Awful Archives: ZombiU

In 1986, Ubisoft published their first ever game: Zombi. Created for the Amstrad CPC, and ported to other computer systems in 1990, the point-and-click first person action-adventure game had the player take control of four survivors in a zombie-filled mall. In 2012, Ubisoft would reimagine the series as a first person rouge-like survival shooter called ZombiU (this project was born out of the game Killer Freaks From Outer Space). Unfortunately, it and it’s 2015 (named ZOMBI) ports to modern consoles would fail to return a profit (in fact, this game may have been a factor into Ubisoft becoming the franchise pumpers they are today) and the game would receive wildly mixed reviews (from a sexy 9.5 or a disgusting 3.5).

So depending on who ya ask, this is either the underrated gem of the WiiU, or the beginning of Ubisoft’s Dark Age. Yep. That’s a pick for Awful Archives for ya.

Presentation

As far as presentation is concerned, ZombiU is dated but good. 

Graphically, it was honestly dated back in 2012, as textures are fairly muddy on all versions, and pieces of debris on the ground are very low res. My own personal Satan of visuals (bloom) also makes an appearance here. Thankfully, unlike Big Bumpin’ or Shadow The Edgehog, the bloom is at least used with concise purpose (it’s only used heavily when you look directly into a light source) and the game in general seems to understand that games don’t need to be pitch black at all times to be tense, achieving this through it’s more religious inspirations in the visuals (most notably how neither the sun nor moon are ever spotted, merely a constantly grey or black sky), allowing for a often bright, often dark, and constantly gloomy atmosphere

The models fare a bit better, though; human models are properly structured and seem to follow human anatomy correctly, weapon models all look like they’re made of the correct material and the particle effects get the job done. The zombies definitely got the most effort, with not only decent visual variety but with a very gruesome looking spinal cord sticking out when their heads explode from a kill blow to the cranium.

Animation is mostly good. While there’s a few stick movements from Dr. Peter Knight,the rest of the time (especially during cutscenes) the NPCs manage to convey their weight through movement very well. Zombie animation is pretty top notch as well, with the shambling of the undead coming at a variety of speeds and having separate movement animations for said speeds. Reload animations are truly what this game does best, though; they’re smooth and almost perfectly paced, which when stopped off with the sound effects really help sell that you just used a lethal weapon and you’re ready to use it again.

Which goes to the strongest of the game’s presentation: sound design. Guns sound exactly like they should, be it firing, reloading, or being equipped. This doubles over to molotov cocktails, grandes, landmines, and throwing flares. Zombies use a variety of grunts to both signal certain attacks and are properly muffled when something covers their mouths to tell certain enemies apart. Even the simple sounds of climbing a ladder have a lot of effort put into them. Voice acting is fitting for all characters, from the frantic Sandra to the warm Dr. Knight to the cold, pragmatic Prepper. Aside from some issues of the (atmospheric) soundtrack cutting out when the player leaves it’s intended radius (ruining some otherwise impactful moments), sound design pushes the presentation to being as good as it is, even with it’s below average graphics.

Story

The narrative to ZombiU is unlike most other zombie games. In a zombie-infested London, you play as a survivor.

Really, that’s about all that matters to your character: you’re here, you’re not dead, you’re not undead, and you’d like to keep it that way. With a randomly generated name and profession, a mysterious man by the name of “The Prepper” (the REAL main character) offers you the safety of his safehouse and his knowledge of these events to help you survive, since he knew this was coming a long time ago.

The game’s narrative is actually pretty mundane. You loot what’s left of a supermarket, defend your safehouse from the undead, and try and break into Buckingham Palace to see what’s been stashed away in there. It’s only there you meet a new NPC and things start getting a bit more complicated, in that the Prepper has no radio contact with you in the Palace Bunker and therefore no knowledge of what you’re doing. From there, it’s alternating between missions to serve yourself and The Prepper, and helping/working with other survivors like The Ravens Of Dee (much to The Prepper’s exponentially increasing anger). Even with all of this, there’s only seven cutscenes in the entire game, with most dialog being said to you via radio.

The really interesting things about the narrative aren’t the events themselves, but how in everything around them. In the meta sense, the game smartly writes it’s dialog to account for the fact that the player could die and become someone else at any moment by having the Prepper already helping more than one survivor at time and clearly being mentally on edge to begin with. The best example is how the pronoun “you” can apply to a single person or a collective group; The Prepper can be saying “why won’t you [the survivor] or you [the surviving population] listen to me?!” for example. To explain how other characters account for this would go too far into spoilers.

The story itself has both a scientific and religious angle to it; the game does give a basic rundown of how the infection works and what it does to its host, but also has biblical elements incorporated into it’s narrative and backstory (those visual parallels to the Book of Revelations isn’t just to look spooky). This can be seen from the Prepper directly quoting scripture to the common newspapers, letters from John Dee, and some government documents.

Speaking of which, while these may be overdone nowadays, the document backstory approach is actually a pretty smart choice for this game. After all, it’s cool that there’s a story about the 400 years before the days the game takes place in… but knowing that John Dee was hunted for witchcraft back in his day doesn’t really help you get fuel for the safehouse generator, does it? It’s better off on the side for the few interested with the events of the game focusing on the here and now.

Which leads to the alternate history aspect. You see, John Dee was actually a real life person who had a goal to unite humanity before the apocalypse, and this game takes that part of the historical figure to build a mythology around him. Between taking place in a world where it appears the royal family holds proper influence in government choices to implying that John Dee’s prophecy of the Blight of Eruope indirectly led to witch hunts in the 1600’s, ZombiU achieves a combination of being reflective but not quite one-to-one with our world. This is less of a positive or negative and more of an interesting thing that, as someone with a soft spot for history, I find fascinating.

ZombiU’s narrative may not be revolutionary, but it is very efficient. The mundane elements are refreshing, the writing tries to keep the gameplay systems in mind, and replacing the large amount of cutscenes with radio dialog gives the player a chance to make story progression during their walks to the next location.

Gameplay: Combat And Survival

Going into the gameplay proper, I’m going to assume you’re aware of the basics and standards of the survival horror genre. If not, then I cannot recommend this game based simply on the fact it is NOT a friendly jump into the genre. On top of that, the remainder of this article will be going over how the WiiU launch title differs from the standards one would expect with the genre, and how the ports differ from the WiiU version. All of these points are for the standard mode, although I’ve beaten the game on all three difficulty modes.

The first is with damage and death itself. Zombies can kill you remarkably quickly, as it only takes 6 attacks to drain your entire health bar. Except for the bite attack which, as the Prepper warns you in the first 10 seconds of gameplay, kills you instantly. Running through fire shaves off health really quickly, and all explosives (from zombies with explosive gas tanks to landmines to your own grenades) will heavily damage or instantly kill you depending on how close you are. Even fall damage is unforgiving, as anything further than 6 feet down hurts and beyond 10 feet kills. And all deaths are permanent as the game saves the moment the animation of the killing blow begins; try to quit the game and you’ll still load in as a new poor soul with the previous corpse (be it walking or not) retaining all your supplies. The game even turns the concept of the player’s score into a survival element; your survivor score isn’t just a number for a leader board, it’s a statistic that determines how tough of a zombie you’ll be if you turn (meaning that it might be nice to carry a landmine in case you need to end it all to save the next fella some trouble). All of this combines to how the game creates its sense of fear and dread apart from most in the genre: you’re fragile and expendable.

While the game may sound cruel [that’s because it is], it’s not merciless. That might sound insane, given the game gives every enemy a one-hit kill move, but the bite attack is actually the best example of this. First, you can interrupt a zombie trying to grapple you with any attack (including your shove). Secondly, a zombie cannot even attempt to use the grapple attack until the player is injured (so if your health bar is full, you’ll only ever be slapped even if they sneak up on you). And finally, about 3 hours into the game the player is given a means to save themselves from a single grapple attack at a time.

The game’s truest form of mercy, though, is through the prepper pad. It has an updatable mini-map if the player finds the level’s CC-TV Junction Box (the first mission is teaching the player this mechanic), a manual scanner that allows the to place markers on any Blighters, items, lootable containers, and doors. And finally, a manual radar that scans for any infected in the area (although it is elevation sensitive… and can’t tell the difference between a zombie and a rat). 

This is how most of ZombiU is balanced; the player is given tools to survive the harsh world they’re in, and the game will kill them off the moment they fail to utilize it.

“…And those men who are not prepared shall succumb to its foul clutches, for God shows no mercy on those who heed not his words.”

Okay, so zombies can hurt you. How do you hurt them? Well, you start the game out with only three things to your name: a rechargeable flashlight (which you thankfully don’t need to put weapons away to use), a standard 9mm handgun, and a not-so-standard cricket bat. This bat is more than a Shaun Of The Dead reference, but is the center of the game’s combat.

Not only is ammo scarce, but most guns make noise and can alert the undead to your general location, and headshots are not an instant kill. Your cricket bat does not wear down nor make noise, but barely deals damage in the first place and is fairly slow to swing – with each subsequent swing after the first three getting a bit slower until you take a break. With zombie health being randomized, it can take anywhere from three to twelve cricket bonks to the head to down any given blighter. However, you the player get priority over the infected; any attack of yours will cause them to stagger, stumble, or fall over, whereas you the player are never staggered by enemy attacks, and while zombie health may be randomized, how they react to your attacks is consistent to a fault.

This gives melee combat a back-and-forth that a knife just can’t provide: learning to time your attacks to interrupt the infected can allow you to take on two or maybe even three zombies at once, but one mistimed swing will hurt and the second might kill. And your guns aren’t worthless either; headshots do deal extra damage and also stagger the zombie, stopping their advancement more than a body shot would. The player also gains a lot of stronger [and a few weaker but silent] firearms over their adventure, all of which the player is given the direct stats for to have an idea of how each gun compares to each other.

And finally, the throwing flares give the player a “get out of fight free” card that can be used for them to run away undetected should they be under prepared and cornered, or combine with an explosive to kill multiple infected at once.

Sadly, the ports throw this balance off quite a bit. The ports’ major gameplay changes are that the game is faster, stamina is more generous, zombie health is now progressive, and there are more melee weapons. The fallout of these anti-frustration features on the combat is that you don’t need to time your cricket bat until you run out of stamina, you can now swing five times before running out of stamina (with faster swings at that), and by the time zombies start to regularly have high health, you have a shovel or nailed bat that does even more damage and can hit multiple zombies at once. And since running away is easier than ever, you will likely always have enough flares and ammo to deal with any large group of Blighters.

This doesn’t exactly ruin the game, but lessing the threat of death ends up lessing the fear factor of the game. The knockback and the aforementioned sound design does still give the combat solid satisfaction regardless of the version at least.

The final note of combat and general survival are upgrades. There are combat upgrades and gear upgrades. Combat upgrades are how comfortable your survivor is with each type of gun, and it levels up as you kill zombies with it. The more familiar you are with a gun, the faster you reload it and the longer you can hold the gun without weapon sway taking effect. These skills are tied to each survivor, however. The gear upgrades refer to anything that affects your guns and tools. Gun upgrades are permanent and carry between deaths, and for gameplay purposes you’ll never lose unapplied upgrades, any C4 packs, any Prepper pad upgrades, nor your lockpick once they’re acquired in all versions.

Gameplay: Inventory And Items

Inventory is thankfully handled better on the ports. The original WiiU game had the Gamepad’s touch screen be used to switch between any of their six equipped items, effectively giving the controller an extra six buttons. This function is moved to the directional pad on the ports, and it works fairly well (although the loss of those six makeshift buttons also gives you less inventory space since they doubled as a second inventory and your backpack was not given extra slots to account for the removal). Melee weapons are mapped to the up direction, and the player can map two weapons to the left and the right (double tapped to equip the second item), and the flashlight is equipped at all times. In the original game, the player would always equip their flashlight and cricket bat if they planned to live, so both versions allow the player to have the same six items. (Side Note: the down direction on the D-Pad allows for the player to cycle through every item in their inventory, but I never found a practical use for this).

That said, the player has a fairly large inventory from the get go, with twelve inventory slots from the start. As a trade off, ammo is the only thing that stacks and it doesn’t stack very high. While this does allow the player to have a lot of options, the lack of stacking makes the situational planks and the minimal-recovering food items not worth a single inventory slot that could go to a proper first aid kit or a pack of shotgun slugs.

ZombiU also features a larger than average arsenal… a bit too large if I’m honest. There are three handguns, two carbines, a crossbow, three shotguns, two assault rifles, and two submachine guns. This weapon surplus makes sense from the stance that a survivor keeps everything with them when they die or zombify, and dying again before getting back to your past self will scatter your supplies to any map in the game, including ones you haven’t visited yet. Between that and the real chance of missing some junction boxes, there’s a good chance some players won’t be getting old reliable back for some time.

What this does do is change how useless some of these guns are: mostly the magnum and the submachine guns. The way ZombiU and it’s ports spawn items is with a combination of preset items that always spawn, and a series of locations that can spawn any consumable item the player has encountered yet. This also means that the RNG can’t spawn ammo for guns the player hasn’t come across or found pre-spawned ammo for. The three weapons themselves and the one promised box of submachine gun ammo are so late into the game that it’s possible to beat the game without ever getting ammo for either of them. And since the player already has the AK-47 by then, the one place that gives you submachine gun ammo also gives you and SA-80, and that it’s ammo is just as scarce as Assault Rifle rounds, why not ditch those guns entirely, give the player the magnum slightly earlier, and replace the second submachine gun with more assault rifle ammo?

Gameplay: The Rest

Level design is linear but nice. Rooms and hallways are small, and even the outside areas are fairly boxed in. However, the game does hide a lot of secrets in its nooks and crannies, from extra ammo and recovery items to extremely rare gun upgrades (one of the few things to carry over between survivors). Plus, from the easily missed CCTV hubs to optional walls of rubble to be blown up to vents allowing for alternate roots, the smallish levels still do a good job making the player feel like they’re exploring the levels and forging their own path.

Zombie variety is actually pretty good. Despite every zombie using the same framework, the standard infected have varying levels of speed and health to keep the survivor on their toes. When the game wants zombies to have unique properties, there are three methods of achieving this: special gear (like wearing riot gear or explosive chemical tanks), mutation (like spitting balls of acid or screaming to alert the horde) with the occasional supernatural abilities (like the 28 Days Later running zombies). All of these zombies are distracted by flares and weak to explosives, but lacking that in your inventory means you’ll need to know how they work to survive.

The game also has a special kind of replay value that only games that give the player a lot of trouble can achieve: the revenge run. A “revenge run” is simply when part of the appeal of replaying a game is the player using the game’s mechanics and their knowledge and skill to get past sections that gave them a lot of trouble the first time through. From killing zombies with guns when the player knows they have the ammo to spare to increase their combat skills to using flares and landmines to counter some of the game’s scripted traps for the player to simply surviving situation that killed them (possibly more than once) in their first run, ZombiU is a game that’s engaging on the repeated visits – just not for the same reasons as that first run.

The one thing that plagues both versions of this game more than the zombies itself is the optimization, or rather the lack of any. This can range from humorous moments of zombies and physics not quite getting along to not-so-funny bugs that can force a save reload. There’s apparently a bug that can force a player to restart the entire game when they’re near the end, but I’ve never actually had that happen and have no clue how it occurs. But the most annoying is how zombies’ corpses despawn if too many are there at once or if the player goes too far away. They also take any supplies they had with them. And the ports have their own share of bugs and jank, mostly from the increase of speed the game was clearly not designed for, and a LOT visual hiccups (seriously, the Prepper Pad’s UI in the ports constantly flickers on and off, and the scanner doing so might actually give players a seizure).

Gameplay: WiiU Exclusive

Before going into conclusions, I want to talk about the factors that only apply to the WiiU version.

First up is the online functionality. The game never had any co-op or anything, but it did have the ability for the zombified remains of a survivor to appear in other games. This not only meant your past life could ruin someone else’s day, but since everyone on your friend’s list was notified of when and where you turned it would become a race to get there before someone else killed and looted past you. Should you ever find someone else’s zombie, you won’t be able to steal any of their firearms but their consumables (including ammo) are fair game. This also meant that more dickish players could choose to let their survivors turn with a high score in a nasty location just to mess with people. As of this article’s writing, the servers for ZombiU are still up.

Also, you can spray messages on the walls for other players to see and either offer them hints on where something is or be a dick and convince them to walk into a horde of zombies.

Secondly is the gamepad functionality. ZombiU makes better use of the gamepad than any other game on the system, Nintendo’s own line-up included. Not every function is necessary, but every choice is done with purpose. This is also why the game likes to try and have zombies sneak up on the player: Because it was designed for the player to look at the gamepad and the screen to simulate someone trying to do a task and keep an eye on their surroundings. It isn’t perfect, but it is unique and functional.

Finally, there’s the local multiplayer. The game divides between the tv and the gamepad. The TV player (with a Wiimote+nunchuck or a Pro Controller) takes control of a survivor with one of seven weapon loadouts of choice and the Gamepad player is the “King of Zombies” who can spawn infected of various types around the map. The king has limited resources and a zombie cap, both of which can be increased as they spawn more infected. However, killing the infected gives the survivor bonuses like extra ammo, health packs, automated turrets, landmines, and even double damage. There are three gameplay modes: King Of Zombies (which is a mix of capture the flag with king of the hill), Time Attack (kill as many zombies as possible while surviving to the end) and Survival (just focus on not dying). While not something that will make or break the experience, these are a unique source of fun if you can get a friend together for a session.

Conclusions

ZombiU is an old school survival horror game, graphically, mechanically in most cases, and in most design choices; to a lot of people that’s probably not what they want. It’s combat is very standard, and many first person shooters are more mechanically in-depth than this one. It hurts to say that most people will prefer RE7 or the remakes of RE 2 & 3 to this, but most people want games to be the best the tech can do these days. Of course, being released on a system nobody owned and then have ultimately downgraded ports that had no advertising certainly didn’t help matters.

But I can say that I truly do love this game. I say that the WiiU version is the best version for those who have the means, but the 2015 ports do keep the core experience even if the finer details didn’t carry over. My favorite classic and action Resident Evil games are not uncommon opinions (PS1 RE2 and Wiimake RE4, respectively), but I’m probably the only person who would say their favorite modern Resident Evil game is the 2012 release of ZombiU.

Awful Archives: Shadow The Hedgehog

Ya know, I honestly had higher hopes for this one.

Released after Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog served as a stand-alone game for the franchise’s most popular character at the time; it is considered both a spin-off and a mainline entry to the Sonic series. It’s intentions were to give the player the chance to define Shadow as a character moving forward, offer up revelations about Shadow’s past, and (from a gameplay standpoint) finally incorporate firearm gameplay into a Sonic game as fans requested. It’s legacy is by and large one of the worst games in the franchise with a noticeable fan base and massive detractor base, the latter of which I fall into.

Yeah, I’m poisoning the well (something I typically try to avoid); I really don’t like this one. While the structure will be more in line with the first two awful archives, I think that knowing my general negative outlook ahead of time is helpful, since this one is about as close as I’ve gotten to my response being in line with the common consensus.

On a final note: I went through this on the Xbox version, which is apparently the best version. All that really matters is that it’s not the PS2 version, which is horribly bugged, has longer load times, and is generally unstable. So if you’re still interested by the end of this in playing the game for yourself, seek out an Xbox or Gamecube copy.

Presentation

There are four standout aspects to the game’s overall presentation: art direction, graphics, sound design and animations.

This is an accurate representation of the asset flipping this game commits.

First is the art direction: this is no art direction. This is thanks to the asset recycling from previous games along with question choices with new models. All of the veteran characters have their models ripped straight from Sonic Heroes. While this makes sense, given that both games share the same engine, remember that Sonic Heroes was trying to look like a Genesis game in 3D. The problem is that the Heroes cast don’t match with the other characters; Mr. President (who reuses his Adventure 2 model), the G.U.N. General (who is designed to be in line with Mr. President), and the Black Arms (who take more than a few ques from Sonic Adventure 1’s Chaos and even Knight’s Into Dreams) all conflict with the bright colors Shadow and his friend(s)(?) without fail. Top this off with the levels having unique elements are graphics/models ripped from Sonic Adventure 2 and Heroes, and you have a game that looks more like a Beta build or an asset flip rather than a final product.

On a final note of the art style, and the first one of the graphics, is the color scheme on anything that wasn’t ported directly from heroes. The colors don’t feel so bright as you average Call of Duty has more saturation than the stages in this game. Even the computer levels, which feature the largest color palette of any stage on offer, comes off as dull and lifeless as Westopolis (a stage that’s literally being decimated by aliens and is supposed to look lifeless).

For the rest of the graphics that result in the game looking worse than the last 3, it comes down to the aesthetics and the lighting. Aesthetically speaking, the game is weak. There may be a result of wanting 23 unique stages with 3 missions each, but beyond an alien spaceship that may as well be Jabbu-Jabbu’s Belly there’s very little you haven’t already seen. There’s the aforementioned computer levels, Westopolis is just another city level that lacks any strong theming the first two had, the Eggman based look as they should but are in a game where all the stages use dark colors, and the flashback level in the ARK are little more than identical corridors. The rest of the time it’s the typical Sonic affair without the typical Sonic flair.

And then there’s my visual nemesis: bloom. For those who don’t know, “bloom” refers to the gradient effect lights give off. This effect is magnified heavily in cameras, and sometimes invoked in film for artistic reasons. In video games, it CAN be used for such reasons, but is often used as a lazy means to convey something is “bright” without having to do much manual lighting. And this game uses it for damn near everything: shining lights, lasers, explosions, water, lava, acid, technology, the chaos emeralds – you get the picture. The bloom effects push this game’s visuals from unimpressive to downright unpleasant.

Sound design is thankfully a bit better. The sound mixing issues from the Adventure days are long gone, and sound effects for weapons are appropriate if not bland (and for some reason, used in the menu screen). On the other hand, the music has a Megaman X3 problem; the songs themselves are acceptable, but as an OST it all blurs together into what feels like a single hour long song. The voice cast has switched over for the 4Kids cast besides Omega; the performances are a little shaking (and occasionally memetic) and the only game in the series where Sonic says “damn” is the same one where he gets his boy scout voice, but the voices still overall fit the characters. On the plus side, the best voices for Eggman, Rouge, and Shadow himself were in the 4Kids group and their deliveries are mostly fine.

And there’s the animation – the one good aspect of the presentation. The characters are still a bit floaty when moving, resulting in characters not quite having the right amount of weight to them in motion. But choreography is much better and more dynamic with Shadow himself than past games, there isn’t much in the way of puppet-like motions or stock animations like the Adventure games had, and the over-acting body movements from Heroes is nowhere to be found. Of the pre-HD era of Sonic, Shadow the Hedgehog easily fairs the best in this regard…

…but good animation doesn’t change that, with everything put together, the game is a late 6th gen game that is overall less impressive than the Dreamcast launch title from the same franchise.

Story

Shadow is thinking about his past event on the ARK but can’t make anything of it. Suddenly, aliens invade the nearby town of Westopolis. Shadow initially has no interest until their leader, Black Doom, sends a message that Shadow owes him the seven emeralds. Despite having no clue what’s going on, he decides to go along with it in hope for some answers. Shadow [and the player] are then given the choice to go their own path, aid Black Doom in his invasion, or team up with Sonic and friends to stop the galactic hellspawn. The last of those three is canon thanks to the bizarre choice of having a final story where Shadow saves the damn day.

This story has been beaten to death by all who review this game, and for good reason. The forced swearing, the stupid morality system, how the final story makes said system pointless, how the story can become an absolute mess based on which stages the player proceeds in (as the player can switch sides and change routes whenever they want), I can confirm it’s all accurate to how others have presented it and won’t waste your time on it any further. So instead I’ll save some time and focus on how poorly this story has aged in hindsight.

For starters, the final story itself. What is the point of the final story? To offer a canonical ending that future games can follow up on. What happened after Shadow The Hedgehog? A franchise reboot that was so bad it got unbooted into a soft continuity where the games are either self contained (Unleashed), it’s own thing (Story Book Duology) or just cherry pick which parts of which games matter this time (Generations and Forces). While the fact the last story invalidates the main game’s plot sucks, the fact it did so for future stories that will never exist is just tragic.

Second: the general premise that the final story retcons. Every plot point in this game has the goal to either allow the player to define Shadow as a hero or renegade, and/or a means to shed some light on his past. The problem is that his past and his morality were pretty well established after SA2 and Heroes. Morally speaking, Shadow is screwed over by his backstory and is now a much weaker/less defined character to give the player the means to redefine him; the Shadow that saved Rouge from certain death in both of his previous appearances as well as the one who originally gave his life to save the planet in his first appearance is now perfectly willing to leave both his best friend and the planet be devoured by a giant piece of space jerky because the player said so.

In terms of backstory, that’s a two-part problem. The first is that the mortality choice system screws over Shadow’s ability to develop as a character since only certain bits of his story are learned at certain points over certain routes. So while the player gets to “learn” “everything” over the course of the many playthroughs, at no point does the character himself ever get to be making decisions based on the answers the player learns. Combine this with how the morality system erased Shadow’s defined character, and you have a recipe for a 22 hour game that turns Sonic’s most fleshed out character into more of a blank slate than your average Link.

Then there’s the logistical side of things. The game doesn’t answer unanswered questions but instead just adds to the existing backstory. For example: Black Doom and the General. They both relate to Project Shadow in significant ways, but neither actually offer any answers on why it was deemed so dangerous that they had to kill everyone aboard the ARK; if anything, they just add more questions (Like how was Black Doom is somehow involved in Shadow’s creation but the government still was blindsided by the Black Arms existence and the ARKs true purpose, or why was the General as a kid spared from the galactic target practice massacre, and why would he then work for the organization behind it no less?)

Also, while not a big deal in the grand scheme of the game, why can’t the player side with Dr. Eggman? In the game where the player gets to make Shadow evil, there’s no pathway where you team up with Dr. Eggman. The Silly Putty from Outer Space gets three endings where Shadow teams up with him to consume the planet, but the iconic villain of the series just gets karate chop action? Lame.

On the final note of this plot in hindsight, Omega really should have been the main character from both a narrative and gameplay perspective.

Think about it: He was the newest character at the time, the most morally ambiguous character in the series yet (his only known mission is to kill Eggman and everything related to him) and the ability to use guns has been built into him from the start. His unique personality also lends itself better to both extremes of the moral spectrum this game strives for, so by all metrics he really would have been a better fit.

Gameplay

Okay, Shadow The Hedgehog has some positives buried within it. First, the rail grinding problem from Heroes has been fixed; I never once flew off to the side when trying to switch rails. Trails of rings that are meant to be used for a light speed dash now leave behind “ghost rings” for the player to use for the dash should they accidentally collect some, and Shadow also only loses about 10 rings per hit, meaning the player doesn’t have to worry as much about making a single mistake in the more enemy filled levels. Most of these changes would carry over into Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Rush, but Shadow deserves credit for their inclusion.

Okay, back to complaining.

The controls flat out suck. It’s not that Shadow controls like he’s on ice, but more that he’s all speed and no momentum. Momentum is important for platforms because the player uses it to help determine when and how they turn and jump. For example, Mario typically has a walk that gradually becomes a run, and an extra movement option (from the high speed dive to the momentum canceling spin attack). The momentum to all of this affects how he turns and jumps, and the player can mentally adjust for that with a bit of practice for some impressive platforming. Shadow, however, goes from a walk to run almost instantly, and the default jump cancels any momentum right then and there. This means that it’s both easy to run straight off the edge of a stage, but also easy to undershoot a platform since Shadow’s lack of momentum means he has to jump at the very edge of most platforms to make it; the player will spend most of the time moving inch by inch through the level to avoid a most painful death, since [unlike Sonic Heroes] the levels here do not complement the movement.

While the levels themselves are more bland than anything else, they all fail to provide much in the way of speed nor interesting platforming thanks to the bad controls. The frequent turning and platforming results in constant stop and start gameplay, meaning even short levels with straightforward missions have some pacing issues. However, every platform has to be far larger than anything the Adventure games offered thanks to the ridiculous speed Shadow naturally moves at, so don’t expect to fail at the platforming unless you undershoot a platform because you wanted high speeds while platforming, or an enemy hits you mid jump and the knockback damned you to a fall.

Oh right, the enemies and combat. Shadow The Hedgehog has the worst combat of any Sonic game (yes, even worse than the boom games), but I’ll be focusing on how it’s worse than Heroes to keep things concise. First of all, Heroes just made combat that was more appropriate to the Sonic series as it played less like a ratchet and Clank platform shooter and more like a 3D beat ‘em up platformer.

Secondly, both games gave enemies health bars but Heroes had more variety in how to deal with enemies. Speed, flight, and power characters had their own movesets and enemy types they specialized in, with said moves varying depending on which of the 4 teams you’re playing as. Each of the three playable characters can also level up throughout the stage, increasing not only the damage but alters the properties of the attacks (For example, Omega’s three punch combo went from basic gun fire to a heavy machine gun to full on rocket barrage). And to top it all off, each team has a special team attack that not only kills/heavily damages anything nearby, but each has a secondary effect depending on the team. 

By contrast, Shadow always has the same moveset regardless of the route he’s taking: a homing attack, a [outright useless] spindash, his currently equipped weapon, Chaos Blast, and his invincible state should he fill either of his two meters up. The leveling system was dropped in its entirety, firearms don’t carry between levels and almost never get replaced with more powerful weapons until the last level of any given route, and the partners you team up with in the story offer no combat benefits what-so-ever.

Finally, Shadow is just a bad shooter; how people say the gunplay in this game is good [or anything short of terrible] is beyond me. For starters, the player can only hold a single gun (something that 2-3 hour rail shooters get flack for); it’s like the game sees guns more as a power up than part of Shadow’s moveset. This makes rocket launchers outright useless if it isn’t a boss battle, and it makes it impossible to save a weapon outside of using the weak homing attack on all unavoidable enemies. It’s really bizarre since Heroes had a system where two button were devoted for switching out between partners, but rather than rework the system to alternate between to stashed weapons, those two buttons were saved up for Shadows two Chaos Powers (that would not be used very often by players if they were effective in the first place). If Shadow could upgrade his attack power like in Heroes or gain permanent upgrades like in the Adventure games, this would help mitigate things.

It’s sad to think that Big the Cat displays better combat skills in Heroes than Shadow does in his own game.

The game also lacks a lock on or a manual first person mode (except for turrets, for some reason), which means that actually aiming at enemies is a pain; most attempts to fire at an enemy that is right in front of the player will result in Shadow missing entirely. And actually facing the enemy means stopping entirely to turn Shadow to face them, but since this game lacks any really strafing (despite the main character having hover shoes) doing so is just inviting another enemy to shoot you.

To counter this, most players will jump in front of an enemy (which will naturally dodge most other incoming attacks) and fire at them [using guns in the air will hold Shadow in place] until the enemy dies. Once dead, the player will then turn to the next enemy – rinse and repeat until the door opens. 

Combine all of this with the fact enemies don’t change behavior to match Shadow’s morality (for example, even if you side with Eggman, his robots will still attack you on sight) and you have a recipe for a dull, repetitive experience. It doesn’t matter how many enemies are in the room. It doesn’t matter how strong or armored the enemy is, or which side they’re fighting for. It doesn’t matter if Shadow is using a 9mm handgun, an alien shotgun, or a military gatling gun. Every enemy encounter that isn’t a boss fight in this game plays out the exact same way across the ten required playthroughs [minimum] to reach the last story segment.

On that note, the boss fights are okay, since they do require the player to focus on the environment and the boss themselves instead of just one or the other. It also does something interesting with the weapons: while the weapons can be spammed on the weak point for massive damage™ as one would expect, guns are capable of damaging bosses at any point. Since guns are capable of being grinded for ammo in most bosses, the player can actually find their own balance between unlocking into the boss and trying to activate their exploitable weaknesses of the bosses. My only issue with the bosses (that isn’t me repeating what’s already said) is that the large health pools make them go on for too long.

That last part also applies to the levels, however. While neutral stages only require the player to reach the end of the stage, moving on the hero or villain paths require Shadow to complete a mission instead. While these missions can occasionally be just getting to the end, it’s usually either killing all enemies on the opposing allegiance, finding and collecting/destroying a certain amount of objects, or the occasional unique mission like destroying a single jet going through the level, racing a character to the end, or collecting 400 rings in a circus. 

The problem is that, depending on the level design and how awful placement for the enemies end up being, level missions can take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes. And given that you have to beat the game 10 times to get that canon ending, you’re either doing the really tedious missions twice, or repeating slightly less tedious stages and missions three or more times to avoid the unbearable ones. The only positive I can think of is that the player can now teleport between any checkpoint in the level, which in theory can help relieve on backtracking. In practice, it only really helps if you know what enemies or collectibles you already missed, but if you already know that then you probably won’t miss them the first time. Also, the checkpoints are not saved for repeat runs, which would have made getting the multiple endings a little less mind numbing since they force you to restart from Stage 1 every time.

Also, remember when I implied that the Chaos powers aren’t even that good in the first place? The missions are why. For Chaos Control, it’s only really useful for neutral missions where getting to the end is the main goal; any other missions will almost always result in you bypassing what you’re looking for. But the Chaos Blast doesn’t fare much better. With the enemies being scattered over every last inch of the level, there’s rarely enough nearby enemies that the player is targeting to justify using so much of the evil meter to blow up what might be at most 5% of the total enemies in the level you’re hunting for. The fact that the enemy’s allegiance determines which meter it fills further limits how useful these two abilities are, and they’re rendered worthless in comparison to the full charge buff Shadow gets when the meter is filled.

Now for the round up, there are vehicle sections, but half of them are optional, none of them control very well, and all of them could be removed without the game losing much of anything. The game does actually feature 5 keys like in Heroes, but instead of special stages these keys unlock an armory filled with a lot of weapons and even some elemental shields (making a surprise return from Sonic 3). While I don’t find the elemental shields to be that helpful here (I’d rather have something like a shield that reduces how many rings are lost upon hit until the player dies or something), this is a cool mechanic; I’m an advocate for platformers having their collectables unlock abilities, upgrades, and/or weapons overtime. There are some unlockable weapons you get for completing each of the endings, which is nice. Would be nicer if I could hold more than one gun, though.

Finally, this game has multiplayer.

Final Thoughts

Yeah, that image sums it all up pretty well. There are some positives here that exist, but I was really hoping for this to be a case of discovering that people were too harsh on it. But alas, no. Between it’s awful pacing issues, terrible controls, boring combat, and worthless story, there just wasn’t a whole lot I enjoyed here and I didn’t even talk about everything I wanted to (like how boring the weapon designs in the game are). This game may not be the worst thing ever, but it gets my vote for the worst Sonic game (although I’ve never played Genesis), and I’m never going back to this one either way.

Shadow the Hedgehog can go straight to hell.