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Shadow Complex Remastered
PC (Steam)
Worth the Wait
4.5/5 stars
Way back in 2009, Epic Games published a new ‘Metroidvania’ style Indie game by Chair Entertainment exclusively on the Xbox 360. At the time, classic console-style genres like this were critically endangered, as the influx of Shooters and Sandboxes from the West flooded the market. Yet, instead of releasing this new game, “Shadow Complex,” on multiple platforms, as was discovered to be the most economically sound strategy in the 7th Generation, Epic Games released it exclusively on Xbox Live Arcade, the digital gaming platform tied intrinsically to Patient Zero of the Shooter and Sandbox plague. I really wanted to play this game at the time, and hoped that it would come to PlayStation Network, much like “Braid” and other Indie games before it. It never did.
Six years later, Epic Games finally came to their senses and decided to share “Shadow Complex” with a much wider slice of gamers than those who owned the Xbox 360 AND were willing to partake in Xbox Live Arcade’s DRM nonsense. “Shadow Complex Remastered” (“SCR”) was released in 2015 for PC, PS4 (via PSN), and XBONE (via XLA… again). Epic even went so far as to give away free copies of the game to anyone who was willing to download and install their Epic Games Launcher app… which I did. As I dove into “SCR” for the first time, I really hoped it was worth the wait.
Presentation
For a remaster, “SCR” doesn’t look all that… remastered. It’s an Unreal Engine game that was originally released in 2009, and it looks like an Unreal Engine game that was originally released in 2009. The problems with the game’s looks only negatively impact it during cutscenes, though, as the traditional sidescrolling camera is situated far enough away from the action that characters and environments both look good during gameplay. During cutscenes, though, stiff animation, muddy textures, and some slightly off character models don’t do the rest of the game justice. As for the gameplay camera hiding a variety of inadequacies, I would have actually preferred the camera to be pulled back slightly more than it is, as it makes the gameplay feel nearly as boxed-in as a standard definition (non-widescreen) TV.
Sound in “SCR” is fairly well done. The soundtrack isn’t particularly aggressive, but when it does make itself known, it works quite well. The voiceacting features a slew of go-to, de-facto videogame voiceactors, including the nauseatingly omnipresent Nolan North as the main character, Jason Fleming. I don’t even play most of the “AAA” swill that North has done voice work for, but I’m already sick of his generic everyman-ness.
Technically, “SCR” is a thing of beauty. It runs well, has a number of PC video options, natively supports Xinput, and just works without a whole lot of fiddling. It’s even DRM free, however Epic Games doesn’t want us to know that. See, when I downloaded “SCR” for free during a promotional period, I was required to do so from within the Epic Games Launcher, which is yet another attempt at forcing an annoying publisher-specific client upon PC gamers, much like Origin and Uplay. Thankfully, the Epic Games Launcher is as lightweight as it is useless, and some clever folks on the Internet discovered that feeding a set of command line arguments (-AUTH_LOGIN=unused -AUTH_PASSWORD=unused -AUTH_TYPE=exchangecode) to the “SCR” executable will allow it to bypass the Launcher completely, with the small sacrifice of losing the ability to access the game’s leaderboards, which is actually no loss at all.
Story
“SCR” is actually a tie-in to author Orson Scott Card’s “EMPIRE” novel series. This is interesting because it explains why the game’s premise isn’t completely horrible (The devs had a REAL WRITER to consult!), and also makes “SCR” one of the best licensed IPs I’ve ever played.
Generic white-boy every-man, Jason Fleming, whose father is apparently a high muckety-muck in the U.S. military, always wanted his son to enlist, and trained him from an early age in the various arts of war. Jason had other ideas, and instead went to college and started dating an anthropologist/spelunker named Claire. While on a spelunking expedition together, Jason and Claire accidentally stumble upon (one of) the hidden lairs of a secret paramilitary organization called The Restoration, whose leader, Lucius (e.g., the default given name of every second-born son throughout the history of Rome), desires nothing more than to burn down the established government of the United States in order to rebuild the nation as the greatest military empire since Imperial Rome.
Jason, in an attempt to find a way to escape with his best girl, comes across some fancy high-tech armor and proceeds to run riot through the underground complex, sabotaging The Restoration’s advanced weaponry. He eventually learns of this particular Restoration branch’s plans to invade San Francisco, which motivated him to wipe them out once and for all.
While at first “SCR” comes across as the type of cheesy narrative one might expect of an NES game (“Blaster Master” comes to mind, with a hero named Jason diving into a vast underground complex on a rescue mission), it’s actually a reasonably entertaining story. The background in Card’s novels provides a structure for the game to build upon, though I would have preferred a bit more lore scattered around the complex, as I have never read “EMPIRE” or “HIDDEN EMPIRE” and don’t have any plans to do so.
“SCR,” as most tried-and-true ‘Metroidvania’ games, only lasts about 10 hours for a blind first run, but it never wears out its welcome and is entertaining for the whole duration.
Gameplay
In the intervening years between the release of the original version of “Shadow Complex” and the release of “SCR,” I have had the opportunity to play a LOT of ‘Metroidvania’ style Action/Adventure games. Games in this style always feature a vast, interconnected map instead of discreet stages/levels, hidden power-ups, and character progression based on picking-up key items that both empower the main character and enhance their ability to navigate the environment in some way, be it via a double jump or some method to clear previously-immovable obstacles.
“SCR” is one of the truest games to the style I’ve played. Other ‘Metroidvanias’ mix things up in novel ways, but “SCR” just takes to basic building blocks of the Action/Adventure genre and crafts a very nice game out of them. Yes, “SCR” does have experience points and leveling in addition to item pick-ups, but that particular nugget has been around in the style since the PS1 era.
Because it doesn’t rely on gimmicks, “SCR” is free to simply be the best ‘Metroidvania’ it can be. The map is well laid-out, the secrets are cleverly hidden but never require a FAQ to figure out, and the combat evolves the aiming mechanics first used in “Super Metroid” and “Metroid Zero Mission” to full 360-degree freedom of aiming thanks to the modern default dual-analog controller layout. The controls are responsive and accurate, the boss battles are well designed, and the power-ups are interesting.
The only negative I could slap against “SCR’s” gameplay is the fact that it does have a horrible tendency to lead the player by the nose to where they are supposed to go next via a line drawn on the game map. I appreciate the waypoint showing where the next key objective is, but I found that in at least one occasion, when I went off the path that the game wanted me to follow to the next objective, I accidentally skipped a cutscene trigger, which then saw me wandering around aimlessly for an hour wondering why there wasn’t actually a new objective at the objective marker.
Overall
I’m no fan of remasters in general. However, I love it when a remaster exists solely for the purpose of spreading access to a game across a broader variety of platforms. “Shadow Complex Remastered” finally frees one of the greatest ‘Metroidvania’ games of the 7th Generation from the shackles of Xbox Live Arcade. It was definitely worth the wait.
Presentation: 3.5/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Overall (not an average): 4.5/5
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