Shadow Complex

Jason Fleming, your day is now officially toast. What you thought was a nice hiking trip out in the woods with your new girlfriend, Claire, has turned into some sort of crazy action movie — complete with kidnapping and a secret society armed with giant mechs and weapons of rich, foamy mass destruction. It’s lucky for the fate of the entire United States, then, that you have some serious, military-level skills at kicking secret-society ass and the dogged male determination to fight, fight, fight for the booty call you so richly deserve once you rescue Claire from the shadowy evil-doers. But first you have to survive…

And surviving Shadow Complex’s gorgeous, epic-sized quest wouldn’t be the gleefully addictive, hour-eroding treat it is without the presence and heavy muscle of the game’s real main character: its intricate, multi-layered, and gargantuan world map. This thing is sick. The way that new areas become accessible throughout the game — through a carefully paced reward system of power-ups that you discover as you progress — will feel wonderfully old-school and familiar to 16-bit vets of Metroid and Castlevania…even though Chair has crafted it all in lovely, gleaming, modern pseudo-3D.

You’ll find yourself seeking out hidden tunnels for collectible goodies, diving deep beneath murky underground waters to reveal new areas, and jet-packing high above outdoor forests to find ways to beef up your grade-A superhero-level armor or add new weapon enhancements to your arsenal. The moment you drop into the sprawling underground complex crawling with chatty baddies (we overheard two enemy soldiers joking that instead of liberating Chicago, why not just liberate the Cubs? Got a good giggle out of us!), it’s like you’ve just strolled into a videogame version of Hotel California. Yes, you can check out, but you’ll never leave. Not until it’s all done. And that’s fine because despite the whole “overthrowing the government” bad guys, we kinda like it here.

Compulsive map exploration aside (we’re admitted addicts), action is the second time-hoarding appointment on Jason’s gameplay schedule. Your busytime consists of shooting up hordes of masked soldiers (our total kills reached into the 1,500-plus range), kicking bots called Bombas, and grenading and missile-targeting the holy fudge out of mechanical nightmares in boss fights. The game plays out entirely on a side-scrolling 2D plane, but your enemies come from all angles. Your auto-aiming should ideally take care of all comers (thank goodness for a laser sight!), but in some instances, poor Jason takes unnecessary hits because of the 2D/3D approach. Not a big deal, but getting kicked back to a Save Room can be frustrating. Still, what’s an old-school homage without a little challenge?

That leaves only a few niggling beefs on the table for Shadow Complex. First is the extensive amount of backtracking through the map. Yeah, yeah…we realize that the nature of the power-up progression makes this an inherent feature, but for anti-backtrackers, you are warned. We didn’t mind it, but some will.

The other is something we feel like whiny brats for complaining about. In short, we want more — more areas, more power-ups, and even more story. The game’s spectacular final blowout leads into a quickie quasi–plot twist of a tie-up that left us wondering if we’d missed something. We were spoiled by Shadow Complex’s sophisticated environments, and while we could settle for the truckload of timed challenges in the nifty Proving Grounds collection of mini-games, we wanted to fall back into the darkened corridors of the sinister Restoration’s high-tech mazes for more, more, more. But isn’t that always how great games make you feel? Hell yes!