The game itself was good. The platforming part was really great. All the areas were transferred from 3D to 2D. It's great... Now let's talk about the negative points. Unfortunately, there are some, and my main complaint is about the special stages... I'm sorry, but they are bad. I never liked the special stages in Sonic 2, but here.... The controls are somehow even worse. Objects such as rings and bombs appear too soon, with no time to react to their appearance. In fact, the original Sonic 2 special stages had some specific rules for the appearance of rings. For example, when the tube spins, the rings and bombs appear only on the side visible to the player and not on the side where nothing is visible.
Now, I am not saying that the game is bad because of this. No, of course not. But I will say that these special stages really ruin the experience for some players who hate tube special stages. And yes, even Saturn Sonic 3D Blast had these stages, BUT they were easier because they were in 3D and gave time to react, and again followed the rules in placing rings and bombs along the way.

It's Christmas day, 2005. The tree is surrounded by wrapped gifts for my siblings and I to open, I don't even know this game exists. Among the gifts are 3 particularly large boxes with no tags on. "Those are for decoration", Mother says, urging me not to touch them for fear of ruining the display. This is the first year we've used fake gifts as decoration, strange.

The day goes on, many a gift is opened and smiles fill the room. But a young Jake can't help but feel a little disappointed that he received no video games for his beloved Nintendo Gamecube console. How much longer must he replay Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Super Monkey Ball and The Incredibles before his horizon would expand...

But then. The impossible should occur. "Jake, aren't you going to open your last present?" My face becomes the definition of bewildered. "L-Last present? I got them all didn't I?" I ask, naively searching under the tree for the lost gift. "Oh really? Then I suppose you don't want what's in here."

I couldn't believe my eyes. There she was, my own mother, whom I'd learned to trust and rely on, gesturing to the so-called 'decorative' box from earlier. Denial filled my soul. "Ha! I'm not stupid, there's nothing in there" I shake the box to prove its lack of contents. But then, what's this? A rumble. Contact is being made between objects beneath the santa-covered paper.

I can hardly contain my excitement, and tear the paper away in an instant! Inside, a large cardboard box. I open that.. and inside...

... Another box, complete with wrapping paper. Another, another, at least 9 boxes, all individually wrapped and progressively decreasing in size. It was a hard fought battle, but at the end I saw him. It was a face I knew well.

Shadow the Hedgehog. And what's this? He has A GUN!? I threw myself upstairs to play it. And have since forgotten almost every single thing about it.

I cannot rate a game I don't remember, but I do remember how I received this game, so I'm giving it 2.5 stars out of respect.

I’m sure the learned scholars of Backloggd will already be familiar with I, We, Waluigi: a Post-Modern analysis of Waluigi, a foundational lens through which we can view almost every video game mascot ever conceived - Ms. Pac Man, Ken Masters, Evil Ryu, Roxas, Shadow Mario, Dark Link, Dark Pit, Dark Prince, Dark Samus, and, of course: Shadow the Hedgehog. But who is Shadow the Hedgehog? Following the tenets of Waluigi Theory, it’s safe to say he’s a copy of the individual shaped by the signifier - a stencil-clone of Sonic the Hedgehog, who himself exists as a reflection of Super Mario, having been created for the express purpose of giving his codemasters a jumping mascot to stick on the box of a video game machine¹. Appropriate then that this black-furred badass lab rat would be called Shadow, existing as he does in the literal shadows of his progeniting mascots. You think I’m taking the piss, right? Well, Shadow the Hedgehog (the game) thinks the same thing I do about Shadow the Hedgehog (the character): that Shadow is just that - a shadow, an unindividual who ceases to exist when Sonic the Hedgehog inevitably moves from the light. And in the year 2005, Sonic the Hedgehog was almost standing in the dark.

Shadow the Hedgehog’s writing team, keenly aware that the 8 year olds playing the game may not have read the works of Swiss semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure, choose to expound this metaphor in a more explicit manner, and centred it in the game’s narrative. Shadow the Hedgehog (the game) begins with a literal Judgement Day, The Creator appearing to Shadow the Hedgehog (the character) in a biblical vision evocative of Exodus 3:3. The Black Doom asks: I created you, but who or what are you? And what form shall you take? Follow my commandments, and you can become as God. (Though unlike the Bible, Shadow the Hedgehog is more interested in getting you to follow the tenets of Collect 8 Orbs than not making unto thee any graven image) Late in the events of Shadow the Hedgehog (the game), it is revealed that Shadow the Hedgehog (the character) isn’t actually Shadow the Hedgehog at all, but in fact an android replica of Shadow the Hedgehog who is imitating the memories and actions of his predecessor, Shadow the Hedgehog. The shadow must define itself in a battle between the unconscious aspect of the self and the conscious ego that does not identify in itself, or the entirety of the unconscious; that is, everything of which a person is not fully conscious. In short, Shadow the Hedgehog is the unknown.

And how does the unknown choose to define itself? Well, this Sega of America-developed video game takes place during the great uncertainty of the War on Terror. Not just in the figurative sense that the game came out four years after 9/11; it literally places Shadow’s mission to collect the Chaos Emeralds in the middle of a war between the United States government (referred to in-game as Westopolis) and an enemy ‘terror force’ called “the black aliens” (the US President in the game always uses this term for them!! that shit is NOT a coincidence baby!!!!). As with his foray into Saussurian philosophy, Takashi Iizuka doesn’t quite trust the patrons of DeviantArt to grasp the nettle of his argument he’s making here, and eventually has to have characters say things like “we don’t negotiate with terrorists!” and “if you’re not with me, you’re against me!”. Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was released six months earlier.

To tie a bow on the whole treatise, the war is ultimately hijacked by a hypercapitalist/industrialist force - lead by a Northrop Grummanesque Dr. Robotnik - who reveals that Shadow the Hedgehog (the android) isn’t actually an android, but is in fact the original Shadow the Hedgehog (the character) after all, conditioned to believe he was an android replica of himself for a purpose the game doesn’t explain. Presumably the developers trusted the player to digest such philosophical matters on their own time, so allow me to explain the game’s message: capitalism has created your character, Shadow the Hedgehog, a being who can only exist in reference to other things. Shadow is the true nowhere man/hedgehog, without the other things he reflects, inverts and parodies he has no reason to exist. Shadow’s identity only comes from what and who he isn’t – without a wider frame of reference he is nothing. He is not his own man. In a world where our identities are shaped by our warped relationships to brands and commerce we are all Waluigi Shadow the Hedgehog.

To sum up this game in a sentence: Charmy Bee leads an assault on a United States federal prison.

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¹ Super Mario himself is a reference to Jump Man (star of Donkey Kong (1983)), who was in turn an homage to Nintendo of America’s Brooklyn landlord. This arguably makes Shadow the Hedgehog the inversion of a reflection of a copy of a signifier of Mario Segale, a 62 year old landlord.