Intro

Shadow The Hedgehog Review

Background:

You are Shadow the Hedgehog, confused with only a few haunting memories left to you as your mind races wanting answers. Out of nowhere the area becomes under attack by an alien invasion as you are approached by a mysterious figure offering you answers if you do what your told. Who can you trust? An evil and grim appearing figure? Dr. Eggman? Sonic and his friends? Or the faint but haunting memories you have left? You decide...and hold on tight for a ride like none other as you create your own destiny. Shadow the Hedgehog brings a few new faces in as well as some familiar ones. Each to guide, or to challenge you along the path you choose.

Game play:

Yes that is right, that is a gun in Shadow's hand and you can and will want to use it to complete his goals. As you travel throughout each area you will find a wide range of human and alien guns to choose from each with its own unique power setting allowing you to rapidly fire, or blow away your enemies completely. Don't feel like traveling on foot? Grab one of the many in game vehicles that Shadow can drive and discover new ways to travel. Chaos Control? But of course, but now there's a twist. You are given two meters at the top of your screen a red gauge and a blue gauge, with each good alliance person you take down your red gauge increases and with each evil alliance person you take down your blue gauge increases. What happens when they get full? The red gauge allows you to blow away anyone good or evil that opposes you in the area with an large chaos blast. The blue gauge allows you to dash rapidly through the area taking out anyone that stands in front of you. As you play on you'll learn other chaos powers that you possess.

Graphics:

I own the Nintendo Gamecube version of it and even for what most people consider to be the lowest grade platform in terms of graphics this game has impressed me. The frame rate of the game seems to maintain a consistent number of frames per second meaning most to all parts of the game run completely smooth, even through some of the more physics challenging game play. Colors and character textures look excellent. The light and darkness shading was done very well to give the world and characters that realistic feel while still maintain the animated feel. The world shading is what most impressed me for the simple fact that each new level you entered had the true light and darkness shade that made it look as good as it did.

Audio:

Alright first off I found the game music absolutely addicting. You can tell the veterans of the Sonic game music, artists like Crush 40 and Julien-K, preformed the game music and it is of excellent quality. I had the opportunity to try this game on normal and Dolby Digital Surround sound and I have to say both are excellent. Voice acting was good in my book. The character voices seemed to match their looks and personality's very well. The only downside is you can tell that there was a desperation attempt to give the game a more mature feel by the constant use of "Damn" or "Damn it". Other than that I thought the voice acting was decent and did give the characters the their true personality. Sound effects were of decent quality. Some of the weapons sounded a little too fake but they could have been much worse. Explosions however and falling objects sounded excellent. The in game vehicles lacked some sound quality but are still decent.

Replay Ability:

Well this is one of the biggest area's that could have used something new. The game is excellent the first few times through while getting to find out one of the multiple endings, but the game begins to get old fast after a finding out most of the endings. Unless you are a persistent and devoted fan of the game it is difficult to keep your interest to play the game and beat it over 300 different ways possible.

Game play Features:

1. Excellent and stunning fast paced graphics.
2. An awesome in game soundtrack.
3. An exciting fast paced story in which you choose the outcome with multiple endings available.
4. Multiple ways to take down your foes including weapons, and rise to the challenge of discovering your true destiny.
5. A few all new characters as well as some of your favorite ones from the past.
6. Travel in style with useable vehicles or journey on foot.
7. Team up with characters in each level to help you along the way.
8. Excellent multi player gaming for friends and rivals.