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Hey guys, and welcome to Nates' Reviews, Shadow The Hedgehog.
Now before I start this thing let me just point out that this game is called , Shadow, the hedgehog
not sonic the hedgehog.
now lets get started.
Shadow the hedgehog can, in a sense, be called the sequel to sonic heroes
it uses the same game engine and was released over a year after heroes.
The game has a very dark atmosphere about it,
it is shadow's game after all,
Anyways the game starts off with shadow looking over a city,
its called westopolis I believe,
when the black arms or black aliens whatever term you prefer invade the city
shadow turns to walk away then black doom comes from NO where and tells him
that it's time
as if shadow can really remember anything oh yeah he has amnesia.
So shadow must set out to get all the chaos emeralds to get his memories back
why they are the key to unlocking his memories I don't know
but that's what he needs.
The gameplay consist of the same platforming elements as seen in previous sonic games before it.
However there is a twist of sorts, each stage you play through gives you three different
missions to choose from which are labeled as dark
hero and normal missions
there are some levels that only give either Dark and Hero missions but those are usually later on in
the game when you've become greatly Evil, Good , or Neutral.
The missions you complete directly affect which levels, cut scenes, and endings
you get to see
which definitely gives a nice sense of replayability since as far as I
know there are at least three hundred different possible combinations of stages
although the difference between them all gets fairly miniscule as you find more combinations.
shadow can utilize his enemies weapons to his advantage whether they be
eggmans robots, G.U.N. soldiers, or the black aliens,
this gives you a nice way of mixing up how you go about defeating various enemies.
also you can occasionally board vehicles like a motorcycle, truck, and for some
reason one of the flying black aliens which is actually kind of fun.
There are some secret weapons that you can unlock by beating the game via the different
endings one of which is a laser cannon that locks on to an enemy and shoots
from the sky down which is amazing.
The boss battles aren't very memorable and are usually stupidly easy if anything you
you may get worked over by the camera jittering around or a sudden loss of
ability to control where shadow is going.
The partner characters like sonic, tails, espio, vector, FIND THE COMPUTER ROOM,
umm...
where was I? oh yeah,
The partner characters will accompany you during your play-though they can vary between
black doom, or any of sonic's friends and even eggman albeit it through a small
floating television screen but
eggman nonetheless.
At the top left and right of the screen you have two bars which fill up with each G.U.N.
soldier, robot or black alien you kill you get blue for killing aliens and
red for killing G.U.N. soldiers or eggmans robots. When the red bar fills up you can
unleash a chaos blast which basically kills everything around you and can be
used over and over until the bar is empty of course. If you fill up the blue bar you can
use chaos control although it doesn't stop time unless your in a boss battle which is
strange since that's what its known for
anyways in a usual level it acts as a speed up or a super boost of sorts which will
speed you all the way to the goal unless of course the bar runs out if you aren't careful
though you can occasionally end up completing the wrong mission at times
not too big a deal but it is an issue
The game does have a two player mode but in all honesty it seems very slapped on and
isn't really worth your time
something cool though is that during certain missions in the game
you can control the partner characters via a second controller which I feel is a lot more fun than the multiplayer
and is a neat little trick you can control Sonic, Espio, Vector, Rouge,
Omega, Tails, Amy, Maria, and Knuckles which leaves Charmy as the only character you cannot
control with a second controller.
For the time the graphics actually look pretty good
but having been released so far after sonic heroes I can see why it was naturally
expected to have some changes to the graphics engine
it does have a few changes but nothing exasperatingly noticeable.
and don't get me started on the CG cut scenes SEGA never seems to disappoint
with those
they stand up very well even to this day. The music in this game for me is
actually pretty cool but I suppose it can be too gritty for some people,
this was intended for a much more mature audience even then SEGA sticks to the techno
that we know they love and I know I love it just as much.
The small blurbs of "profanity"
aren't really that bad the words Damn, and Hell
being the only adult words but seriously
these are things most kids have heard before they even turn 3 there's a reason
SEGA got away with a E+10 rating after all.
All in all this game really isn't all that bad I will admit there are
certain quirks it has that aren't very satisfying and having a partner
character yell at you when you try to accomplish a mission can be
annoying to some for myself however I find it funny to go against everything
they tell you
The common issue is that people call it a sonic game which it isn't
just read the title of the game it was never supposed to be a game staring
sonic
its about shadow and his past and SEGA wanted to differentiate him
from sonic and give him his own game-play
the idea was literally to NOT be a sonic game
but a shadow game
people very often forget that fact.
I'm going to give this game a beautiful 8/10
I think despite some hiccups that bound around in the game and a lackluster
multiplayer mode
this is no where near as bad as people make it out to be and i'll boldly say that
this is a decent game where popular belief is just so far from the truth.
This has been Nates' Reviews: Shadow The Hedgehog, See you guys next time