Metroidvania. I have a better time with Metroid than Castlevania, but truth be told, I think I have a better time with games that are inspired by the two, rather than games that have their names attached.
I can remember playing CounterSpy on the PlayStation Vita, set in a fictional, James Bond-like Cold War that has you sneak around huge bases looking for nuclear weapons or something. I liked it because it reminded me of another similar game that I'd watched on YouTube, long before.
That game was Shadow Complex, a Metroidvania game brought to life through the Unreal Engine, starring yet another dark-haired white guy stumbling into the extraordinary, gun in hand but no desire to kill.
That'll probably change in no time...
Fun Times
While I was on the Xbox 360 for The Dishwasher demo, I noticed I had the demo for Shadow Complex on the hard drive too, so fired it up and sat back for however long it took for the demo to end and a prompt to unlock the full game with a simple purchase came up.
It was quite a lot of demo that ended after an unusual boss fight, and I sat back, pleased with myself that at some point in the past, I'd bought Shadow Complex Remastered for the PC because I really wanted to play more of this.
Unfortunately, higher powers have overridden the suit to turn it into a useless husk, probably trapping this hero inside for good measure, and they've even gloated over the phone that they've just blown up the Vice President of the United States. Whoever the bad guys are, they're certainly a step ahead of this chap.
Cut to elsewhere in the US, where Claire and Jason are hiking in the woods, engaging in a bit of caving for good measure. Not a euphemism, but Jason is voiced by (and looks like) Nolan North, so there are strong hints at romance, to say the least.
Claire has run ahead and left her bag behind, and already you get the idea that she's gone missing after just a twenty-second head start. But, as Shadow Complex is a Metroidvania game, her backpack counts as climbing gear, and climbing gear allows us to grab ledges, something this cave is full of.
Already, Shadow Complex shines. The Remastered version ups that shine, of course, but the original release was a bit of a looker as well. As you're only ever looking at scenes from one angle, there's plenty of depth and detail on display, and the more you explore it, the more you'll be rewarded with stat progression and hidden items.
Finding some sort of office, we happen upon a live video feed of Claire getting slapped around. Combined with an out of place, black and white flashback of Jason and his dad, and a pistol on the desk nearby, this is the reason for Jason to drop his desire to kill nobody in a heartbeat. One bad guy punching the woman I might be coupling up with later? Everyone's about to meet their maker.
But first, the turret that has dropped from the ceiling. Aiming with the right stick is easy when there's a laser beam stuck on the end of your gun, but I think this is an option you can turn off for some extra difficulty.
Ammo is also plentiful, in that it's infinite. I'm liking Shadow Complex more and more, can you tell?
Claire has already been removed from the interrogation room and our next objective is to catch up before it's too late. There's no timer or anything here, so catching up will happen whenever you say it does, leaving you plenty of time to explore the map, which gets added to each time you get a new objective and find a save room and the like.
The blue line may be another easy difficulty addition. What can I say? I want to enjoy Shadow Complex, not be put off by it.
And enjoy it I do. Jason is a capable fella, jumping and clambering around like Nathan Drake, probably faster even. It can sometimes be a bit tricky to see where it is you want to jump or what you'll be grabbing onto until Jason automatically does so when near enough, but you'll get used to the controls in no time at all.
Aiming is a little trickier until enemies come into the same plane you're fixed to, but you can shoot them, generally speaking, wherever you find them. Aim for the head to take them down in one shot and work your way towards some achievements - Shadow Complex has a story to follow, but I think it knows it's about the gameplay above anything else.
Frustrations
Because I had played through all of this in the demo, I was whizzing through it on the Remastered version, so quickly that there were often times where, especially when entering a new room, that the entire game would pause and stutter as something no doubt loaded in the background.
It upsets whatever flow you had, and can result in the enemy getting the drop on you just as you thought you had the drop on them. I wonder how much of it is down to various effects and graphics settings, as much as it to do with speeding through from place to place.
It is, thankfully, a minor quirk, and we can crack on with working our way through this cavernous complex in search of Claire.
Enemies can shoot you from off-screen, but it doesn't happen too often. They'll usually be completely oblivious to your presence unless you make yourself known, such as by shooting a robot to drop and explode at their feet, for example, at which point all hell breaks loose for a short while until the threats to you disappear.
Further Fun Times
At the bottom of this long drop - and true to its word, you don't take fall damage, thank the Lord - is the first boss, a giant robot spider. Defeating this with some grenades you find in a nearby room ends the Xbox 360 demo, but I get the joy of finding out where Shadow Complex goes from here, and I really can't emphasise enough how much I want to see what lay ahead.
I'm told that I've already passed areas with lots of goodies and secrets, some of which inevitably weren't available to me until I had my hands on some grenades, and learned a little more about how you can move around.
This is the nature of Metroidvania, of course. Do you backtrack and hunt everything down, or push forward until you hit a wall that requires a bit of backtracking?
I elect to push forward. Gold isn't all that, and I don't know what passkeys are for anyway.
 |
| Surprise! |
Once again, we learn of Claire's whereabouts by seeing her getting removed from those whereabouts, this time in a helicopter, defended on the ground by a big ol' mech.
You can sneak around the back of it, and potentially ignore it altogether and proceed unscathed, but I had grenades and it was a target. I'll get to Claire eventually, don't worry.
It is safe to say that I was having quite the blast with Shadow Complex by now. Yeah, there were the odd hiccups and stutters, the odd moment of not quite knowing where it wants me to go, a few awkward jumps that resulted in bringing the game and its engine front and centre, stopping me from getting absorbed into the setting, but all of these irks were spread out amongst what was otherwise really fun gameplay.
All I was doing was working out how to get from one side of a room to the other, defeating any opponent I needed to along the way, but the way I was tasked with doing so, and the environments I was placed in, made it all the more cooler.
Shadow Complex just felt complete, mostly polished, simple enough for a dunce like me to get far in, and rewarding for anyone who stuck with it. In the back of my mind, I knew I could easily be playing this for the next few hours at least, but I also knew I had to find a good place to call it quits for this session soon.
You'd imagine that here would be a great place, as we walk in a dispose of an evil doctor in a single bullet. Not even a boss fight, all in a cutscene. Claire has been paralysed, and carrying her out isn't an option, so she suggests hiding her behind some cabinets and going off to find a tank.
If you say so...
There are no tanks nearby, but I did find a turret and a rare change of camera angle as I got behind it to unleash some pent up fury. The B button is used to execute a melee takedown, either from the front or behind, and is also used to get behind the triggers of a turret. I like the B button.
By this point, I am both desperate to keep playing and desperate to stop. I've been all over this place, yet there is so much more of it to explore, and I must easily have killed close to a hundred soldiers already, if not more.
Each screen, especially the large open halls, is a joy to just be in, and when it all kicks off and the air fills with fire, it's even better. On easy difficulty at least, you can just Rambo your way through an area like it's no big deal, and it feels great.
This underground base already makes no sense, so let's stick a mine section in here, complete with minecart track and jump, for that little bit of Indiana Jones flair, too. A couple of lever puzzles can't stop me from making progress. What was I doing again? Looking for a tank, right?
And that, finally, an hour in, was the kind of stopping point I needed to see: one that I really didn't want to stop at.
Final Word
It doesn't take a genius to work out that I can't wait to get back to some more Shadow Complex. Whatever it is that appeals to me - the setting, the graphics, the controls - it's absolutely gripped me. I love games like this that, on the surface, I perhaps wouldn't have gone for myself, but that when I did play them I was hooked.
It reminds me of something like Dead Nation, a twin-stick zombie shooter for the PlayStation 3 that's best played in co-op. I might even have gotten it as part of the 'Welcome Back, sorry for the hack' program, but I was so damn glad I did because in the hand it felt amazing to play. Even managed to play it, or some of it at least, in co-op too. Local co-op, as well. Blimey, the past was a weird time...
This isn't Dead Nation, though. Shadow Complex is a different genre entirely but has similarities elsewhere. Both games are relatively short, compact affairs that do what they do with such focus and attention that whatever shortcomings they may have get forgotten and overlooked on account of how well done everything else is.
Is this a game with issues? Yes, it is. Are they enough to put you off playing it full stop? Not in the slightest. Shadow Complex stands out as Metroidvania done right, and shown off in its own way, in three dimensions.
Will I hunt down every secret by exploring every nook and cranny? Probably not, but when it's this easy to pick up and that hard to put down, you never know.
Fun Facts
Video games branch out into many other forms of media, and the story in Shadow Complex bridges the gap between two Orson Scott Card novels, Empire and Hidden Empire.
Shadow Complex, developed by Chair Entertainment, Epic Games, first released in 2009.
Versions played: Shadow Complex Demo, Xbox 360, 2009.
Shadow Complex Remastered, PC, 2015.