only rank the graphics slightly higher than the graphics for Fallout 2. Given how old Fallout 2 is, that’s not a compliment. There aren’t even any dying animations. Creatures just go from standing up straight to flat in one frame. There is a disappointing lack of voice over for the lines of the main characters. This is part of what makes them all forgettable. The only voice-acting in the game is for the narratives between missions. The sound effects are kind of ordinary. One positive aspect of the audio is the soundtrack. The low key tecno music is probably the best aspect of the game’s production values. It’s not going to win any awards, but it sounds good, and it’s sufficiently moody for the game’s apocalyptic atmosphere. The game manages to be sufficiently challenging to entertain you, if you can look past the horrible fist impression that it makes, and the lack of a story that makes any sense. There are 21 missions, and unless you ace them all the first time through, you are probably looking at 30 or more hours of gameplay. This is definitely not a bad game, but it is still a hard game to recommend at full price. The game is too ugly and the story is too poor to satisfy anybody but the hardcore fan. If you’re desperate for a turn-based tactical combat game, then check for it in the bargain bin. 
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