Shadow Complex Remastered (Xbox One)

Back before indie developers really began to embrace the Metroidvania genre of exploration-focused side-scrolling platformers, Metroidvania design was mostly just found in the two game series that gave it its name, Metroid and Castlevania. Often perceived as a niche genre, indie development allows for more risk taking when it comes to game concepts and genres, and in 2009, Shadow Complex emerged on the scene and paved the way for the many indie Metroidvanias to follow. Remastered now on Xbox One, it is certainly possible to see the spark that ignited renewed interest in the genre, but perhaps being one of the first out of the door for the indie wave of Metroidvanias also lead to a few of its stumbling points.

 

Shadow Complex Remastered takes place in a large underground facility where a strange army called The Restoration is developing advanced technology as part of an effort to overthrow the U.S. government. Despite your enemies using robots and mechanized assault vehicles, the game is not a fully science fiction setting, these unusual advancements unique to this hidden empire, and our main character isn’t even directly trying to hinder them at first. Going on what seems like an innocuous spelunking trip with his new girlfriend named Claire, Jason Fleming is thrust into trying to take them down when they kidnap Claire under suspicion she might be someone trying to infiltrate their subterranean headquarters as a spy. Jason begins with just the simple stuff a backpacker would have, and besides his absurdly high jumping ability, he sticks with logically grounded weapons for a while. He fights foes with things like automatic weapons and grenades until he begins to find pieces of his enemy’s technology to use to his advantage, the power discrepancy gradually disappearing as Jason finds more unusual armor and tools to help him save Claire and stop The Restoration’s efforts. The game’s cold open and Orson Scott Card’s Empire book series both reveal some more information on how effective The Restoration are, but Shadow Complex does seem to focus more on its gameplay than its story, very few characters or major story beats cropping up save those needed to seal in the motivations of who you are playing as and who you are up against.

The massive underground complex that makes up Shadow Complex Remastered’s game world manages to be interconnected without stretching plausibility, but the game’s attempt to be somewhat realistic does mean that you shouldn’t expect too many outlandish locations during play. There is an effort put in to differentiate locations still, and while the exterior areas in the cave and above ground are definitely the most distinct, Shadow Complex Remastered does vary up its interior areas by leaning more into different industrial and technological concepts. Naturally, areas like storage and living quarters will be different visually than each other, as would maintenance areas or research and development labs.  Shadow Complex Remastered will also do unusual things to an area like flood them to shift things away from what is mostly straightforward action platforming.

 

As you progress deeper and deeper into the facility, you’ll get new skills that increase your movement capabilities and add new ways to open up areas both new and old. The world map you receive is easy to read as it gets gradually filled in, and during story exploration, a helpful arrow will show you where to go but not necessarily how to get there. If you want extra items or upgrades though, you can revisit old areas with new abilities and items to access areas that were blocked off or inaccessible before. Your flashlight can be used to get a good feel for which environmental objects need to be broken and what they’re weak to due to which color they glow, and the map will even mark areas where an item can be found, the player sometimes needing to figure out small movement puzzles to get their goodies. Things like the ability to double jump or breath underwater, grenades and missiles to blow things up, and foam than can expand to break objects and electronics can be found as you adventure, and while all of them factor into forward progress as well as  new areas requiring them to continue, small side paths from before can reward you for going back to open them up with your new gear by giving you more storage capacity for your explosives or extra health and armor. It’s definitely worth doing and does have visible rewards as you last longer and hit harder, but while Shadow Complex Remastered does do a good job with its exploration elements, there are a few flaws with its action.

Much like your movement options, you do get stronger weapons as you proceed, almost all of them straight upgrades. You go from a simple pistol to gradually stronger automatics as you progress, none of them having limited ammo but clip size and power will limit a weapon’s effectiveness. Your character also levels up as the game progresses, making you more accurate and giving you other little bonuses to your weapon’s output. Aiming is done with one control stick while the other controls movement, but despite the effort put in here, the action isn’t all that complex. Most of The Restoration’s forces are regular soldiers who will fire back at you but go down pretty quickly, and while there is some variation like stronger troops who can gun you down easily and little robots that serve more as obstructions during platforming sections, most of the time it’s easily gunning down basic infantry who might have a different gun from the last one you fought. This is mostly passable, too much obstruction during the platforming could get annoying and most of the troops are best treated as the fodder they are, their interesting battles involving when they come in numbers or have some other trick to make the combat exciting. However, Shadow Complex Remastered tries to get a bit fancy, having its backgrounds be more than just static images. Sometimes, your enemies can come from the background or even just stay back there and fire at you, and while your movement is restricted to a 2D plane, you can aim at these background soldiers. The problem is, it’s not integrated too well. Depending on where you stand in a room that has background enemies, you’ll be aiming in the background automatically, and this can lead to some awkward aiming struggles when you’re trying to hit someone in the foreground. This can also mean the opposite where finding the spot to aim at the background is odd, but in areas where it’s important to target either primarily, it’s mostly solid. It’s when things are mixed that you might have to wrestle a little to aim right.

 

There are some bosses and tougher enemy types to face in Shadow Complex Remastered, and while these could be more involved fights, there more often just the place you unload your explosives. Outside of the small roadblocks that maybe require a grenade or two, their only other big use is for the rare boss or heavily armored soldier, and since save areas usually pack refills for your explosives, there’s not much reason to conserve your heavy duty options during these harder battles. What could have been the action highlights instead feel about on par with the regular enemy encounters, as in they fill a role well enough but aren’t too exciting. Some do break the mold to require a bit more thought to overcome, and your health is often limited enough that they aren’t brainless to the point you can just stand in place and chuck grenades at any enemy in your way, but the explosives do tip things a bit too heavily in your favor. Shadow Complex Remastered does try and offer a few ways to make things more challenging outside of its main story though. Besides angling for achievement challenges like clearing the game in less time or with less equipment, Shadow Complex Remastered also contains a challenge mode called The Proving Grounds where the developers restrict your abilities and set out little trials to overcome. Less about exploration platforming or action, things feel more like a puzzle platformer as your limited skills must overcome trials that test your movement skill and item use. It is a bit divergent from the main game’s design, but Shadow Complex Remastered already feels like it leans a lot more towards the overcoming of the environment and its design than big battles, and having the extra room to turn that up a notch gives Shadow Complex Remastered a bit more longevity that plays to its strengths.

THE VERDICT: Shadow Complex clearly understood much of the appeal of Metroidvania games, and since Shadow Complex Remastered only adds light changes to the the game’s design, it ends up continuing on the strengths and weaknesses of the original release. The underground facility you explore makes its platforming involved and consistently rewarding, the distribution of new items and upgrades making for a good pace of forward advancement and new opportunities to open up old paths. The platforming adventure is the stronger part of Shadow Complex Remastered though, as its combat has a few quirks like the occasional awkwardness of aiming into the background and too many foes being overly weak to your explosives. While the battles aren’t always exciting, exploring the world does remain interesting because of the effort to make the enormous interconnected complex feel diverse despite its attempts at sci-fi realism.

 

And so, I give Shadow Complex Remastered for Xbox One…

A GOOD rating. While not exactly the brilliant light that lead indie developers to more heartily embrace the Metroidvania genre it is sometimes described as, it nails the genre conventions that are the unique appeal of this particular platforming subgenre. The remaster certainly feels like the right time to possibly make the aiming more reliable in the mixed background and foreground shooting sections and a few more foes could have been given a counter to grenade and missile spam, but trying to remain authentic to the original is admirable in its own way. It wouldn’t be risking the excellent design of The Restoration’s base or the varied and rewarding platforming to try and touch up the action a little, but perhaps they were afraid of jeopardizing the quality of minimum item runs that only the devoted players would be interested in trying. The action still provides a decent obstacle to overcome in its current form, but its simplicity does leave Shadow Complex Remastered with a fair fewer highlight moments than it could have had.

 

Developer Chair Entertainment tried their best to make this game feel like a Metroid title, and they did successfully reproduce much of what makes Metroid great while still adding their own twist to it all. Some of the ideas didn’t pay off too well, but they got the core of exploration platforming right, ensuring that Shadow Complex Remastered can be another enjoyable example of a genre the creators both loved and helped to revive so that more developers and players can appreciate it like they do.