The boss battles could have used more work, but for the most part Shadow Complex was enjoyable from end to end
I know I recently wrote my thoughts on Shadow Complex already, but I still feel like talking about it which says something about how I feel about the game. I figured I’d hit a few more points that espion4ge and I missed our first time, just in case you still might be on the fence:
- There definitely is a lot of gameplay to be had for your 1200 MS points. I finished my first run (100% completion) in about 8 hours without using the blue guidance line for the most part. Then I spent 2 hours on my speed run (under 13% completion achievement) and tried some of the challenge packs. After 10 hours with the game, I’m still seriously considering doing an Insane run, which would be my 3rd run through.
- For a single player game, there is a lot of “competitive multiplayer” interaction. The game tracks how many melee kills you have (amongst other things), and every time you hit a milestone like 100 it will show the score of your friend as well. So I marveled at the fact that a buddy of mine has 2100 melee kills compared to my 500. It’s a small feature that does compel a player to try to “top” others, like a built in leaderboard.
- There are a couple of puzzle elements in the game that are quite a bit of fun to figure out. The coolest thing is that some of these puzzles can be solved in different ways, for a few I solved them one way and found out online the “better” way. So the game lends itself to some subtle but significant gameplay choices.
- The story of the game really is pretty terrible. Now that I finished the game, I’m like…uh…what? Part of me wishes the game was like the original Metroid, aka I have no idea what’s going on but I’m just enjoying the ride. It seems like an afterthought, and should be treated as such when deciding to buy the game.
Anyway, I think that’s all I’ll ever have to say about Shadow Complex. Time for me to go start my Insane run…
