is shadow the hedgehog so bad?

[drnknssofshdw]

Hey guys , I just bought shadow the hedgehog today on xbox 360, too see for myself if its crap or not, personally the graphics are really bad, but the story is pretty dam action packed, i dont understand whats so bad about it?, in my opinon its a great game, its also hard, just the way i like my games

ps: short and brief answers only thanks

[Remy]

Short responses only? Sorry. We don't do that here.

Shadow the Hedgehog is a game which reeks of mediocre. You can't aim properly, you can't see what you're meant to be doing due to camera, the game expects you to play the same levels over and over again, with some absoultely idiotic objectives in some stages, and not the mention the fact I care barely control shadow half of the time, and find my ass falling into bottomless pits.

Also, they lied about being able to throw boulders. Not cool.

[Sean]

ps: short and brief answers only thanks

Gladly!

Shadow the game has the dubious honor of being one of the only games I'll never play. I've had nightmares in which I bought the game for five dollars. NIGHTMARES, MAN. I've already exposed myself to enough gameplay videos though, so I'm basing my opinion of it both on the retarded-ass concept, poor level design, and the uncanny ability to go out of its own way to make itself look as not fun as possible.

Shadow's the worst thing to ever happen to the franchise. Making Sonic dark and gritty was the worst shit Sega could ever have done. It was the kind of thing people would have joked about eons ago. "What if Sega had made the Sonic series more tough and violent and dark and gritty? Put guns in the series, make the characters swear all the time. Haha, will never happen, it's just us teenagers being stupid and rebellious as usual." But it happened. Fucking A.

HEY. Sonic didn't need stupid cursing in every other sentence, angsty backstories, stupid rivals, and idiotic, mind-numbing vocal rock music (but Waking Up is pretty nice). And he certainly didn't need to be dark and edgy. Shadow single-handedly brought everything I dreaded and feared into the series.

It's amazing that this game even exists.

[drnknssofshdw]

Short responses only? Sorry. We don't do that here.

Shadow the Hedgehog is a game which reeks of mediocre. You can't aim properly, you can't see what you're meant to be doing due to camera, the game expects you to play the same levels over and over again, with some absoultely idiotic objectives in some stages, and not the mention the fact I care barely control shadow half of the time, and find my ass falling into bottomless pits.

Also, they lied about being able to throw boulders. Not cool.

i own alot of sonic games, sonic rush, sonic rush adventure, sonic the hedgehog, sonic unleashed, sonic adventure and shadow the hedgehog, and as i said even though as you said you cant see what you're doing half the time, its still fun to play if you can get the hang of it, i believe the story line to it is really good, and its worth playing to understand it

[Dr. Mechano]

ps: short and brief answers only thanks

I'm afraid I can't comply to this request. I have far too much trash to talk about the terrible travesty that is Shadow the Hedgehog!

The story is "action packed" as you say, but what it's not packed with is coherence, characterization, or continuity!

Ridiculous retcons! Turning Shadow from a simple creation of Professor Gerald to a haphazard clone of Black Doom, who may arguably be the most flat, generic antagonist of all time.

Doom and his dreadful droves of darkness weren't compelling in the slightest- He failed as a character primarily, and even as the mere literary object of the antagonist. In all of Sonic history, I would be hard pressed to find a character as uninspired and cliche as Black Doom, though Shadow himself- appropriately- comes very close.

None of the ten endings logically link up the last story, making the entirety of the game before then entirely pointless in the grand scheme of things.

Nevermind how the universe conveniently bends to Shadow's will, and how each of the other heroes willingly prances along acting as a sidekick and advisor, freely allowing the mopey miscreant to hedgehog all the glory. Sonic escapes Black Comet rather than attempting to save the world. Sonic runs away from the game's villain, leaving Shadow to do all the work, something the character simply would not do. But he did, because the plot demanded that Shadow be the only one to fight the boss, even if it meant flimsily writing the other characters out with no justification whatsoever!

The game's treatment of poor Eggman earns it extra ire on my list, as it beats, humiliates, and even noncanonically kills the doctor- Treatment that a sympathetic villain like him simply doesn't deserve, pal! Eggman fans the world over were appalled at the doctor's treatment, and the game will forever live in infamy in the Eggman fanbase because of it, which by the way is larger and more outspoken than you probably think it is.

Shadow the Hedgehog's story is a messy pile of angst and confusion, leaving the gamer just as frustrated and lost as our bewildered, hammy protagonist. Perhaps the only time I've ever agreed with the angsting antihero was his final decision- That he simply didn't care who he was, and wanted to leave this whole mess behind him. Frankly, I don't care about Shadow's jumbled trainwreck of a past either, so if nothing else, the issue is over and done with.

What is Shadow the Hedgehog in the end? To me, it's a disgrace to Shadow(Who I don't even like that much as a character), to Sonic, to Eggman, and to the franchise at large. It's one of the most insulting plots I've ever had to suffer through, and I never wish to see anything remotely comparable to its level of awfulness for the rest of the series.

To answer your question- Yes, I do think Shadow the Hedgehog is "so bad", and then some.

Edited July 24, 2009 by El Gran Gordo

[Saint Nathan]

@drrknesswhatever

Good job. You've bought every new age Sonic game, and you feel ShTH is a good game. You have sucessfully proved you don't know what a REALLY good Sonic game is.

ShTH was shit. Yeah, it was better than '06, and it was somewhat okay, but paint shit pink and it'll still be shit. Hell, it took the okay Sonic Heroes, took all the good charecters out and made them NPCs, and made everything fucking BROWN. Even the cool green field in the trailer was turned evil and dark.

Not to mention the story was horrid. Aliens? In MY Sonic games? A dark and emo hedgehog who has teen problems even though he's 50+ years old? Yeah NO THANKS.

And they killed Eggman in over 3 endings, and Tails was only there TWICE in the shittiest levels.

And this isn't talking about the GODDAMN controls.

It's horrid. No excuses.

Edited July 24, 2009 by Galaxy Man

[Diogenes]

ps: short and brief answers only thanks

Screw that, here comes the pain train.

ShtH is crap in almost every aspect.

The graphics, as you said, are bad. Character models ripped directly from Heroes, with everything drenched in browns and blacks to the point that most levels look like mud, and even the few that don't are barely passable. The story? Shadow's already had memory issues, for one thing. But this alien business? Goddamn. They had a decent backstory for Shadow in SA2, but then they clamp on this ridiculous alien blood thing. It comes out of nowhere and it only makes Shadow's past more convoluted and ridiculous. The whole "choose your side" thing is crap, as the game invalidates all of your choices in the end. The androids? I believe they only show up in two levels, and while I'm tempted to give them credit for having the balls to at least have an ending where Shadow's an android, it's invalidated in that a potentially interesting story hook was shoved off into a corner in favor of generic-ass aliens, and that the Last Story invalidates the whole android thing as well. And how about the one question anyone actually cared about--how Shadow survived? Stuffed into an in-battle quote 9 or so minutes into the final boss fight. Seriously, the one thing that could have justified the game's existence is nothing more than a throwaway line that a lot of people aren't even going to see.

Oh, and the guns! Goddamn I'm not sure I've ever seen a more shallow pandering to all the dumb little kids who want to seem cool and mature. A talking hedgehog waving a gun around is ridiculous enough, but it's taken dead serious, and the whole game is drenched in the same sort of immature maturity. Seriously, this is Sonic, for fuck's sake, and it shows; they can't get anything more mature than a few dozen "damns" and fake alien blood. So why the hell did they think they could pull this off? And it's not much better as far as gameplay goes. Shadow's pathetically weak in this game; no basic ability that he has is useful against anything but the weakest enemies. Anything bigger than a bat basically requires a weapon if you want to kill it in any reasonable amount of time. And this, from the supposed "Ultimate Life Form", a guy who can run at the speed of sound, is supposedly immortal, and can shoot energy blasts from his hands? Even when you do pick up a gun, it's still not any fun to play. There's no strategy or skill involved; just grab a gun and keep shooting until you can move forward. It's boring and repetitive, for what's supposed to be one of the game's biggest pieces.

And they give him vehicles, too. Again, this is a guy who can run at the speed of sound. He is faster on foot than any of these vehicles. The only possible advantage that most of them have is protecting you from a few hits; as far as being transportation, they're slow and clumsy and better off ignored completely. I will admit that the alien disk and the jump mech both have their places, but only when the level is designed to make use of them, and it still doesn't save the vehicles in general. What else, what else...oh yes, Shadow controls like butter on ice. Don't even bother trying to run fast, as Shadow's nigh-uncontrollable at anything above a jog, and you're guaranteed to run straight into a wall, or worse those damn larvae and spiky fruit that only exist to punish you for going fast. Nearly any mission but the basic "get to the goal" ones are terrible, largely because nearly all of them make you hunt down every damn enemy in the stage that's on a certain side, and if you miss just one damn bat you're going all the way back to the start and searching every nook and cranny of the level all over again. And how about how everyone wants to kill you? Even the guys you're supposed to be allied with? I understand that they didn't want you switching sides on the fly simply to get one group or the other off your back, but when I take the evil path in every level and aliens are still shooting at me? Kind of ruins the point of having a choice. And the life force doors they like putting every five steps? Get ready to hear your partner bitching at you for killing enemies that you literally must kill to finish the level. As if they don't talk enough already! No matter what side you're on there's constant inane blather from your partner about every little thing you run across. You can't even switch it off by going to neutral; that just makes Shadow talk to himself constantly. And it doesn't help that this is the first game with the new VAs; even if the switch in itself doesn't bug you, the crappy performance should.

...oh, and the music's pretty bad.

[Phos]

In every episode of their podcast,, the authors of 2P Start! name the worst decision made in video gaming for that week. They call the segment "The Black Doom Awards". A rather amusing little detail if you ask me, and rather telling as well.

Shadow the Hedgehog has the strange distinction of being one of the few post Atari games for which it is impossible to take a screenshot of it that would positivity affect my desire to play it. Simply put, nothing in this game looks good or like it's any fun.

I have actually played it, though, and it's easily the best example of Iizuka's cluttered and misguided method of designing games. He seems to have had an arbitrary list of marketing tick boxes that he had to fulfill, but no idea how to make them work together in a game. Perhaps some executive meddling was involved.

[Blazey Firekitty]

I haven't played it, but my impressions of it are mixed.

On the one hand, I dislike it because of its overly dark tone, over-reliance on multiple endings, retcons, and its transformation of Shadow from a relatively well-rounded character who was somewhat derivative into a deranged, bipolar stereotype.

On the other hand, I think I'd enjoy it anyway, because it looks so out and out bizarre, it seems to have a certain "So bad it's good" charm going for it. It's almost like the video game equivalent of Half Life: Full Life Consequences.

"I have to kill fast, and bullets too slow!"

[Tornado]

ps: short and brief answers only thanks

I'll comply:

"Where's that damn 4th Chaos Emerald?"

That alone sums up pretty well just how awful the game... nay, the entire fucking concept, actually is. Absolutely no redeeming values whatsoever, and pretty much the only thing it does better than the ultimate of travesties, STH '06, is better load times.

Edited July 24, 2009 by Tornado

[drnknssofshdw]

@drrknesswhatever

Good job. You've bought every new age Sonic game, and you feel ShTH is a good game. You have sucessfully proved you don't know what a REALLY good Sonic game is.

ShTH was shit. Yeah, it was better than '06, and it was somewhat okay, but paint shit pink and it'll still be shit. Hell, it took the okay Sonic Heroes, took all the good charecters out and made them NPCs, and made everything fucking BROWN. Even the cool green field in the trailer was turned evil and dark.

Not to mention the story was horrid. Aliens? In MY Sonic games? A dark and emo hedgehog who has teen problems even though he's 50+ years old? Yeah NO THANKS.

And they killed Eggman in over 3 endings, and Tails was only there TWICE in the shittiest levels.

And this isn't talking about the GODDAMN controls.

It's horrid. No excuses.

U dumb, i have finished the other sonics too, i personally think that everyone hates it cause its hard

[Sean]

That's another thing. This was the game that killed off Eggman. The villain of the series, the guy who you always beat at the end of every game and flies off covered in soot, fuming at you for foiling his plans but is always ready to come back next week for more.

Yeah, really dark and edgy. Canonical or not, why did they even play around with that idea? Team Rocket would never die. Neither would Dr. Wily (although hey, Mega Man almost finished him off in MM7, but realized that he wasn't able to because of conflict of morality, despite having the chance to finally end it all). This game's story was a terrible fanfic, through and through.

That bit that Gordo mentioned about Sonic running away from the villain though, I didn't know about that one. Truly hilarious.

Edited July 24, 2009 by Jake

[Tornado]

U dumb, i have finished the other sonics too, i personally think that everyone hates it cause its hard

Ah, the time honored "you suck at games" defense. Ninja Gaiden was hard. ShtH was badly designed and then poorly executed on top of that. Don't get shitty game design confused with difficulty, and especially don't do it on purpose.

[Diogenes]

U dumb, i have finished the other sonics too, i personally think that everyone hates it cause its hard

I've all A-ranked the game 3 times and I've beaten Expert mode at least that many times if not once or twice more.

The game is not hard. It's just shit.

[Saint Nathan]

U dumb, i have finished the other sonics too, i personally think that everyone hates it cause its hard

The only hard part is sitting there playing it. The game is easy as fuck. I beat it in under two hours on the hard mode. It's horribly made and glitchy as fuck.

And if you think it's hard you haven't seen SU's Eggmanland on the XboxPS3 version. or Death Egg in Sonic 2 and 3&K.

Acctually, scratch that, play through Megaman 2 on a real NES. That's hard. ShTH? Not at ALL.

Also irony with you calling me dumb when you can't use capitals and use "U" as a word.

[Sega DogTagz]

Gladly!

I'm afraid I can't comply to this request. I have far too much trash to talk about the terrible travesty that is Shadow the Hedgehog!

Screw that, here comes the pain train.

Next time I want people to spill their guts, I’m going to tell them to keep things short.

As for Shadow’s game, it in itself is a complete failure. Most of the concepts are poorly executed. Even the motorcycle, mindboggling that they could even screw that up, is ridiculously slow to the extent where you waste most of a level riding it, while moving on foot is so much more efficient. Most of the extra weapons are forgettable and some of them overpower most enemies and make the game too easy.

Like all the Sonic games, if you like the genre, there is some enjoyment to be had. In this title, there is slim to none.

[Silencer226]

I'll keep it short (damn wii keypad sucks) but sth was a bad game. Not to be rude but nothing about this game is action packed. It's simply below mediocre and I will never subject myself to such crap like shth again... typing on the sucks but I don,t feel like going down stairs...

[Ferno]

U dumb, i have finished the other sonics too, i personally think that everyone hates it cause its hard

Look man...I know you're new here, but, first off, even though you're basically being eaten alive for your opinion, you're kinda giving these guys a reason too, if you're going to respond like that. If you're going to thrive here, You've gotta defend your views more constructively, and in a way that you'll be respected, with proper grammar and the like.

((Really sorry for backseat modding, just wanted to help the guy out. 'Never happen again.))

[Eternal EX]

U dumb, i have finished the other sonics too, i personally think that everyone hates it cause its hard

I too have finished the other sonic games and SHTH was no worst or better than SATSR or Black knight. All 3 games sucked (my opinion). The only reason I'd play SHTH is because Shadow is the main character and I just sooo happen to be a shadow fan (fanboy if you wanna call me that). Secret rings had probably the worst controls for a sonic game I've ever seen, and Yes 06 had better controls. (the one thing 06 did that secret rings didnt do) Black knight just sucked all around Nuff said bout that game. And no sonic game is to hard for me. Well except the very 1st one since the only way I beat it was through debug codes. Shth was not a hard game, JUST VERY ANNOYING AT TIMES!

And 'Ferno was right, and I don't think that counts as Back seat MODDING. Your just helpin the guy out and giving him some USEFUL info right?

[Ferno]

And 'Ferno was right, and I don't think that counts as Back seat MODDING. Your just helpin the guy out and giving him some USEFUL info right?

Yeah, that's what I was doing, 'didn't wanna have 'em out here in battle without a sword or sheild.

Though, all that could be in vain if he really is a troll...*sighs*

[Eternal EX]

Dude what would this forum do without you? Wait don't answer that I don't want the answer

[Tombi]

Well, I can't say a whole lot positive about the game - but one thing I can say is the gameplay never really felt "broken" in the same way Sonic 06 did for me. At least in the sense that I didn't randomly fall through the floor on several occasions, the gameplay still could have been a lot tighter.

So yeah, it's pretty bad to be honest; and whilst it probably did make a profit in catering Shadow to the angsty teen crowd - the very concept of doing that is a recipe for disaster. It was never going to do a damn thing for Shadow in the long run and SEGA were already starting to reinvent the character by the time 2006 came along, but the damage had already been done.

The graphics were incredibly cheap and it was so blatantly lazy of them to reuse all of the stuff from Heroes despite the fact that Heroes was built on a completely different concept and the graphical style actually fit that game. I'm not saying a super-realistic style would have saved the game, but at least it would have looked like they were actually making an effort in creating the grimy, dark and realistic talking hedgehog world.

I didn't have any real problems with the music, but about 90% of it was "just there" without really leaving any lasting impression. There were at least a few good ditties, but not nearly enough - especially when considering the series it's a part of.

I won't make any huge comments on the story because I really couldn't do it any better than you fine folks already have. Just hopeless and altogether a huge waste of an interesting character and his story's potential. (And that's not even counting all the other characters that appeared in the game despite really not needing to.)

For some good points, I happened to enjoy a few of the levels such as the Eggmandland-esque theme park and the inside of Eggman's computer (although this makes me wish the game was made in the more comical era we have now so you could come across his hidden files; most likely being about 30 variations of his theme song and research into ancient sandwiches.), but those are pretty small parts of a large game filled to the brim with mediocrity.

With other games I can say things like "Well okay it was pretty bad but at least we got this or that out of it", but with this particular game I can't say its existance has provided anything so memorable that it actually affected me either way. Well, a few of those dodgy lines that let me know that I 'know what they say', for example; were quite funny at the time.

[Badnik Zero]

Okay, so I played this game well after it released, at the beginning of this year actually. Got me an $8 used copy and sat down with the thing, trying to remain neutral despite the negative attention this game gets inside and outside the fanbase.

I'll start with the bad.

Graphics are choppy and basic, and bright colors are gone from this game. I get they were going for a broodier kind of style, and I don't think it necessarily fails in the art department, but the graphics on the GC are worse than any games before it.

The story just tries so hard to be "extreme" hedgehog, but it's really not. It makes no sense, and the multiple endings don't relate to each other. Plus, this game takes a previously dead character and makes him into an alien. Dumb.

Level design here is the worst I've seen from the series. While some areas experiment with maze maps and platforming, it's not often enough that it matters. Most levels have the player running straight through, with no obstacles or pathways.

Gameplay just had something wrong with it. Shadow doesn't seem to use momentum, his homing attack is inaccurate, and his spin dash is almost useless. Guns had an okay auto-aim, but shooting often requires you to stop and look around.

Now for the good.

Choose your own adventure wasn't a bad idea. Despite the awkwardness of the story and all its endings, it really is fun to choose a different story path by mixing the missions up. If more people could stand to play it, this would be good replay value.

Compared to Sonic Heroes this game is less slippery with controls. Not really a good thing, since Heroes killed you with shaky controls all the time, but SHtH does this less. Unfortunately it still feels like a 1-player Sonic Heroes.

Hedgehog. More hedgehog is a great freaking idea. And SHtH was the only Sonic game of its generation to have hedgehog-only play. This is the best thing about the game. Each out of the 22 or whatever levels is a speed stage.

Overall the game is nothing spectacular, but it was a fun distraction, and a Sonic distraction. You might wish they'd made a different game instead, but whatever. I enjoyed the destruction Shadow could cause in this game, compared to the rock-paper-scissors gameplay of Heroes. I don't think its biggest fault was the weapons. It was the way you needed to kill enemies to progress in some missions, combined with an auto-aim that required you to slow down. And the level design really was awful. Proper physics are still missing from ShtH, but I don't blame this game for that. It's certainly no Adventure title. Just a bit better than Heroes IMO, though.

And by the way, this game is not hard at all. Scoring A-ranks is the easiest here second to the original Sonic Adventure.

Edited July 24, 2009 by Badnikz

[Gabz Girl]

ps: short and brief answers only thanks

Nu uh~

Here's my point of view on the game. This is THE worst Sonic game, if you can even call it that, that I've ever played. I still feel ashamed for buying it full price on release day. I couldn't believe how horribly mediocre this was.

The storyline is stupid, the controls are bad, the stages are confusing and badly textured, the music is average, character AI is AWFUL (whether you're on Hero or Dark, they will still attack you on both sides!), real time cutscenes looked like poo, the graphics in general looked like poo and were cheaply reused from Sonic Heroes, Shadow, Sonic and the others were really, really OOC, and Eggman being killed in one of those many endings? WTF is all I can say.

Oh, and Black Doom was just really cliche. The final boss is awful too. I have a hard time controlling Super Shadow and worst of all, they don't tell you everything until 7 MINUTES INTO THE FINAL BOSS.

Yeah, I'm never EVER gonna touch this game. It is "so bad." It's worse than bad, it's junk.

[Silencer226]

U dumb, i have finished the other sonics too, i personally think that everyone hates it cause its hard

Hard, are you serious? This game was crap, nothing more than aimless wandering around and doing boring stupid missions that had absolutely no vital impact on the outcome of the damn story anyway.