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Shadow the Hedgehog - 10th Anniversary Retrospective Thread

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Beltway, Nov 16, 2015.

  1. Aerosol

    Aerosol

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    Wow, pretty divided here.

    I think Shadow the Hedgehog had a lot of potential. It was bogged down by crappy writing, half-assed gunplay, and repetitive levels. Funnily enough though, I'd play a Shadow-centric game again, simply because they've fleshed the character out a bit and he's actually interesting. Shadow the GUN Agent is much more interesting than Shadow the MUHPASThog.
     
  2. Sid Starkiller

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    I liked it. It's the Birdemic of the Sonic series. Objectively bad, but there's still some fun to be had if you can look at it the right way.

    EDIT:
    This. I feel like they FINALLY had his characterization down pat in Sonic 06, and then after that game failed, they just stopped using him. Still pissed about that.
     
  3. Fuck this game. That's all I'm going to say on this matter.
     
  4. Flare

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    Oh this game has a strange soft spot in my heart where I enjoy rushing through stages.

    Of course the whole thing is funny, I mean it amazes me this actually is a product. But hey, bright side is it brought some memorable lines and jokes to the series, even if it ruined a lot of childhoods.
     
  5. Dark Sonic

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    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT5kyCEy33k

    Ow the edge!
     

  6. The game pretty much played like Heroes' Shadow. Which, with his 'shoes', is a good thing. Running on air pressure would give you the right amount of "no control" that I would expect. The loading issues you speak of seem to plague the PS2 version more than anything, but blame that on the PS2. Levels had to be chunked out and loaded on the fly, and that paired up with the sluggishness of the system, ended up with things not working half the time. I agree with some of the voice acting being...strange, but it essentially carried forward Heroes' problems.
     
  7. Shadow the Hedgehog did improve the rail mechanics (making switching between rails work all of the time) at the expense of removing the rail-balancing mechanic. Also, there are certain lines of rings in Shadow the Hedgehog that become transparent when they're collected, so the Light Speed Dash is more reliabe.

    One of the other criticisms that I heard regarding this game is that some stages reuses level design from other stages, but SA2 does the same thing. At least in the stages in Shadow the Hedgehog, you have different objectives from which to choose besides "reach the end of the stage".
     
  8. GeneHF

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    On the voice acting front, and somneone can ask Mike if they want to, part of it comes down to it being the first major game the the 4Kids cast were assigned. Jason's Shadow was this really weird soft spoken Batman-voice with a sore throat, and I remember reading that the voice direction was to try to make Eggman sound somewhat like how Deem did it.

    But the soundtrack at least has some pretty good tracks, though I feel it has quite a bit of butt rock, for better or for worse. Sky Troops is awesome if repetitive, but it also has Lava Shelter, which is just plain badass.
     
  9. Overlord

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    The music is one of the few things in the game I have no real issues with. There were some neat remixes from SA2 such as the GUN-Mobile theme, the E.G.G.M.A.N song used as Robotnik's theme... and some nice original stuff such as Lost Impact.

    The game itself can still go chug dicks, mind.
     
  10. Dark Sonic

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    I think sucking dick is more fun than this game good sir :specialed:
     
  11. Blivsey

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    I wish I could enjoy Lost Impact's theme, but... you know. Sixty fucking minutes burns it into your soul.

    Digital Circuit, The ARK, Cosmic Fall, GUN Fortress, Final Haunt... this game does have some great pieces. And Westopolis's theme is good, which helps offset having to play it ten times to finish the game. I also like the remix of Radical Highway used in versus mode.
     
  12. JaredAFX

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    I don't like this game. I don't like this game at all. I prefer Sonic 06 over this, if only because it's more entertaining at how bad it is.

    Shadow definitely introduced some good features, such as one hit not taking all your rings away and FINALLY HAVING ACTIONS ASSIGNED TO MORE THAN ONE BUTTON. The guns actually aren't bad to use and the Good/Evil bars along with their infinite ammo bonus when one is filled makes for action gameplay that isn't too bad. Unfortunately, the rest of the game sucks. The platforming is worse I think than Heroes, the plot is so ridiculously over-the-top and the tone is so dark and "edgy" for a Sonic game it's stupid. Even the music isn't memorable, save for a couple songs. I was seven when this game came out, and I really haven't gotten much better at it since then. It's just really not fun. Like I said before, at least Sonic 06 is a buggy mess that's somewhat fun to run around in and break.
     
  13. It's pure butt-rock, but I do love the theme for Death Ruins.
     
  14. Skyler

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    I don't consider it bad, just... not good. It's just kind of there to me, you know? Still, I'm able to enjoy it.
     
  15. 360

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    Focusing a Sonic game using the Sonic Adventure 2 engine on Shadow is a technically sound idea on paper. The Grand Theft Auto style mature audience grabbing execution however (guns! cars!) was an incredibly bad one. I played it back on the PS2 in my University days because Sega sent me a review copy (used to write for a games publication back then) and from what I remember I felt there were the seeds of a good game hidden underneath the veil of terribly thought out marketing that were just masked by horrible ideas and lacklustre execution. I don't know what Sega were thinking at the time but giving your character a gun and using that on the box art isn't suddenly going to make your game sell five million copies. It was a disappointing game that did harm to the Sonic brand.

    I will concede however that there was the heart of a good game in there somewhere. I'll give it that at least.
     
  16. So, I played Shadow the Hedgehog again for the past couple of days (before which I didn't have the game for a long period of time) and I have gone through most of the stages, unlocking three of the special weapons and their Level 2 versions. I need to ask: what exactly was the problem that others had with the missions that require you to defeat all of the enemies of a certain alignment? Those missions tend to receive the most complaints because missing one of the enemies means that you need to go back to a previous part of the stage, but the enemies are always in plain sight, so you shouldn't miss them at all unless you weren't paying that much attention.
     
  17. Blue Blood

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    Certainly not the case. Sometimes the paths fork (such as in Prison Island) and for whatever reason you may end up on the wrong one and miss a ton of enemies, or you've got swarms of flying enemies that move in and out of sight. It can be as simple as just running past a lone enemy on an otherwise empty path or nothing looking around a particular corner. On the Ark stages with Maria, it's especially easy to get lost and miss some of the Artificial Chaos entirely. Generally the idea of having to stop and kill every enemy in a Sonic game where you want to move from A to B as quickly as possible is just stupid. In theory, yes, you shouldn't really miss any enemies. But it's much easier said than done. The exact same applied to some of Team Chaotix's missions in Heroes. Grand Metropolis tasked you with killing every enemy with no leeway, and it was even worse in Mystic Mansion where you were supposed to put out every lantern.

    It's dumb design.
     
  18. Mecha Sally

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    I haven't played this game in a while, though something tells me it probably hasn't aged well. At the time it came out I remember liking it more than Sonic Heroes, and thinking that it was cool that there were multiple endings. Was pretty surprised to see an ending that implies that + - Shadow murders Eggman   . I keep meaning to go back and get different endings but I never feel like it. >.>
     
  19. Whenever the path splits in Prison Island, a GUN Beetle always shows to you where you need to go. For the Hero and Normal Missions, you use the jump panels; for the Dark Mission, you ignore them. If you accidentally went the wrong way, you could always go back to the previous checkpoint once you reach another one. At least you can use the checkpoints as teleporters. Lost Impact is a somewhat linear level with a lot of dead ends. Because the Artificial Chaos tend to be in the areas that lead to dead ends, you're supposed to check those first. There are maps in the game that show your location and the locations of the dead-ends. The Doom is a bit more complicated, but the GUN soldiers and wounded researchers tend to be along the main path. The partner characters tell you to check the elevators for GUN soldiers or researchers when you reach the first one.
     
  20. roymcgeeters

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    I kinda liked Shadow growing up, and to some angle, I find it oddly enjoyable today. Don't get me wrong, the game is pretty terrible mechanically, but coming from the perspective of someone who has played it extensively in the past without really developed any sort of tastes yet, playing it nowadays, its easy to avoid the really crap parts of it. It's just second nature of me to turn to the right in Westopolis and see that one GUN soldier I would've missed. So yeah, I can enjoy Shadow, but given the duty to defend it against an ongoing storm of critics, I'd say I would let it fend for itself.