That doesn't mean SystemReady wasn't talking about the physics. Noted, and thanks. The "physics engine" is the physics used, not necessarily just the middleware used. The implementation of the middleware is part of the engine for that game. Nobody's blaming Renderware for anything.
He said "engine", not physics. This isn't up to interpretation and even if it was, that's the wrong word to use. No. Stop right there. Renderware's physics engine is Renderware. There is no separation here. Now if it were say Unreal 2 which uses the Math Karma Physics engine, you would still be wrong because you are blaming the engine for the incompetence of the developers. You clearly are. Either that or you don't understand how game engines work to which I say, go visit 3dbuzz (RIP) and watch the videos where they make a game engine from scratch in C++.
This is a bit of a lame answer but honestly I don't think it's really a game that can be "fixed". The Shadow game is fundamentally a bad idea; the concept for it came from Yuji Naka looking at the success of *Grand Theft Auto* and wanting to make a Sonic game mimicking that. The story is about "explaining Shadow's past" but that was already answered in SA2; the answers the Shadow game provides is just dumb retcons that shits on SA2's story. There's really no way to salvage...any of this, really. You basically have to go back to the drawing board entirely. I think Shadow works best as a contrast to Sonic, so some sort of game where they're a duo would be interesting, but I don't think Shadow really carries an entire game by himself.
So after all this chat about the game I went back to it and had a play through for the first time in, maybe a decade? Here’s my thoughts: 1) The camera is crappy often, whether it’s being automatically directed by the game or manually controlled. There’s no option to change the axis controls and it freaks out frequently. When going in to first person mode it doesn’t allow you to look up which makes it completely pointless, and I died fighting Black Bull because the camera became stuck under me and I home-dashed off the side of the level in to a pit. Talking of pits... 2) There’s too many pits. Why does every boss need one around the arena? Why is every level basically filled with them? It’s unnecessary and adds a faux difficulty to the game which is generally just unfair. 3) The graphics are not good, even for a 2005 game. They barely scrape Dreamcast graphics. The colours are dull and bland, the textures are all very muddy, and the environments and characters are all low polygon. Heroes looked way better. Great CG cutscenes though. 4) The controls are actually better than I remember, but why is Shadow’s top speed so incredibly fast? It’s almost laughable because the level design doesn’t ever allow you to go that fast without getting hit. 5) The lock-on is sometimes incredibly strong and locks on from far away, or misses when it shouldn’t and sends you to a deep pit. 6) The soundtrack is awesome. I love the soundtrack to this game. The voice acting and delivery is generally crap all round, minus anything Robotnik says. 7) The story is odd and doesn’t always exactly sync up to each cutscene, but kudos to the team for trying to make 300+ different playthroughs. The dialogue can be a bit iffy and doesn’t always string the story together. Overall it’s not a terrible game, and is actually enjoyable for the most part. It’s what I’d call a guilty pleasure. I’d give it a 6/10 at the very most.
You seem to be taking what I said extremely literally. I'm not blaming the engine - I'm blaming Sonic Team's usage/implementation of the game with it. This also ties into stuff like what Speedstar mentioned above with the bottomless pits everywhere - which was also a problem with Heroes's level design. It's basically them taking their garbage Sonic Heroes tech usage and philosophy (mind you, Team Dark's storyline is basically just a teaser for this game) and tacking guns on it. And Step 0: don't base your new game off of Heroes in any capacity because that game is garbage, right down to the basic building blocks of any video game, such as how the characters handle.
Then don't say "engine". That's not up to interpretation. That has a specific meaning in game development and whether you knew it or not, that's you saying that Renderware is to blame. The people arguing about Fallout76's engine aren't complaining about "usage/implementation". They are complaining about an old engine that they kept tacking stuff on because they don't want to upgrade their tech proper. Same thing with Duke Nukem Forever using Unreal 1 underneath. BTW, the reason Renderware was used was due to the PS2 and Sony wanting the next big Sonic game on their platform (under threat of not being allowed to publish anything on the PS2 if they didn't). The engine they were initially going to use was the engine of Sonic Adventure DX which was only going to be on the Gamecube and Xbox (because the PS2 is a coding nightmare). The major selling point of Renderware is that it made development on the PS2 waaaaay easier hence why they switched engines (and if this happened later in development, probably screwed over the time needed for polish).
Less talk (and pedantry) about engines, more talk about fixing (breaking?) the abomination (masterpiece?) known as Shadow the Hedgehog!
While "change guns for Chaos Spear" is a pretty obvious change, if they still want to have different weapons, have enemies drop modular attachments for Shadow's wrist cuff that alter the properties of Chaos Spear's shot. They could increase damage, add a rapid fire effect, etc. Then you could still have a basic unlimited weapon, and more powerful ones with "ammo".
I'd say release a PC port to allow modding but I don't know if that old license would be honored...or profitable.
I feel like part of the issue with Shadow the Hedgehog (and Heroes, by extension) is how the character(s) handle. If the character(s) were easier to handle - whether by reducing their max speed, making turning a bit harder to do, or decreasing acceleration gain, the game itself would improve. Part of the issue I had, when I played Shadow the Hedgehog, was that they wanted you to explore their levels to find all of the enemies/collectables, but it was a pain to do so.
now that you mention it, it is an extremely odd choice to be like "only kill this kind of enemy" in a game that still has the character move really quick within relatively narrow levels. IMO, the only way to possibly do that (+ objectives of any kind) is to have open levels. It just does not seem to work with 3D Sonic's more linear level style - which quite possibly not so coincidentally is also something I hated about some of Team Chaotix's levels in Heroes as well. You had to make laps around the damn stage, using teleporters that would be at the end of stages, to complete stages with objectives and god it just didn't work. It really did seem like they were stuck in a very specific level/gameplay style come to think of it, regardless of their stated desire to make a game that was different from other Sonic titles. It hasn't been something I had caught on in comparison to the very clear "boost" methodology they've been going with...mostly. (Looks at Lost World)
For emphasis. I want to make this post more substantial, but I really don't have much to add about this game. Shadow the Hedgehog is a bloated boring game that would need to be turned into a different game to be a good game.
There's one small thing in particular I think the game deserves credit for: because of the backtracking nature of the levels, in places where you have to light dash to continue, they put...I'll call them "ghost rings" over top of the actual rings so you keep light dashing. That was a great move that I wish had been done in the earlier 3D games, Adventure 2 especially. It might seem pointless, but I will point to the Magnet Shield. If you're gonna put long stretches of emptiness where you need the light dash to cross, don't also give me a power-up that moves the rings, thus ruining my path across.
Heh, in Adventure 2, doing Light Dashes in midair was easier as Shadow because he didn't have the bounce ring to quite possibly instantly pit-kill him if the player got the timing wrong (Hard mode City Escape has one of these). I guess Shadow has always had a better idea of how light dashes work than Sonic. :p (it's been so long that I forget, did Heroes and SotH have a single action button that was based on context like SA2:B? if not, that is actually an improvement that happened that we can point to)
To the first: OMG YES! All they had to do was give the Light Dash the X button all to itself! To the second: Yeah, Heroes for some fucking reason thought you needed two "switch character" buttons instead of two action buttons. Shadow has a slightly better scheme: A is jump, B is shoot, X is context-sensitive actions, Y is drop weapon and Chaos powers when the meter is full.
And even then, the light speed dash is unresponsive as shit in those games (excluding the Wii/PS2 version, in which you actually still just use the action button). Seriously, in Generations on my Xbox I literally have to mash the Y button relentlessly whenever I see light speed dash rings, and even then it's like a 50/50 crapshoot.