I first played Shadow the Hedgehog a couple of years ago where me and a friend laughed at the opening cutscene, went through a couple of levels, and then moved on with our lives, content to not play through the entirety of it on the basis of it being Shadow the Hedgehog. Yet since then, dropping it that fast has almost left a bit of a void for me--what was the rest of that game like? The premise sounded so bizarre that I knew I needed to come back to it someday and see it through to the end, and so I did, completing all 10 endings plus the true final boss.
Shadow is definitely an ambitious title: Guns! Vehicles! Branching paths and moral choices! It turns out that first thing actually works pretty well, for as memeable as the idea is. Shadow, Heroes, and 06 are all Sonic titles that will lock you in a room until you get rid of boring enemy waves, but in Shadow you're able to get past this nuisance the quickest, due to most enemies going down in just a couple of shots. The implementation is still clunky, but it's something!
Don't get too excited, though, as the level design is very clearly several notches below other Sonic games released around the same time, being filled with lots of copy-pasted rooms, repetitive environments, and absurd amounts of waiting for moving platforms. Given how the story expects you to do several playthroughs in order to reach the true ending, having to replay stages so often is something that seems like it would actually be faithful to the core design of Sonic: getting better and better at a level as you do more playthroughs, allowing you to speed through it quicker while taking all the fastest routes. Unfortunately, while the below-average level design could be passable in a vacuum, replaying it as much as you do just makes it more obvious how much of a step down it really is. There is also, of course, the notorious objectives that turn the level into a marathon in order to kill every last enemy or do some other mundane task. It's not great!
And yeah, that morality system sure is something! I was really interested to see how this was handled, how your decisions would affect the plot and characters, and it... doesn't, really. Sticking to a full dark/full hero playthrough leads to a fairly coherent run, but straying even slightly off the beaten path (which you will need to do to get all the endings and unlock the finale) leads to the plot becoming outright incomprehensible. You'll be teleporting around from stage to stage with no explanation for how you got there, plot beats will constantly be introduced and then dropped, and while characters will comment on your actions during gameplay, they'll completely forget about it by the time the next stage rolls around, as though their memory was just wiped.
It's a system that is certainly interesting on paper but it's too loose to go anywhere--when you can switch sides so often without anyone acknowledging it, it's hard to feel like anything you do has any actual consequences. It's a shame that the concept of the branching paths is also attached to this morality system, because if there was an alternate universe where a more traditional Sonic game picked up the idea of having alternate levels unlocked by completing extra objectives, without any of Shadow's baggage, without any of the hero/dark nonsense, it could make for something really cool. Unfortunately, the fact that it's part of Shadow means it's going to be forever tainted, and we probably won't see a successor to the concept. Everything about Shadow's presentation is antithetical to Sonic, but looking at the progression structure purely mechanically? They could've had something. (Although Sonic CD does admittedly have some mechanics that are kind of similar, to be fair.)
Shadow the Hedgehog is a failed experiment and it'll probably always be remembered as one, but I won't deny that this was also easily one of the most fascinating titles I've played this year. And hey, I Am All of Me is still the best Crush 40 song!
Shadow is definitely an ambitious title: Guns! Vehicles! Branching paths and moral choices! It turns out that first thing actually works pretty well, for as memeable as the idea is. Shadow, Heroes, and 06 are all Sonic titles that will lock you in a room until you get rid of boring enemy waves, but in Shadow you're able to get past this nuisance the quickest, due to most enemies going down in just a couple of shots. The implementation is still clunky, but it's something!
Don't get too excited, though, as the level design is very clearly several notches below other Sonic games released around the same time, being filled with lots of copy-pasted rooms, repetitive environments, and absurd amounts of waiting for moving platforms. Given how the story expects you to do several playthroughs in order to reach the true ending, having to replay stages so often is something that seems like it would actually be faithful to the core design of Sonic: getting better and better at a level as you do more playthroughs, allowing you to speed through it quicker while taking all the fastest routes. Unfortunately, while the below-average level design could be passable in a vacuum, replaying it as much as you do just makes it more obvious how much of a step down it really is. There is also, of course, the notorious objectives that turn the level into a marathon in order to kill every last enemy or do some other mundane task. It's not great!
And yeah, that morality system sure is something! I was really interested to see how this was handled, how your decisions would affect the plot and characters, and it... doesn't, really. Sticking to a full dark/full hero playthrough leads to a fairly coherent run, but straying even slightly off the beaten path (which you will need to do to get all the endings and unlock the finale) leads to the plot becoming outright incomprehensible. You'll be teleporting around from stage to stage with no explanation for how you got there, plot beats will constantly be introduced and then dropped, and while characters will comment on your actions during gameplay, they'll completely forget about it by the time the next stage rolls around, as though their memory was just wiped.
It's a system that is certainly interesting on paper but it's too loose to go anywhere--when you can switch sides so often without anyone acknowledging it, it's hard to feel like anything you do has any actual consequences. It's a shame that the concept of the branching paths is also attached to this morality system, because if there was an alternate universe where a more traditional Sonic game picked up the idea of having alternate levels unlocked by completing extra objectives, without any of Shadow's baggage, without any of the hero/dark nonsense, it could make for something really cool. Unfortunately, the fact that it's part of Shadow means it's going to be forever tainted, and we probably won't see a successor to the concept. Everything about Shadow's presentation is antithetical to Sonic, but looking at the progression structure purely mechanically? They could've had something. (Although Sonic CD does admittedly have some mechanics that are kind of similar, to be fair.)
Shadow the Hedgehog is a failed experiment and it'll probably always be remembered as one, but I won't deny that this was also easily one of the most fascinating titles I've played this year. And hey, I Am All of Me is still the best Crush 40 song!
Yousef
2 years ago