The Gaming Experiment

The game I completed for this week’s experiment was the XBLA exclusive Shadow Complex, by Chair Entertainment. You might remember Chair’s first XBLA game, Undertow, which was an underwater capture the flag game. Though it looked great, Undertow used the Unreal 3 engine, it was somewhat forgettable.

Their second XBLA outing is head and shoulders above the last game.

For those unfamiliar, Shadow Complex is a side scrolling action adventure game, in the vein of the 2D Metroid games, and the classic, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Though the game works in a 2D space, moving from left to right, there is also foreground and background enemies that can attack, and the game auto-recognizes that you are shooting at them. This allows for a little more depth to the game, and helps the setting feel more alive.

You play Jason Flemming, a regular guy who meets a girl named Claire, they go spelunking. Claire disappears, and Jason goes searching for her. He stumbles on to a complex underground, in the shadows… cleaver name. In Jason’s exploration of the facility during his search for Claire, he hears about a plan to attack San Francisco . He now has two major objectives; to stop this shadowy PMC and save Claire.

The story was somewhat interesting, but it was the gameplay that held my attention, and the gameplay in Shadow Complex is fantastic. You start by finding a backpack that gives you the ability to double jump, and as you delve deeper into the facility and explore more of the huge map, you find upgrades to your weapons, and armor to your suit.

Some of the mechanics of the game are really great. You are equipped with a flashlight that when shined at an area that can be affected by your weapons, turns the color of the weapon needs that needs to be used. Green requires grenades, orange requires a gun, and purple is you foam gun.

The foam gun is really the highlight weapon of the game. It not only fun to use on enemies, it’s also extremely functional in creating platforms to get to hard to reach places.

You do level up with each kill and by exploring and finding secrets. With each level comes more accuracy and precision. The replay value is definitely there too. In my first run of the game, I was able to get to level 13, however, there is an achievement for reaching level 50. I also wasn’t able to get 100% of the items, and explore 100% of the map.

This is definitely a game that I will be coming back to again, because of the perfectionist streak in me. Shadow Complex is a great game and on that you Must Download

Let me know in the comments what you thought about this fantastic game.