BEAT.British

Oh Shadow Complex, you are such a jem.

Ok. So I got a little too exited about Shadow Complex. I also initially thought it was going to be bunk. Lets face it Gears 2 didn’t have the same spark as gears 1 and undertow wasn’t one of the most popular games on XBLA until it was given away for free after xbox live didn’t work over an entire christmas period.

Thanks for that Microsoft, seriously. Christmas (but I digress).

I was skeptical during E3, I was skeptical when news came out about it, I was pretty much sceptical until about a week before it came out.

This changed when saw a Quicklook video. Something about the collecting many things and the memories of playing Metriod and Castlevania made me REALLY exited. To the point where i left my xbox on on the day it was released so i could use xbox.com so i could tell my xbox to download it while at work.

I wasn’t disappointed. Lets get that out of the way. Shadow Complex has raised the bar (and the size) of XBLA games. It has a polish and quality that is lacking from most of what is on offer on XBLA. It’s quite obvious why it was the last of this years summer of arcade. Because it is the best of the bunch.

They tout it as a Metriodvania game, and it’s not too far from the truth, the idea that this could become a genre is fantastic. It’s a true gamers genre and it’s nice to be pandered to for once.

Shadow Complex starts you off (after a little prologue of what’s to come) with a flashlight and the ability to jump. You and your new girlfriend go to explore some caves, and she decides to play hide and seek. She buggers of and gets kidnapped by a shady organisation  called ‘the Restoration’. You find her backpack (which has climbing gear in it) it gives you the ability to wall jump and grab ledges and the game begins. The story (as always) soon becomes about way more than just rescuing your new piece of tail but luckily the main protagonist was trained to be an assassin. A tad contrived yes, but while playing it didn’t really bother me.

Slowly as you explore you get more gear, better guns, cool gadgets and upgrades etc… Some of which is optional but will inevitably make the game easier. One example is a helmet with (if you find all the passkey components)will give you a shield which if you stand still renders you invincible. But you can still shoot. Bloody useful.

Shadow complex works in mostly a 2D plane, it’s touted as a 2.5D game (which always bugs me as a title, just say sidescroller). Sometime yes the perspective changes and you are shooting into the screen but it’s usually for cinematic effect and can be a little fiddly.

It does look fantastic, not during closeup cutscenes. Shadow Complex is Running in the unreal engine and it suffers from the low to high resolution texture pop-in frequently. but these minor technical issues and as well as the occasional weird bug are easily forgiven after you realise that you’ve been playing longer than intended and it’s 2am.

This is essentially the main joy of Shadow Complex, it always feels an accomplishment is right around the corner. Looking at the map (in all but the highest difficulty) will indicate where other items are for collection with a simple Question mark. The fact that one is just two rooms away and it will ‘only take five min’ means ‘only five mins’ becomes an hour. And now your late for work.

Fuck.

- Viewer note don’t try and squeeze in a little bit of SHadow Complex before you leave in the morning. Unless you can call in sick… mainly because you will.

Everything you do nets you experience points, every ten levels you get something special (up to level 50), however contry to what most games do. players get more experience for discovering new rooms and getting upgrades. Just smoking fools nets you next to nothing in experience. Doing it creatively gets a little more and bosses give quite a lot; but not as much as looking for upgrades and exploring. Which in turn makes you want to find everything. Experience carries over through multiple playthroughs - which is REALLY useful when you get the infinite ammo upgrade for the sub weapons.

Getting around the map is really easy, certain doors and panels can only be opened by certain weapons/devices. Gold for guns, Red for Rockets, Green for Grenades (hey these all start with the same letter as the weapons i only just noticed that) and Purple for Foam (wait never mind). THe foam gun is by far my favourite of the devices in the game.

The Foam gun is basically a ‘make you own bridge gun’ is is key to the fabled ’sequence break’ of the old Metriod and Castlevania games which you can do to finish the game in under 20 mins my best time being 36 mins odd. THe foam gun bugs up funs is grates and incapacitates enemies, sticks riot shields to the floor. Oh and explodes if you attach a grenade to it. Which can lead to hilarious results.

Once you’ve finished the campaign you can either start over with your exp level intact and level up some more or you can try your hand at the challenge rooms. A series of challenges which get progressively harder and have a time limit.

Ultimately Shadow Complex is probably the best XBLA/downloadable game i’ve played all year (maybe ever) and is in my top 5 games of the year period. If a game like this came out every wednesday i’d be broke, but happy.

Here are some words of wisdom: I know Shadow Complex is 1200 points, but try it. It truly is one of the greats.

Paris.

Shadow Complex is Available on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 1200 Microsoft points.

Ah those Nazis. As if starting wars and genocide wasn’t enough, it also appears as the fiends were conducting supernatural experiments and creating new and deadly weapons based on science they don’t quite understand. Well that is what the team at Raven is insinuating.

Wolfenstein is the latest in the series of first person shooters from id, going back to one of the first ever FPS’s, Wolfenstien 3D (predating Doom by a year). That said, the game feels like a closer link to 2001’s Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

As said before, those damn Nazis are up to their dastardly plans again, and have taken over the town of Isenstadt in order to use it as a base for seemingly all of their black projects. Once again, you play B.J. Blazkowicz, an OSS agent sent in put a spanner in the works of the Nazis and stop their various plans. This is done the usual way, with B.J. shooting everyone, stealing intel and picking up Nazi gold. In that sense, it business as usual.

The main change to the series is the introduction of a open world hub for the game, the city of Isenstadt. I’m not entirely sold on the idea, as it can be very annoying to limp back from the missions only to be ripped to pieces by a bunch of troops outside a safe house. But, it also means there is always fun to be had just shooting up the enemy soldiers. However, the open world is jammed full of loading screens and the extra missions are not actually that good. Additionally, roaming enemies rapidly become more powerful, making a simple trip to the shops hard.

The other major change is the introduction of the new “Veil” mechanic which allows B.J. to slow down time, shield himself and empower his weapons as well as providing  multiple ways of solving challenges. One of these are the Geists, little bug like creatures that float around. Only visable in the Veil, they act as floating exploding barrels providing an extra punch when fighting some of the new enemies. These powers are a bit generic, the type you’d expect from any developer trying frantically to fit some kind of supernatual power up. That said though, the powers can be fun, especially the time slowing ability.

Despite all of this, the place where Wolfenstein truly stands out is the guns.They are some of the most satisfying weapons to use I’ve ever seen in any game. As well as the stalwarts such as the Kar 98 (excellent for blowing Nazi heads off or removing limbs), the MP40 and the MP43, we are also treated to a hilarious panzershrek, the best flamethrower since Far Cry 2, a ghostbuster’s style proton cannon, a tesla gun and finally a rocket launcher that turns enemies into skeletons before disintegrating them. As if that wasn’t enough, Raven has also included an upgrade setup, allowing you to actually focus on the weapons you use. For example, I upgraded the MP40 and the Kar primarily as they are useful throughout the game, but would have loved to upgraded the flamethrower all the way (you will never have enough money to upgrade everything).

The graphics this time are running on the idtech 4 and they certainly do look nice. The backgrounds are especially lush, with some of the levels approaching Bioshock levels of beauty in my eyes especially the hospital level. The character models are also very good, with a good use of some particle effects, mainly on the veil troopers, the gentlemen in the heavy armour with electrical effects jumping across them. The sound effects are also of a good standard, with the crack of the Kar being especially punchy. The game has some sections that really crank up the tension, such as the aforementioned hospital level.

There are some issues however. The multiplayer is a bit generic, and is actually worse than Enemy Territory which is available for free. In singleplayer (the meat of the game), the missions all feel very similar, just with different backgrounds. The other flaw is that basically, this is very similar to RTCW just with a little update and a few tweaks.

Wolfenstein is a strange game. On one hand its a great game, good fun to play with some of the best weapons ever seen. On the other though, its fatally flawed, quite linear and simplistic. End of the day, its a summer blockbuster action movie with good old sterotypical Nazis shouting “Mei Leiben!”. Don’t think too much about it and just sit back and enjoy the ride.

I give Wolfenstein on PC 85%

Editors Note: Thanks Seraphim2150, keep up the good work.