The Good and the Bad: Shadow the Hedgehog

[Nattala]

I'm not saying Shadow isn't flawed but compared to Heroes it gets a lot more hate. So instead of being redundant and pointed out flaws when everyone has already done so here's the things Shadow did better than Heroes.

It had better level design than Heroes. Heroes is characterised by bottomless pits and gimmicks that are hard to work or fling you into bottomless pits- bobsleds, tornado poles, cannons, flowers, vines, rail grinding. Shadow has greatly reduced amounts of bottomless pits, more multiple paths, rail grinding that works, and gimmicks that won't kill you- balloons, rollercoasters, birds ect.

Shadow had less of the 'kill all enemies to proceed bits' than Heroes. It still had them though and ideally it shouldn't of had them at all.

Guns work better than Heroes punching. In Heroes you could choose to fight in Speed (homing attack) or Power (punching) formations. The homing attack was weak and the punching was more powerful but was spamming a button, had a likelihood of making you fall off the stage and if you did it too much you would enter a long uninterruptable animation that did an area attack. Guns in shadow are just standing still spamming a button. Plus with the auto aim you only need to be standing in the general direction.

(Unrelated; the P key shouldn't be next to the O key because sometimes when typing Heroes I miss a key and accidentally write Herpes)

[-Robin-]

The Good:

The soundtrack. Only songs that I've never felt attached to was Prison Island's and Egg Breaker's themes, but everything else sounds great. Sky Troops, Black Comet, Final Haunt, Gun Fortress, and Lost Impact are all sweet, the GUN Mobile remix for Blue Falcon is all kinds of awesome, and I fell in love with the piano piece that plays before Never Turn Back starts.

Physics and motions were pretty fluid. Nothing felt shoddy in terms of movement, and for parts where it felt a little less than uncomfortable, it was in areas where I could have been more conservative in terms of movement and accomplish the same thing. Platforming and puzzle elements were also nifty, and although some were forced, alternate pathways was a welcome treat, with the pathways either adjusting or branching off according to the mission in question in some levels.

With all the gunplay going on, it was nice seeing that the game didn't cross too many lines pertaining to death and have the streets littered with the corpses of GUN soldiers; any human soldier you shoot is fully conscious and shows sign of activity (Unless you use the Vaccuum Guns, in which case lol), and everyone in Central City is pointed out to have evacuated the area before the place is nuked by the ARK. Even missions where Shadow is required to kill someone doesn't end in the death of that person, like the President in Air Fleet, or Eggman in Sky Troops and Iron Jungle. Retaining some sense of keeping everyone alive made things better, to me.

Tropes ranging from jungles, cities, space, and ruins being used more than once; even the cyberspace trope - a new one for the franchise iirc - is used twice. Seeing how the stages varied in design was nice.

Mike Pollock's acting for Eggman gave me smiles all around. He just states things so matter-of-factly despite everything that's going on that I can't help but like it.

Minor, but The Final Rush/Final Chase corridor in SA2 being trekked through again in The ARK. Continuity ahoy. The Ark's theme even hearkens back to songs like Speed Highway and White Jungle, with the repeating lyrics playing throughout, which was pretty nifty.

The Tolerable:

The voice acting. I hardly have issue with voice acting, and the 4Kids dubbing isn't an exception. Sean Schemmel does good with Black Doom, I've always like Dan Green's Knuckles, and Charmy's VA is the same as Max's in Pokemon before the VA shift, so I'm biased in that regard. And whoever did Gerald's voice managed to pull some heartstrings, so he's good as well. Though Rogue, Cream, and to a lesser extent, Tails.....yeah.

The Bad:

How convoluted the script can get depending on the route you take. You choose to take the Dark Route in Westopolis, but then go the Hero Route next level and then Neutral for the third, and suddenly Shadow is on ruins you have not seen at all which Shadow speaking about them as if he's seen them before. Everyone do just seem to get flung all over the place with little sense of why and how; why does Shadow use Chaos Control to go to Prison Island and Iron Jungle? Did he just sense Chaos Emeralds there? How did he know where Lava Shelter was? Why was Sonic going to the ARK, if he was just going to the Black Comet right after, instead of cutting the middle man and heading straight to the comet? Was he just dropping the Chaotix off? Hell, it feels like SEGA was fully aware of the teleporting Shadow was doing, and decided to troll by him teleporting to Iron Jungle, only to have Sonic and co. be at that exact location to pick Shadow up to whisk away to the ARK. The flow of the game is just all kinds of jumpy no matter which route you take.

Plastic cutscenes. Yuck. Needed more cutscenes in the style of the intro and the ARK cutscene before The Doom level.

This game's a guilty pleasure of mine, lol. I can't help but enjoy it when I play it.

Edited June 19, 2012 by Dr. Joshua

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Bad Points

Maria was a purity-sue.

[Diogenes]

Well she pretty much just exists to be this cute little sick girl who dies to give weight to Shadow and Gerald's stories.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Well she pretty much just exists to be this cute little sick girl who dies to give weight to Shadow and Gerald's stories.

Edited June 19, 2012 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[UltDevilDoom]

I think some fans can be a little prejudiced to this game. Yeah, it was far from perfect, but it wasn't horrible either.

Despite its flaws, I still had a good time with the game.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I think some fans can be a little prejudiced to this game. Yeah, it was far from perfect, but it wasn't horrible either.

Despite its flaws, I still had a good time with the game.

Edited June 19, 2012 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[Diogenes]

Sounds more like a minor background character than a purity sue to me. And this being said that I'm looking at the definition of a Purity Sue right now and not seeing a match here.

From TV Tropes:

It is a character that is intentionally made by the author to be overly positive.

They almost never have any flaws that actually affect them in a way that truly matters

instead getting overloaded with overwhelmingly positive but largely passive traits (i.e. beauty, innocence, etc.).

The character will usually be soft-spoken, have a pleasant voice, and be mild-mannered.

She's usually cast as a passive motivator of other people

Layer Ill Girl and Dead Little Sister on top of that and you've pretty much covered everything there is to Maria's character.

e: what the hell, it won't let me link two things?

Edited June 19, 2012 by Diogenes

[Kuzu]

From TV Tropes:

Layer Ill Girl and Dead Little Sister on top of that and you've pretty much covered everything there is to Maria's character.

e: what the hell, it won't let me link two things?

To be fair, it's like you said, she's a minor character so that kind of disqualifies her from suedom right there; still I can't help but be irked by how much she's basically an emotional crutch for Shadow, especially by the fandom's portrayal of her, which dives headfirst into Purity Sue territory.

EDIT: I fixed the link for ya.

EDIT2: Nvm, fuck the linking system.

Edited June 19, 2012 by The Batman

[Semi-colon e]

Maria's always been more of a backstory plot device than any meaningful character, both for Shadow and for Gerald. It would have been cool if that, because this game was all like "yeah Shadow's past", that they went into more depth about Maria, but no. This game's plot is not of that much quality. The closest we got was the past ARK levels, but it wasn't quite enough.

Mephiles trying to tempt Shadow to being evil again would have worked better in THIS game than 06, provided you took out the time travel and the Iblis fusion and the Silver stuff.

Edited June 19, 2012 by Semi-colon e

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Okay let me see:

It is a character that is intentionally made by the author to be overly positive

To keep from seeming up my ass on this definition, I'll check that off...

They almost never have any flaws that actually affect them in a way that truly matters

I'm not even sure this should even be checked off because aside from being a sister figure she hardly has anything that truly matters aside from her death being a catalyst for revenge for three characters and telling one that she wants the world to be happy. Otherwise, I would concede to this.

instead getting overloaded with overwhelmingly positive but largely passive traits (i.e. beauty, innocence, etc.)

I'd argue how those traits are "overwhelmingly positive" than they are just there before checking that off.

The character will usually be soft-spoken, have a pleasant voice, and be mild-mannered

Okay, check.

She's usually cast as a passive motivator of other people, inspiring people to strive towards the author's goals by her very presence alone.

Um…check? Maybe? I see the motivator of other people part in her, but in terms of the author's goals…I'm probably gonna make a mess arguing this, but at any rate.

I also read the standard "Being loved by everyone for being "perfect" in every way that matters" and aside from being a sister figure and such I'm not seeing how she's perfect in every way that matters, because very little of her matters beyond her relationship and death to two characters being the cause of their rampage. Then there's the character's fascinations with her, and while we could definitely say it's there it kinda loses value when the fascination was there before ShTH. That and usually purity sues (or sue anything) tend to have more than just background roles and more roles that have more spotlight which emphasizes them more.

…that, and I probably just hate hearing the word "sue" anything because of how alarmingly easy it is to throw it around. Eh, take your pick.

Edited June 19, 2012 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[SilJeff]

The Good:

It's better than '06

the guns actually hit their targets the majority of the time

The Bad:

everything else

[lounge]

The Good:

-animation is better than heroes

-good music

-the story I enjoyed. I didn't see it as forced. the sonic characters still act like themselves

-Black Doom was a great villain.

-gunplay is pretty fun

-good replay value

The Bad

-CG cutscenes were a waste of money and disc space that could've been used towards the actual game. (Nintendo understands this)

-multiplayer was lame

-level design most of the time doesn't complement shadow's physics

-reused Heroes lame models

-the fact that they developed it simultaneously for 3 consoles thus degrading its potential quality.

-vehicles weren't even programmed right.

-rocket launchers don't have auto aim

I think shadow was decent. Not deserving of 4's. But I guess that depends if you played the PS2 version which is barely controllable.

[Snatcher2047]

I think some fans can be a little prejudiced to this game. Yeah, it was far from perfect, but it wasn't horrible either.

Despite its flaws, I still had a good time with the game.

Said by someone named UltDevilDoom. Haha, I kid, I kid...

But yeah, ShTH is quite possibly my ultimate guilty pleasure of gaming. It's one of those "it's so bad it's (somewhat) good" kind of things to me. I have always said that if a game made me want to beat it ten times to get the final ending, it must have done at least one thing right. I just don't know what that thing is.

I actually enjoyed the gun aspect of the game, but only a few of the guns are actually usable or effective. The controls are good for the most part but at times it feels like Shadow is moving on ice. The level design is actually pretty good, but I think I had just as many if not more pitfall deaths in this game as HEROES. And that's A LOT.

Love, no... LOVE the soundtrack to death. Story is... eh. Dialogue is hilariously awful. And the CG scenes are GORGEOUS. I mean Super Shadow has never looked better.

So yeah, not the worst game ever or as bad as most make it out to be... but it's not something to admire either.

Edited June 19, 2012 by Snatcher2047

[UltDevilDoom]

Regardless of how much you enjoyed it, this game brought a lot of inappropriate material and/or execution with a number of its ideas. The amount of times the word "damn" is used barely scratches the surface as opposed to the gunplay, poorly executed dark tone (especially considering that they actually pulled it off in SA2 only to screw up here), and messy story where the only things that are 100% certain the beginning and the end; everything in the middle was just guessing on the part of many players.

This game's saving grace is that it manages to be better than the glitchfest that was Sonic 06, but the fact remains that this game is the most visible checkpoint where Sonic started going downhill to both the game industry and to the many fans of the series.

Inappropriate material? What are we, in fucking kindergarten? Otherwise, I see what you are saying and the game did have many of the problems you speak of.

The video game industry as a whole is always trying to figure out how to make games appealing to more people. One of the most popular ways to do that is to darken the game. Ever play Jak II? That was a serious mood switch compared to the original.

Sega first tried to do that with the Sonic franchise for Sonic Adventure 2 and it was, for the most part, successful. Then Shadow the Hedgehog came along to deepen that idea and people either liked it, didn't like it, or weren't ready for such a big change. Yeah, it had some significant problems, but it did sell very well. Even people who didn't like the game still like the character.

I guess that in the end it's all about appeal. But yeah, it is undeniable that Shadow's game did need some serious overhaul before it was released.

Edited June 20, 2012 by UltDevilDoom

[Mangoaxe5]

Personally I like Shadow the Hedgehog. It's one of my favorite Sonic games. I enjoyed it more then Sonic Colors, and I think it's a better game then Sonic Heroes.

I like the storyline, but the problem with the story is that we don't know what really happened. The first cutscene and the "Last Story" cutscenes are canon, but we don't know what happened in between.

I have no problem with Shadow saying hell and damn. I don't consider them to be swear words.

I thought that Black Doom was a cool villain, and I like that we learned that he helped Professor Gerald create Shadow. It always bugged me that Gerald was able to create a living being as advanced as Shadow by himself so I'm glad that Shadow the Hedgehog retcon it.

Plus this game give us the GUN Commander(Abraham Tower)who is one of my favorite characters.

Now to talk about the bad.

The gameplay is not the best. Sometimes it was hard to control Shadow, and I would keeping running into enemies. This especially happenes a lot on the "Last Way" level.

And I hate that they use the 4kids voice acters in the game. It would have been better with Shadow's original english voice actor David Humphrey.

It's a shame that the game didn't do better since I would love to see Shadow get his own series of games.

Edited June 20, 2012 by Vampfox

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Inappropriate material? What are we, in fucking kindergarten?

Uh yeah, no. Just because we're teenagers and adults does not mean that we should be okay with a series where a character uses words like "damn" and picks up realistic guns when it never did so 15 years ago. Maturity doesn't work that way.

The video game industry as a whole is always trying to figure out how to make games appealing to more people. One of the most popular ways to do that is to darken the game. Ever play Jak II? That was a serious mood switch compared to the original.

Yes I've played Jak II, and Jak 3, and, Jak and Daxter, and Daxter. You wanna know something about the mood switch they pulled off? They knew how to make it work! And yet it still had humorous moments to lighten the mood.

Not the same case for ShTH when they wanted to make it Dark and Edgy as a selling point all the way through the game. And this goes without saying making something darker to PG-13 levels isn't always the best way to appeal to people. I'm not saying it can't be done, but if games like Jak or Majora's Mask are any good of an example of successful dark titles of games, it's that you can't simply darken the series and expect it to instantly work like that. And a lot of games besides Sonic have been failing at doing so, which should say enough that many in the game industry hasn't had good luck on it either.

Sega first tried to do that with the Sonic franchise for Sonic Adventure 2 and it was, for the most part, successful. Then Shadow the Hedgehog came along to deepen that idea and people either liked it, didn't like it, or weren't ready for such a big change. Yeah, it had some significant problems, but it did sell very well. Even people who didn't like the game still like the character.

It sold well, but they got a lot of bad reception for doing so. This game was the final blow that fractured the fandom to the way it currently is, turned Shadow from a well loved character to one that gets mixed reception, made people question what the hell they're doing to the series, and was the catalyst to the whole "Sonic's Shitty Friends" meme that we've been getting for years.

I don't call that a success, and it's kinda hard to defend a game that did all of that at one time.

[Alice Twilight]

You might as well have argued that guns are optional in an actual shooter game. While that may occasionally be true to some extent, that doesn't make it a particularly appealing option.

[Tornado]

The video game industry as a whole is always trying to figure out how to make games appealing to more people. One of the most popular ways to do that is to darken the game. Ever play Jak II? That was a serious mood switch compared to the original.

Edited June 20, 2012 by Tornado

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

This is about as relevant to this discussion as bringing up the fact that it originally came out on a Tuesday. STH '06 sold pretty damn good too. But at what cost?

By impossibly being worse than ShTH.

Edited June 20, 2012 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[UltDevilDoom]

By impossibly being worse than ShTH.

Something tells me that you are prejudiced to Shadow the Hedgehog. EIther that or you really hate it that much.

Just remember two things:

1. It came when Sega was really shitting on the franchise.

2. Despite all the hate that it recieved, Shadow is still popular. If it had been any other character besides Sonic, it would have been the kiss of death.

Edited June 20, 2012 by UltDevilDoom

[Komodin]

Despite all the hate that it recieved, Shadow is still popular. If it had been any other character besides Sonic, it would have been the kiss of death.

Yeah, but he's still pretty much the series' Base Breaker now thanks to that game.

[Solkia]

Eggman's character model is awful. Teeth go INSIDE the head you fucktards.

[Kuzu]

Something tells me that you are prejudiced to Shadow the Hedgehog. EIther that or you really hate it that much.

Or it's just really that bad of a game, what's so hard to understand.

1. It came when Sega was really shitting on the franchise.

And this is relevant because...

2. Despite all the hate that it recieved, Shadow is still popular. If it had been any other character besides Sonic, it would have been the kiss of death.

This game is the reason Shadow is such a divisive character to begin with, yeah it totally had no effect on his reputation at all.

Edited June 20, 2012 by The Batman

[Diogenes]

Shadow was divisive even before ShtH. ShtH just made him even moreso.