Shadow Complex: Remastered

2009 was an interesting year for gaming. We saw titles such as Assassin’s Creed II, Halo: ODST and a little Xbox 360 exclusive which passed many by. I can remember when I played Shadow Complex for the first time and loved the hell out of it. It had all the right elements to produce a brilliant 2.5D shooter with an interesting game world, immense amount of secrets and intense action. It’s been some time since I played it and to my surprise Chair and Epic games have brought out a Remaster of this classic title. I was massively intrigued but also cautious as nostalgia can be a dangerous thing. But I was ready to enter Shadow Complex once again.

Shadow Complex is a 2.5D shooter that brings in a vast and complex game world filled with exploration and action. It’s very similar to the renowned Strider and Castlevania Sympathy of the Night titles where players will explore; find vital items to progress and along the way there are a few secrets to find. You play as Jason, a plucky young guy voiced by the excellent Nolan North who’s met a girl, they go hiking and stumble onto a group of home grown terrorists who plan to invade the U.S and bring their own “order” to the country. So it’s up to Jason to save the day with the help of an awesome battle suit that gives him certain advancements to tactical his foes.

It’s nothing like a classic Tom Clancy novel and to be fair the narrative is fairly generic, bland and with characters who remind you of Cobra Commander, it’s difficult to take seriously.

Shadow Complex is set within a vastly open world, where players will explore a massive underground complex divided in multiple sections. Each section has its own characteristics, secrets and dangers. Obtaining key items such as grenades will allow Jason to progress further into the world and unlock secret areas to find bonus items to increase his inventory. From start to finish the game can last between 5 to 10 hours, depending if you want to find everything. It does help finding as many key items for your suit and bonus extras as the last third of the game is a furiously epic challenging.

There are several key items for weapons such as grenades, missiles and expanding foam which destroy certain, colour coded obstacles. So for big green doors, grenades will do the trick, big red doors it’s the missile to use and for those doors which scan you for entry, foam is the answer. There are a multitude of obstacles and these are scattered everywhere across the map. It actually helps progress the game naturally and helps with back tracking to find vital loot and replay value. So if your into vastly explorative games such as Strider, this is a huge plus point.

The mechanics are solid, providing a very engaging mixture of platforming, puzzle solving and intense action. The huge variation for gameplay elements flow together fluently while never complicating the experience. Even moments such as turret sections are altered each time you come across them to keep the game from feeling repetitive. There are other interesting aspects implemented for a 2.5D shooter such as cover based shooting and multiple ways to tackle certain situations. I never knew that you could sneak your way through particular areas which are heavily guarded and not fire a single bullet. In many ways, Shadow Complex gives you some freedom to play how you want and thanks to the long list of abilities, you can find new ways to tackle enemy forces. Options to either use brute force on the masses or when to simply sneak through a vent and avoid any trouble.

Certain improvements have been implemented such as fixing frame rate issues from the previous release and a slight tweak to the challenging difficulties. However I did come across some bugs and glitches that were amusing mostly but other became a slight annoyance when they got in the way of attacking NPCs, such as kicking explosive items that wouldn’t move after I kicked them and resulted in my taking damage. It’s rather annoying, considering these issues were present in the original game.

But overall what can I say about Shadow Complex? Yes there are some very annoying glitches at times and the map is a little too big to traverse without some form of fast travel. But, I still love this game. It’s brilliant and as said before, if you love these types of games such as Strider or Castlevania or even Ori and the Blind Forest, you have to buy this. It’s still highly engaging and enjoyable after all these years. This is one remaster I cannot recommend enough and for those who have an Xbox One to enjoy now before it comes out onto PS4 and PC in May.

+ Fantastic action gameplay
+ Immense and detailed game world
+ Huge replay value

- Annoying glitches and bugs are still present
- Paper thin story

A review copy of Shadow Complex: Remastered was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review