Shadow Complex is an Excellent Teacher
But does a game that is almost expertly designed to teach the Metroidvania genre still hold up after all these years, and for someone who has recently already learned how to play Metroidvanias.
Occasionally I look back on the industry as a whole and think to myself, what if I could finally, for the first time, play one of those games that people loved back in the day (mid-late 2000s or earlier when I could have played it but didn’t) and review it now? In those moments I like to try to contact this wild hair Doctor I once knew, hop on my skateboard, remember I never actually learned how to skateboard effectively, fall, then just walk to the twin pines mall where I find out that I didn’t actually used to know a Doctor with wild hair and that I just had a weird time travel fever dream so then I decide to sit down and play a game that has a reputation in the industry as something influential or as a cult hit. Today, we are doing a Throwback Review!
The Introduction
I have now done 2 reviews of Metroidvanias and both of them were modern games so I decided that I wanted to take a minute and look back at some of the best games of the genre from decades past. This lead me to Shadow Complex, a game that I have apparently owned for a long while on steam despite not remembering buying it (it’s the remastered version which did come out in the mid 2010s but it’s the same game so I’m still considering this throwback). So I decided I must play it. I still remember watching it debut back in...ugh...2009 at the E3 Microsoft Press Conference. I wasn’t interested in it then but hey, now I am!
With that, I had a moment recently where I was unable to sleep (its happening a lot more often for some reason) and decided to get up and do something to make myself tired. So I exercised a bit, but really I sat down and turned on Shadow Complex. It was 6am (I’m on second shift so don’t wake up to noon) and I was exhausted but I played for 2 hours because of how engrossing the game was. I only stopped because I was so damn tired. I then finished the game after I woke up. So yeah it’s not that long. But it’s engrossing and just all around incredibly fun...except for some finicky stuff. Let’s get into it.
The Premise
When Jason and his girlfriend, Claire, go hiking and end up in a cave in the middle of the forest, she gets kidnapped by a paramilitary force and held captive inside an advanced underground complex (oh hey that’s why it’s named that) and Jason has to go on a rescue mission to get her back. But the people in the Complex are actually more than they appear as they seem to be planning massive military action very soon. Can Jason get Claire back? Will the story get any less cheesy? Will he find out why the paramilitary fucks are accusing both of them of being NSA agents? And of course, will Jason discover what NSA looks like? Who knows. Except you. You can know in a very short time period.
The Good
The gameplay is damn good. It felt good to control Jason, nothing felt too floaty or was annoying. You get to use a jetpack and use the height you get from it to ground pound. There’s a lot of tiny decisions the devs made that showed just how much they were intending on teaching the player.
The level design is a bit maze like but the map does a wonderful job of representing important things. Specifically, it shows what doors are which. You have Foam doors that are purple and Missile doors that are red. You’re able to look at the map and know whether you’ve been somewhere because it’s darkened or just not there and then able to tell if you’ll be able to get past the door with a new ability that you just got and all in the map itself.
The depth of the game is also fucking wonderful. The gunplay feels great when the enemies are on your plane, but once you are fighting enemies near you, and in the environment behind you, the combat really starts to shine as something special. It’s not just that you’re able to fit a lot more enemies in a scene when some of them are in the environment behind you, it’s also that it makes the world feel like its a real location. So many side-scrollers like this don’t have that depth making the experience very flat. Having that depth enhances the experience and makes you feel like you’re looking through a window instead of looking at a screen.
The story is cheesy and dumb, but it kinda feels right for this kind of experience. It may as well be MetroidVania: Nathan Drake what with Nolan North being there and all the indiscriminately massacring hundreds of people. Jason makes the same quips as Drake, he says stuff about the world like Drake. He even comments on his shooting like Drake.
The game also has a specific intention that I think is important to discuss. It has 1 mission and that’s not to tell an incredibly serious story or to make the most amazing and deep experience out there. It’s designed to teach you how to play Metroidvanias. This is from the get go where when you enter the facility you quickly come across a vent you can’t access and Jason essentially says “I can’t access this right now, I should come back to it when I have something to use to access it.” Sure it has a path put forward for you for what direction to go, but that teaches you that backtracking is normal for the genre. It still has hidden things, it still shows you that sometimes the best thing you can do is just run away. It’s a very good game to give to someone to show then what a Metroidvania is like to play and how you should approach them and it does that all in something you can complete in 5 hours. It’s impressive.
The Bad
Sometimes the aiming can be a little finicky when trying to shoot enemies that are in the background, but I eventually realized you don’t usually have to try to shoot those, if you just start firing near them you’ll just automatically shoot at the one closest and then go between them once you defeat one. It’s a neat little feature that makes the background enemies much easier to deal with, but until you realize that it’s a pain. And again, this is finicky. Sometimes it just didn’t work or the enemies were so far away that it wouldn’t click. Or, even more, I couldn’t get close enough to fire at them. It sucked but this is more of a nitpick.
The Ending - Detailed
**Start Spoilers**
After assembling the suit and “saving” Claire you have to face down the general in order to save the world. Except, you don’t really fight him directly. You get to where you’re expecting to take down the general and that whole area becomes a flying aircraft carrier that you don’t get to go up into. Instead you’re down in the “lake bed” area that it was where there’s a bunch of enemies, some of those discount Metal Gear looking motherfuckers, and some missiles.
There you have to launch several missiles at the carrier as it hovers in the sky in the distance. Once you finish that, you’ve saved the day. A person that I think is the General tries to figure out who Jason is to which he says “I’m no one...and everyone”. The general then threatens Jason and his families lives until he is about to shoot the general to stop him. But then Nicole comes out of nowhere and shoots him in the head so that he “doesn’t murder someone in cold blood”. Then she reveals that she’s NSA, that she needed someone from outside the Agency who would be helpful and that lead her to Jason. Then, as a helicopter lands, she basically invites him to join the NSA. Claire walks to the helicopter, Jason hesitates but then follows. Credits.
**End Spoilers**
The Ending - Reaction
After murdering a ton of people over the course of the game the fact that you can’t kill the bad guy, or at least the person I think is the bad guy, is fucking hilarious. Such cognitive dissonance. Jason is a murderer but I guess this was too much.
The ending was just as cheesy as the rest of the story because of that but I still enjoyed that cheese. It’s an experience that I found dumb but in a fun way. So overall pretty good. Plus, it’s exactly the kind of ending you’d expect to see in this kind of game.
The Conclusion
Shadow Complex is a special gem that is only around 5 hours long, although it does offer some replayability with trying to get a high score. Its the perfect game to give to someone who is wanting to learn how to play Metroidvanias, but also is worthwhile for those that already know how to play them. It’s got tight controls, even when it’s finicky, it’s got a cheesy but fun story, and it’s an older game so the remastered version is super cheap.
It deserves to be played. And best of all it has difficulty settings so if you want to make it a bit more challenging you can. Although I’m not aware of what that does because I just played on easy. The game is just all around fantastic and, as it is so short, if you haven’t played it yet you really should. The game goes on sale all the time but normally is just 15 bucks, you should grab it and try it out! Trust me, its Shadow stands tall among the giants of the genre.
Meow,
Cat
It's fun getting around to playing games decades after they were new, isn't it? It's what I base everything I write about on 😁
I'm glad you enjoyed this game and found it accessible to play, every genre should probably have a "starter" game to ease people into them.