Shadow Complex does an incredible job of gradually stepping up your character's abilities. oh, hello air duct) and, of course, an achievement. Your efforts earn you more powerups, more components of your combat suit (lifted from a secure room. Finding shortcuts, discovering hidden rooms, and ultimately canvassing the entire thing are all encouraged. The hallmark of any Metroidvania title, the map quickly becomes an oft-checked resource. The foam gun – foe of Restoration baddies, friend of sequence breakers everywhereĪt the center of the Shadow Complex experience is the enormous map. Couple that with Shadow Complex's beautiful 3D graphics and 2D gameplay – powered by Unreal Engine Chair is owned by Epic Games after all – and you've got an experience that, were it not for the wonders of digital distribution, would not exist. The reference to Metroid's Mother Brain is no mistake – Shadow Complex unapologetically places itself into the increasingly anachronistic genre of "Metroidvania" titles, typified by large, open-world maps wherein progress is limited by access to equipment (think: you'll need the missile launcher to get past that door). It's enough to keep you moving forward ("must kill Mother Brain") but luckily moving forward (and backward, and upward, and downward) is what Shadow Complex is all about. Holed up in their Washington-state, mountain-fortified hideout, the Restoration is planning its first major outing: the "Liberation of San Francisco."Īnd that's it – the entire story.
Filling in the role of "bad guys" are the soldiers of the Restoration, a fringe military group driven by ideology (Right? Left? You can't tell in Shadow Complex). but all he ever wanted was a normal life. err, Fleming (voiced by video gaming's omnipresent superstar, Nolan North) is the son of NSA brass and a natural soldier.
To detail those trappings (happening in parallel with the Card / Chair Entertainment novel, Empire), Bourn. Put simply, Shadow Complex is the easiest Xbox Live Arcade recommendation I can make and one of the best games of the year. Nathan Bourne) and the story are both entirely forgettable however, the real star of the game comes from the other half of this collaboration: the gameplay. The hero ( everyman Jason Fleming but let's call him. For one of the most hyped elements of the production, author Orson Scott Card's contributions are underwhelming. Let's get this out of the way: You'll need to forgive Shadow Complex its generic trappings.