I like games… sometimes.
Archive for August, 2009
Shadow Complex (360)
Aug 25th
Jason Flemming: he is no one, and he his everyone. He is also your main character in Shadow Complex, the last title in the Summer of Arcade line of games for 2009. Created by Chair Entertainment (part of Epic Games and of Undertow fame), Shadow Complex actually takes place within the Empire universe made famous by Orson Scott Card… although there’s little here that makes that apparent.
After a brief “Look at all the stuff you’ll be able to do later!” segment, the real game kicks off while you are on a hike with a pretty young lady. She goes on ahead then disappears while you follow her trail. Jason is presented as your normal, everyday fellow… thrown into an extraordinary situation and takes it upon himself to stop a rogue group of terrorists, called the Progressive Restoration, from starting the second Civil War (somehow). The story here is not spoon fed to you, and you’re always left without that omniscient feeling. You only see and hear what Jason sees and hears and are better off for it.
Jason is so ill-equipped for the task that he doesn’t even start off the game with a gun… but why would you if you’re on a hike? Instead, you get a flashlight and some climbing gear while you head into the enemy base tucked away in a underground cavern. The only superhuman thing about Jason is that he doesn’t take damage from long falls. Instead, as you progress and explore Shadow Complex’s rather large map, you’ll find new gadgets to make yourself a little better here and there. You’ll find numerous gun upgrades, secondary fire modes, a mini booster jetpack and more. Most of these upgrades will allow you to access previously unavailable areas of the map. Additionally, exploring and taking down enemies earns you XP in-game, and at each level increase you’ll improve even more with accuracy and health upgrades among others.
The combination of gear pickups and experience based leveling is really one of the strong points here. It never feels like a grind to get to the next level, instead you are always improving yourself in a more gradual progression instead of a stepped one. Furthermore, you can earn achievements for performing a specific number of enemy takedowns which are all tracked on the game’s leaderboard system. Once you hit the “achievement” level, sure you’ll unlock the achievement, but you’re still competing with your friends to see who can melee the most baddies, or get the most headshots. It’s a great little meta system.
Using the Unreal Engine, Shadow Complex is really quite a great looking Xbox Live Arcade game, and arguably the best looking out of them all. The mountainside are lush, animations are smooth, and there are no load times once the game gets going. Additionally, while at it’s core is a 2D platformer, every bit of the game has some depth to it, some of which force you to attack enemies that are in the background.
While it looks good, SC lacks much of the character found in the games it borrows from… you’re just running and gunning like some generic dude. There are also several glitches which really detract from the immersion, like running up to an enemy to melee him, and clipping through the wall, or not having a specific animation kick in when you’re trying to wall jump. I even had one point where I had to restart the game thanks to an audio loop getting stuck. There are other points as well where the 3D elements don’t seem to make sense… Why do I have to jump off a landing when there are stairs right there?
Shadow Complex borrows just about everything it has from the 15 year old Super Metroid, the exploration and map, to the carbon copy weapon and ability upgrades. It does little to innovate on the formula, but that doesn’t make it bad at all. Shadow Complex is a solid, great looking “Metroid-vania” game that could have spent some more time in the cooker to iron out some weird glitches that take place. Most importantly, it is a fun game. If you’ve ever played post-Symphony of the Night Castlevania titles, or Super Metroid, you know what you should expect here and can decide if you want to do it again or not. Those of you who haven’t, give it try and see why exploration games of this ilk has become beloved by many over the years.
Score: 4 out of 5
The Good
Visually, one of the best Xbox Live Arcade titles available
Entertaining, tried and true, exploration and upgrade gameplay
If you’re a completionist, this game will keep you busy for a long, long time
The Bad
Quirky bugs detract from the overall experience
Lacks some charm found in similar games of it’s kind
The Ugly
Did Chair just copy and paste portions out of Super Metroid? Let’s try to change things up a bit more next time.
‘Splosion Man (360)
Aug 4th
Something has gone wrong in a mad scientists’ laboratory. They’ve created an uncontrollable, maniacal creature who glows red and has a strange fascination with Arnold Schwarzenegger movies… Oh, and he can make himself detonate at will and has escaped. You are this creature, and its your job to make those scientists pay for… I guess creating you?
The story isn’t the strong point of this game. In fact, it’s barely there. So if you’re looking for the next Godfather movie, move on. Instead, this game is all about the platforming. ‘Splosion Man could just as well be played with an old school NES controller as there’s really only two things you can do: Move and ‘Splode. You can also suicide but most of the time you’ll just die. As long as your feet are on the ground, you can explode just about whenever you want, but once you go airborne, you’re limited to three blows which equates to triple jumping.
Most of the time, you’re running (or being propelled) from left to right, trying to get through 50 increasingly complex levels of death. Reaction time is critical and you need to be as precise as possible, or you die. Miss one detonation? Die. Blow up a hair too late? Die. Forget to pick up the fat scientist? Die. In fact, you will die in this game more than you’d probably like to… but don’t worry too much. While you’ll have to re-try sections of the game numerous times, the developers have crafted the levels beautifully, throwing down checkpoints in all the right places so you never have to repeat too much over and over.
The game is broken up into three worlds, each with its own quirky and entertaining final boss battle. While you blow through the game, you’ll learn new mechanics pretty much right when you just begin feeling like you need a new mechanic to learn. Each of the levels is setup as a mini puzzle and has a “par time” that you can attempt to hit (and probably fail doing so). Optimally, you’ll shoot for the fastest time through a level and that info is posted to the Xbox Live Leaderboards, but at first you’re probably just going to work at trying to get through a level without quitting or lobbing your controller through your LCD.
In an effort to reduce the feeling of platforming fatigue, Twisted Pixel have injected ‘Splosion Man with plenty of charm and whimsy (and gasoline probably). The lead character is memorable, maniacal, and magical with plenty of hilarious animations and voice work. Sometimes he’ll throw his arms out to the side and pretend he’s an airplane, other times he’ll hunch over and pretend he’s a gorilla complete with gorilla sounds. The levels are full of frightened scientists who both try to stop you, and run away from your explosiveness. If they get too close to a boom, they’ll comically turn into steaks and hams (no blood, just comedy here). There’s even a big, fat, donut eating scientist that comes with his own donuts theme song. If anything bad can be said about the artwork, its the backgrounds. Each world has a specific tileset that never deviates too far from the generic. A bit more variety would have been welcome.
In addition to the lengthy single player campaign, there’s a whole separate co-op multiplayer focused set of levels that are designed to be less about pinpoint precision, and more about working together as a team. You can take up to four folks (both online and offline) and try to traverse the levels with your own colored version of ‘Splosion Man. In addition to the new levels, you even get a few more mechanics to play with, like super jumps off of one another, and even a way to coordinate timed explosions.
‘Splosion Man is a classic platformer with changes made in all the right places. It’s a great looking, sometimes hilarious, often frustrating game, but its a hell of a lot of fun. Hearing ‘Splosion Man yell “GET TO THE CHOPPAH!” in a chipmunk inspired voice while blowing the meat out of a scientist makes the hair pulling seem not so bad and honestly, who doesn’t like explosions OR meat? Bad people, that’s who. Having the single player alone makes this game worthy of the price tag, but throwing an entirely separate cooperative mode makes it an incredible value. If you’ve got any love for the old platformers and want to see what a well done, more recent entry can pull off… go buy this game.
Score: 5 out of 5
The Good
Incredible sense of humor and style
Spot on platforming is difficult, but doesn’t get old
Plenty of stuff to do
The Bad
Needs more background variety
The Ugly
Missing a jump by that much.