Shadow Complex (Xbox 360)

It's not Metroid ... it's not Castlevania ... but ... well, actually, it kind of is. And that's OK!
8/19/2009 3:13 PM | 4 Comments | Page 1 of 2

Given its standing among developers, critics and fans, it's surprising that there aren't more games that blatantly rip off Super Metroid. Where Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter II and DOOM inspired whole movements of cash-in clones, Super Metroid's distinct item-based, nonlinear action-platforming has been confined primarily to two franchises: Metroid itself and Konami's Castlevania series.

There are a few exceptions in recent memory -- indie hit Cave Story, for one -- but the subgenre has been coined "Metroidvania" precisely because of those two series. With the release of Shadow Complex, though, the genre may just have to be renamed. I'm still undecided on what that new name should be. Metroidvaniacomplex? Shadowmetroidvania?

After a quick introduction, the game gives us Jason Fleming -- a strapping young lad who's a bit too bumbling to be believable as the one-man army he eventually becomes, and just a bit too skilled to be believable as the everyman he's supposed to represent. What starts as a simple hike for Jason and his shallow-as-a-kiddie-pool female companion quickly turns into a ridiculously over-the-top mission to single-handedly stop a heavily armed revolutionary group aiming to take over the United States.

We get bits and pieces of the revolutionaries' plans through overheard snippets of conversation and overwrought, mercifully short cut scenes, but the enemy operation never really comes together as a believable plan. So they killed the vice president and are sending their army to take over ... San Francisco? Because that one city will somehow cause the entire American experiment to crumble? The game-ending twist reveals an even more unbelievable backstory and motivation for at least one character, and just muddies things even further.

But it's hard to care about the thinness of the plot when the world of Shadow Complex is such a vibrant playground. From winding caverns to sterile white rooms; from leaky mine shafts to rusting industrial waterways; from an undisturbed lake house to a soldier-filled mess hall; it's all rendered with enough depth and lived-in detail to make exploring a joy.

This is important, because you'll spend a large portion of the game looking into every nook and cranny. In the greatest Metroidvania tradition, the mazelike corridors start off with more dead ends than open paths. Finding new weapons and items not only increases your firepower, but also your possible paths through the impressively sized map. This system does a good job of teasing at upcoming areas long before you can reach them, though the balance between tease and delivery here feels a little back-loaded. The final few items, which open up a surprisingly large portion of the map, come only near the end of the game, when the action is clearly declining toward a finale. By the time I finally got the last power-enhancing bit of my super-suit, I had forgotten half of the dead ends that I had made a mental note to come back to only hours before. A detailed and easy-to-use map function does help in remembering these locations, but without the ability to make notes directly on the map, exploring that last bit of the base can be a little aimless.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the design of the maze is so strong that aimlessly wandering is a joy. It can also be the best way to stumble upon the copious power-enhancing items hidden throughout the base. The map helps again here, marking these items with hard-to-ignore question marks. But the level designers have done a great job figuring out clever, counterintuitive hiding places for the items. It can be tough to figure out exactly which piece of scenery to blow up or how to coordinate the set of careful wall jumps needed to reach the trinket. While most are simple enough for an experienced gamer to unearth, a few will test the thinking and platforming skills of even hardened game veterans.