Shadow Complex

I've been a bad, bad man as of late, having purchased four (four!) video games over the course of the weekend. Shadow Complex was one of them. My roommate and backlogging buddy Keith recommended it, so we downloaded a demo. I didn't even wait for the demo to finish before opting to purchase the full game for $15. And what a pleasant surprise it was from start to finish. It seems like a few of my friends have at least heard of this Xbox Live Arcade game which came out last summer. I had not, and it really came out of nowhere and hit me in the face with greatness. I'll get right down to it: if you have an Xbox 360, you should definitely buy and play this game. It's a 2D adventure game with plenty of "puzzle" qualities. It's very Metroid-inspired, and this is apparent from the get go. Different weapons can open different doors and the whole complex is navigated and mapped out by the player in a grid overlay very similar to those found in Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. You even acquire things like the double jump and health and missile upgrades. But it would be unfair to call this game a mere Super Metroid knockoff. Instead, consider it a spiritual successor (albeit on a different platform and made by different people). Truth be told, this was easily just as fun as the Metroid games I've played. It's also got a similar length to it. I finished my first (and probably only) playthrough in about six and a half hours and managed to find most of the items and upgrades. The game's climactic "battle" is absolutely awesome and though the story is nothing to write home about its also perfectly adequate. Really, Shadow Complex felt like so much more than a simple arcade game. I think it easily could have been sold, as is, for $50 on its own disc. It's that good. My biggest gripe was the aiming. You're limited to movement in two dimensions, but enemies can move in and out of the background. In order to shoot enemies at different depths than you, you must use the right analog stick to aim accordingly. But it can be very hard to line up the finicky laser sight. After all, think of this: you can aim the stick in 360 different degrees of direction, but ideally you want full two-dimensional coverage instead of the roughly circular shape you get. And you can't manually aim at the foreground at all, which is too bad, since enemies frequently appear there too. Still, aiming aside, this was a fantastic game. For fifteen bucks and five to seven hours of your time, it's a really enjoyable experience from start to finish. I beat it in just three sittings and the only times I stopped were when I had something else I needed to do. I give this game two thumbs up.