Template:REVIEW

{{collapse| Ohh boy. So apparently this was the top result of our first poll and I have to review the game for what it is. Thank God that I'm not doing essay-quality reviews of these games or this would take forever. Some background info before we begin: Shadow the Hedgehog is a multi-platform game released in 2005 to generally negative reception from critics, it's been known as the black sheep of the Gamecube era of Sonic titles for the game's unusual atmosphere and other little elements like its plot and overall direction. I mean, would you really expect a Sonic game to carry guns and alien blood into the mix...? I wouldn't if I never saw this game at all, and seeing it for the first time would probably damage my feelings about the franchise entirely.

So here's the gist: Shadow needs to figure out who he really is and is torn between joining Sonic's side to find his answers, the side of game antagonist Black Doom and his Black Arms alien race, or going independently to seek his own answers, and he needs to collect the Chaos Emeralds as he goes along. None of the endings are canon but that of the last story. The game is a 3D platformer like the mainstream games of its time but features Shadow instead of Sonic, although they control quite similarly. Perhaps the biggest difference between Shadow and the rest of the franchise is that Shadow has an abundance of weapons to choose from, be it from Eggman's robots, the Black Arms, or from G.U.N. robots.

Both back then and in retrospect, it is still seen as a bad game that damaged the series' reputation. The real question is, is it as bad as the general consensus happens to believe?

Plot
The plot of Shadow the Hedgehog is sort of a follow-up to the earlier release of Sonic Adventure 2, with Shadow attempting to discover who he truly is while attempting to gather the Chaos Emeralds for his task. That sounds simple enough on paper, but here's the catch: in just about every stage, you need to complete one of two or three tasks, and depending on the one you complete, you are taken to a whole other level. But that's where the story distorts: the story can heavily change and become awfully confusing as you go along, and the plots become non-comprehensible by about four stages in for most paths. Black Doom is consistent with his plans but Shadow and the story's locations bounce all over the place. It's like a jigsaw puzzle without all the needed pieces.

Plotholes are really abundant because of the reliance of the player's decision making and the 10 non-canon endings are each confusing and leave me to dry. What does Shadow do after each of those endings? Shadow implies what he is going to do some of the time but we're just left with credit rolls after them. The last story -- unlocked after finishing all of the other ones -- is the actual canon ending, but by the time you reach that part of the game you probably will be sick to your stomach of playing some of these stages (especially Westopolis) over and over and over again. The ending to the story has the Black Comet (where the Black Arms come from) destroyed with a blast from Space Colony ARK. The ending is decent but it's not rewarding for the stamina you took to get that far into the game.

Perhaps the worst part is that the plot is boring as hell atop being confusing. It's bad. It's maddening. And you shouldn't have to waste your time to get through each of those ten fake endings. The plot here angers me.

Presentation
The presentation of this game is a mixed bag, although in a really polarizing way: there are very good things here and very bad things. We'll start with the graphics... wow. They are unspeakably awful and some of the very worst in the entire series. The models almost look like they come from the N64 at times just with how simple and untextured they can be, which is insulting considering the game was released near the end of 128-bit gaming. Character models are a mess, especially in the cutscenes. While borrowing assets from Sonic Heroes, the game somehow looks way worse and the dim lighting throughout most of the game makes the characters look really dull and uninspired.

But apart from the graphics, the actual interfaces, menus, and HUD of the game are pretty damn good, everything looks nice even in a dark setting. Fonts help set up a nice aesthetic and the artwork done for the game is incredible when compared to the in-game models. The HD cutscenes in the game are really great to look at and try to help make this game better than it actually is (although because of the poor storytelling it really does not matter that much). Something to admit, too: while the graphics are a waste of talent, they would look worse if the settings were vibrant and colorful, so the fairly edgy setting suits the models fine. That doesn't excuse that they should look better, however.

Generally I'm mixed on the presentation, some things they could have done better and some things that could have been worse. Moving on.

Controls
What they did with the controls in Shadow the Hedgehog is a question I'm still pondering to this day. The controls have not improved from predecessor Sonic Heroes and are just as slippery and unstoppable as ever, and really do not mesh well with the more compact stages in this game. When you fling the control stick, Shadow fires off like a rocket, and his movement is really easy to stop. You're either going fast or you're not going at all, which makes little platforming challenges more tricky than they should be. Sonic Heroes had the excuse of having wide levels with huge stretches of ground that propelled the player forward to make up for some sloppy control, but Shadow the Hedgehog has more precise platforming as many of the missions require that you explore a lot. It's frustrating and exhausting. The guns, while fun to use, are really strong and can take the challenge out of fighting.

I'm annoyed with the controls in this game, and while the gun shooting is fun the mechanic is a little too overpowered for its own good.

Gameplay
While the controls are sloppy and can at times lead to untimely (and unfair) deaths, the actual gameplay isn't that bad. The level design, while repetitive, gets the job done and it's simple enough to move forward and race your way to the end of the stage. If you ignore the missions and just get straight to the Goal Ring or Chaos Emerald, you just have a short 3D adventure and little will actually stand in your way as the neutral stages have some of the best platforming design in the game. Using the guns is quite fun and it's a little difficult to not crack a smile when you're shooting everything in your way like a total badass. But if you're trying to actually complete the different missions to get all the endings, good luck with that.

A lot of enemies are hidden away in the stages, and you may need to stay in a level for up to 10, 15, or even 20 minutes just to find every single target, and it seems like it's intentional game design as I spent 10 minutes in one of these stages and came out with an "A" rank. While that rank felt good to get, your Sonic stages shouldn't be that long or enduring. It's frustrating and exhausting. However, for what the game does get right, they do it right, and that's kind of how it should go. The controls, if they were actually good, would probably make me satisfied with the general gameplay.

So while controlling is a disaster at times and you may need to spend many minutes just to hunt down objectives, the actual gameplay is solid and doesn't really break too much of what Heroes set up for it. I'm mixed on the gameplay.

Mechanics
Something that Shadow the Hedgehog excels in is the mechanics. The idea that you can choose your own path throughout the story is interesting and perhaps entertaining even if the corresponding story is poorly written or way too complicated to understand, and the missions are usually easy enough to understand and complete, it's the task of finding them that can be a royal pain in the ass. Shadow's homing attack works most of the time and his gun shooting is quite fun and entertaining. While Shadow's general skills like the spindash and his "chop" attacks aren't all that useful, the guns way more than make up for it and the game gives the player quite a number of them to use. Some stages even have their own exclusive weapons. Shadow can damage street signs and swing them around too or torches. Really, there was some love put into the gun aspects of the game.

By killing enemies, you can fill up the Hero and Dark meters to use Chaos Control and Chaos Blast, respectively. Chaos Control can be activated when enough Black Arms minions (or occasionally Eggman robots) are destroyed, and will propel the player forward a huge distance, which can be used to make some stages quite a bit shorter. It's sort of like a cheat code but it's useful for crossing parts of a stage you really dislike. Killing good guys though activates Chaos Blast, a powerful attack that knocks out many enemies on the screen. Both abilities are rewarding to use and are worth killing enemies for. Missions that involve killing a number of good guys or bad guys can often reward you with these powers quickly without much consequence.

Other than the guns and power meters, Shadow the Hedgehog still plays like an average 3D Sonic title. And you know what? The guns and power meters add to the game experience and make it fun at times. I'm satisfied with the mechanics.

Boss Battles
The boss battles in this game are really weak, which is a shame because boss battles are generally some of the most fun parts about Sonic the Hedgehog titles, and usually give them a lot of flavor. But they just don't do it for me in this game. The bosses are either pathetically easy and easy to wipe out with repetitive gun shots or have way too much stamina to take out. Out of all the ten non-canon endings, there are only three different final bosses. The Egg Dealer, Black Doom, and Diablon bosses are each boring and take little effort to defeat, and you face them each three to four times if you really want to make it to the last story. Bosses spread all over the rest of the level map don't really need to be faced at all if you don't plan on going into the levels that hold them, but they're still disappointing and take little skill and too much time to beat.

The final boss suffers from taking way too long to defeat and Shadow's attacks hardly do much to it, and other bosses just look really plain and uninspired, especially Black Bull and the G.U.N. mechs. The only actually fun boss in this game was the Egg Breaker, for it presents a challenge that the other bosses lack in the Cryptic Castle fight and in the Mad Matrix one. The one in Iron Jungle is pathetic, however. The bosses (especially Dr. Eggman) have annoying lines that will not escape your head no matter how fast you try to defeat them. Not even the music for these bosses is great, they're really plain electric rock tracks that are really easy to forget, which is a shame because most Sonic music is rather catchy.

It angers me that for some of the pain I have to move through in casual gameplay that the bosses in this game are no better than the controls to this game, and each is a waste of time. The different battle backgrounds you can fight these bosses in doesn't save how repetitive they are.

Difficulty
Getting game overs in Shadow the Hedgehog is one of the saddest feelings you'll experience with video games, because when you get back into the level, you start it from the very beginning. And some of these levels really overstay their welcome, especially some of the Stage 5 and Stage 6 ones. The actual difficulty of the game is not very high, but players that aren't aware enough of how the game's mechanics work should prepare themselves for cheap death after cheap death for the sometimes merciless control scheme. Artificial difficulty is always present and possible with the damn slipperiness of Shadow the Hedgehog. Some of the missions also way overstay their welcome and take any magic away from the experience when you're hunting down certain objectives for 15 or 20 minutes straight.

While it's not a merciless game when it comes to the level design, it will absolutely frustrate you with bad camera angles and deaths you couldn't see coming. Sometimes if you're too fast and keep that momentum going for a while, you may end up clipping right through the floor for a death you didn't deserve. Checkpoints are all over the levels, but don't mean much when you keep getting game overs, forcing you to reset the level until you either give up or complete it. When I say the game can be a difficult monster to overcome, I mean it.

Music
Another thing that Shadow seems to do only decently. The music to this game is not god-awful, but it is full of repetitive, same-y tracks that don't quite stick in your head like other Sonic tunes do. It's not particularly bad music but it feels underwhelming and cliché, and doesn't make the game any more enjoyable. The good bits of the OST are far and in-between and it's difficult to choose favorites when you know that they all sound quite similar. Final Haunt and Lava Shelter have good tunes, though, although it took me a while to remember what they sounded like really. The best bits of the OST, however, are in the vocal tracks, to which I offer my praise. I Am... All of Me is really catchy, Never Turn Back is a perfect ending theme to this game (and a lesson to those who play it), All Hail Shadow is Jesus in disguise, and the other ending themes are all great except for Almost Dead.

I wouldn't recommend the OST for the most part, but if you are curious in its selection, look to the vocal tracks of the game. Most of them won't disappoint unless you dislike heavy rock or metal.

Replayability
If this game didn't hurt to play through in its eternity then you will certainly not dislike the amount of stuff that you can actually do in this game. There's A ranks to get on all the missions, keys for you to find in each level to open up their secrets, a whole bunch of different story routes you can take to have different results, and different missions to help save players from boredom. Getting all A ranks opens up an Expert mode that is not too terrible (although Cosmic Fall could use many tweaks) and gives the player a sense of true accomplishment. If one really likes playing through this game, then they will enjoy playing the rest of the game 9 times over to get the last story. While there are other Sonic games that handle replayability better, there is no other Sonic game begging for you to trek through its many stages over and over.

If you truly like Shadow the Hedgehog, are a completionist, or both, that paragraph must have caused an orgasm for your sense of sight!

End-Game Appeal
At the end of a run of six stages and that route's boss, you may be thinking "what the hell did I just play?" before you actually decide on whether or not you liked the experience. When you beat the final boss, nothing really all that interesting happens and the credits just roll, but you may feel the need to stretch out or give yourself a pat on the back after beating one of these runs. And that's okay because Shadow the Hedgehog can be a daunting experience at times. If you liked the action, the guns, and the missions, you may find yourself going back through the game to try out new stages and get some A ranks or find all of a level's keys. But if you found the journey far too exhausting for its repetition and lack of Sonic charm, then you may not want to pick up this game again and forget about it for eternity.

It's not a groundbreaking game but it is surely an experience to behold. The rewards for actually beating six stages in a row and the subsequent boss aren't much, with new guns added to the mix and that's about it. If you're not crazy about it, you may find the endings to your route decisions disappointing. But if you really like collecting stuff, then maybe you found some enjoyment in it after all. The multiplayer is nothing worth mentioning though -- just you and a local friend just shooting back and forth at each other constantly.

FINAL RATING
Shadow the Hedgehog isn't exactly a bad game, but it's a dry experience that never really rewards you much for your efforts if you're not a completionist, and the amount of garbage that you have to sit through and complete is uncomfortable and too much of a struggle to bear with. While the gameplay core is solid, the slippery controls and overly long tasks will eat away at your stamina and break your mind whenever you unfairly clip into the ground or simply get flung off a ledge for controls that aren't even your problem. You're controlling someone on ice in a Sonic game that's full of guns and a gritty atmosphere with the icing of the cake being gritty and dull graphics with a mostly boring OST sitting atop it. While it has plenty of replayability and the mechanics can be fun, they don't make up for this game's price and the exploration wears quickly on players that don't really get a kick out of that sort of gameplay.

Story of this game is miserable and inconsistent and does nothing to remedy the flaws of the controls or the repetitive level design and the lasting appeal does not really do much to keep you interested in the game for long. Boss battles are among the weakest in the series as is the game's OST. There's little to see here if you're not the kind of guy to go around and collect a bunch of keys or A ranks. I'd only recommend this game for die-hard Sonic the Hedgehog fans or people that have an obsession with this game's titular character, there is very little you're missing on here and there are better games when it comes to shooting and platforming. It's a worthy visit if you're looking over the entire franchise too, but don't ever have high expectations for this game or you will likely be quite disappointed.

Hardcore Experience

This is a game that puts your patience and skill to the test, so I recommend it for Hardcore gamers. They may find great enjoyment in finding every object that the game is hiding away from the player, including whole levels, bosses, guns, etc., and perfecting the levels may be a fun and interesting challenge for them. Those that are more casual may be too easily turned away by the fact that the game has guns, and lots of 'em, and the steep difficulty spikes that the game occasionally offers.|1st REVIEW: SHADOW THE HEDGEHOG}}