Good afternoon everyone.
As requested by Talila Fox
Here it is the review of Shadow The Hedgehog.
Story
Shadow is questioning himself, who he is and what he is. How come the names Shadow The Hedgehog and Maria are the only names he remembers? Who is Shadow The Hedgehog? Who is Maria?
As he questions his being, an alien invasion suddenly breaks out in the city of Westopolis, Shadow is then confronted with a being called 'BlackDoom' he tells Shadow that if he wants to know who he really is Shadow needs to go find all 7 Chaos Emeralds.
Shadow then goes into the heat of the invasion to find answers.
It's a very short story with a very short narrative, not only that but the narrative can be easily thrown of course because of completing one particular objective.
Which I will get to in the gameplay section of this review.
Presentation
The graphical presentation of Shadow The Hedgehog is very weak.
Re-cycled enemy and character designs are frequent with very unimpressive level designs.
These levels are varied and quite large but nothing to impress.
Gameplay
Remember what made Sonic games good? Yeah....just hold onto that memory and hold it tight because it is not here in Shadow The Hedgehog.
Shadow The Hedgehog tries to make the game more edgy with the addition of fire arms like machine guns and rocket launchers, melee weapons like speed limit signs or alien weaponry but it ends up becoming a sloppy mess due to lack of ammunition and the fact that you don't even need to use weapons in order to eliminate your opponents, you can simply spam the dash attack on every enemy you encounter without even picking up a weapon in the first place.
There are some elements of past Sonic games that are present in the game. Dashing through levels, jumping over debris and obstacles to find secret areas to collect rings and other items but it's made a challenge due to the poor character and camera control.
The camera fights you when doing your basic dash attacks and other moves, you yourself can now very well know that there is an enemy behind you but the camera isn't showing said enemy, Shadow will instead dash through the air hitting nothing leaving a high probability that you will fall down and die.
Progressing through the story mode, I must admit is rather unique for the series, instead of playing through a preset variety of levels you'll instead be given 3 mission objectives. A Dark Mission, Neutral Mission and Hero Mission, depending on which objective you choose to complete will change what happens in between levels, what happens in the narrative, which level route you are taking. Neutral missions will send you straight to the end, Dark missions will send you to the higher set of levels and Hero missions will send you to the lower set of levels. Each path having it's own boss to fight at the end.
There is one problem though. At the beginning of the game Shadow is questioning who he is and what he is? How come he cannot remember anything but the names Shadow The Hedgehog and Maria?
These questions might not be explained base on your chosen levels, any motivation for his actions in the games' small cut scenes will leave you scratching your head. Shadow will say "I'm doing this because I promised Maria!"
Who's Maria?! You can complete the game without knowing. Maria can just be a name and a face to you, the relationship between Maria and Shadow will be left in the dark unless you complete the right set of levels in order to answer these questions.
Completing the game will not take very long, when you take out the replay-ability factor of the game you're looking at a total time of 40 minutes to do one play through of the game, no matter what path you choose to complete.
The Verdict
Shadow The Hedgehog back in 2005 was a sign that Sega truly does not know what to do with the Sonic franchise.
The story is small, the narrative is weak, the game play resembles a Sonic game but adds a new twist that is not executed very well with a bad camera fighting the player and poor character control.
Shadow The Hedgehog gets the very low score of 2 out of 10
Hopefully this coming generation, we might see some good Sonic games.
Thank you for reading, my next review will be on Fable 3.
Be sure to +1 and leave a comment below.
As requested by Talila Fox
Here it is the review of Shadow The Hedgehog.
Story
Shadow is questioning himself, who he is and what he is. How come the names Shadow The Hedgehog and Maria are the only names he remembers? Who is Shadow The Hedgehog? Who is Maria?
As he questions his being, an alien invasion suddenly breaks out in the city of Westopolis, Shadow is then confronted with a being called 'BlackDoom' he tells Shadow that if he wants to know who he really is Shadow needs to go find all 7 Chaos Emeralds.
Shadow then goes into the heat of the invasion to find answers.
It's a very short story with a very short narrative, not only that but the narrative can be easily thrown of course because of completing one particular objective.
Which I will get to in the gameplay section of this review.
Presentation
The graphical presentation of Shadow The Hedgehog is very weak.
Re-cycled enemy and character designs are frequent with very unimpressive level designs.
These levels are varied and quite large but nothing to impress.
Gameplay
Remember what made Sonic games good? Yeah....just hold onto that memory and hold it tight because it is not here in Shadow The Hedgehog.
Shadow The Hedgehog tries to make the game more edgy with the addition of fire arms like machine guns and rocket launchers, melee weapons like speed limit signs or alien weaponry but it ends up becoming a sloppy mess due to lack of ammunition and the fact that you don't even need to use weapons in order to eliminate your opponents, you can simply spam the dash attack on every enemy you encounter without even picking up a weapon in the first place.
There are some elements of past Sonic games that are present in the game. Dashing through levels, jumping over debris and obstacles to find secret areas to collect rings and other items but it's made a challenge due to the poor character and camera control.
The camera fights you when doing your basic dash attacks and other moves, you yourself can now very well know that there is an enemy behind you but the camera isn't showing said enemy, Shadow will instead dash through the air hitting nothing leaving a high probability that you will fall down and die.
Progressing through the story mode, I must admit is rather unique for the series, instead of playing through a preset variety of levels you'll instead be given 3 mission objectives. A Dark Mission, Neutral Mission and Hero Mission, depending on which objective you choose to complete will change what happens in between levels, what happens in the narrative, which level route you are taking. Neutral missions will send you straight to the end, Dark missions will send you to the higher set of levels and Hero missions will send you to the lower set of levels. Each path having it's own boss to fight at the end.
There is one problem though. At the beginning of the game Shadow is questioning who he is and what he is? How come he cannot remember anything but the names Shadow The Hedgehog and Maria?
These questions might not be explained base on your chosen levels, any motivation for his actions in the games' small cut scenes will leave you scratching your head. Shadow will say "I'm doing this because I promised Maria!"
Who's Maria?! You can complete the game without knowing. Maria can just be a name and a face to you, the relationship between Maria and Shadow will be left in the dark unless you complete the right set of levels in order to answer these questions.
Completing the game will not take very long, when you take out the replay-ability factor of the game you're looking at a total time of 40 minutes to do one play through of the game, no matter what path you choose to complete.
The Verdict
Shadow The Hedgehog back in 2005 was a sign that Sega truly does not know what to do with the Sonic franchise.
The story is small, the narrative is weak, the game play resembles a Sonic game but adds a new twist that is not executed very well with a bad camera fighting the player and poor character control.
Shadow The Hedgehog gets the very low score of 2 out of 10
Hopefully this coming generation, we might see some good Sonic games.
Thank you for reading, my next review will be on Fable 3.
Be sure to +1 and leave a comment below.
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