Hedgehog Shadow

This title for the Sega series of Sonic the Hedgehog is a unique and yet very different theme for Sonic titles. In it you will be Shadow the Hedgehog, a hedgehog similar to Sonic who cannot remember his past. In the introduction you will learn that he knows that the Chaos Gem Stones are a possible link to that past.

The action is aimed at being fast paced with new surprises for any Sonic the Hedgehog fan. You will have to worry about being stopped in your tracks while running at full speed, avoiding obstacles like overturned trucks, falling off a cliff and dodging flying walls. Surprisingly, he can wield weapons such as swords, pistols and many other weapons. The weapons can usually be picked up from falling friends or foes that were knocked down, but also found in crates and hidden areas. Using a homing jump attack, sliding through them or just punching is a quick way to get a weapon from someone. Another added twist is that you get to choose rather to be chaotic or good.

You start off with a decision to choose between allying with good or evil. This is a constant decision that you can either stick with or not at any time. The storyline also will revolve around your choice as it determines your next stage. The stroyline even has its own uniqueness to it as you choose your overall storyline by finishing a stage either for good or evil. It can be saved and shared with friends after you have finished one. You ultimately choose to ally yourself with the bad guys, such as Dr. Eggman, or ally yourself with Sonic or one of his friends. When doing this, your mission for the current stage takes on new goal accomplishments as your goal for completing the stage changes with your choice. Either you must help prepare an assault against troops (good guys), attack evil (bad guys) or destroy the Black Aliens (also bad guys). Black Aliens are not really allies of Dr. Eggman and others, but are a 3rd group that ultimately pose themselves as a threat to the universe. It is their goal to capture the Chaos Gems to control the universe and it is the revolving theme around all storylines. However, they play the part of the evil side in some stages, whereas in others Dr. Eggman and others will represent the side of evil. You are also given the choice of being completely neutral and simply going for the rings and reaching the goal.

The stages might be a little confusing for some at first, especially if you are new to the Sonic games. You usually have about 5-8 warp points through a stage, which transports you back to a point to find things you missed. This is sometimes necessary to complete a stage. You can go to any point that you have already stepped on, but not others that are in unexplored areas (or forgot about). Some of these might help meeting requirements to eliminate all Black Aliens, finding extra goodies such as keys, helping fallen people, etc. Some goals to stages are straight forward, such as eliminating all Black Aliens, while others are more like puzzle solving problems. If you go for neutral, then there is little to leave out for these unless you are looking for stage keys to unlock bonus doors. With a little practice, you can get an idea of how the game system flows.

Shadow the hedgehog comes equipped with a number of abilities that are far more exceeding than Sonic's. He can do triangular jumps off walls, hang onto walls for up to 2 seconds, wears techno skates for boost to his speed, jump into the air for a homing attacks, slide under tight crevices, ram through destroyable objects and much more. In addition to these abilities, you will find that he has 2 very unique special abilities. As he helps the forces of evil, destroys everything he can or attacks any good guys his evil meter goes up a little. Once his evil meter is filled, he can unleash a furious and destructive blast that spreads in a big radius and destroys everything in its path. The more he is good by putting out fires, destroying Black Aliens or any other good deed will make his good meter go up. When this is filled and unleashed, Sonic flares up in an aura and flashes through at lightning speed for a short while that destroys or goes through everything in his path. The nice feature is that either meter can be filled at any time and does not subtract from the other one. You can have both meters fill up near the end and unleash one after the other. You can also choose which accomplishment you are going for to complete the stage, but this will not effect your meter at all. If you are ever stuck in making it through on a stage because you can't find that last objective for the good guys, then you are allowed to just switch to the other side.

Graphics are well done and very, very creative in my opinion. Each stage is so unique that you will not see, or at least notice, a lot of repetition or unexplainable objects. It is full of variety, well-placed and perplexing to think about how a destructive world can be so well thought out. The colors were overall very well-balanced, thinking about the magnitude of the stages and the variance in them; while keeping up with the theme of the stage at the same time. Music almost could have rocked the world, but actually kept pace at least with the game. Actually, it did, keep pace with the game as it knew when to score at key moments during pick up in the game. Very well done. Sound effects were overall a little on the mediocre side. I think this was the ultimate flaw in the title, as sound effects were not as varied as everything else with the exceptions of weapon effects.

What becomes more innovative is how the storyline really works. The storyline is built like a sideways, pyramid storyboard. As you choose to complete more stages for evil, you go up in the storyboard. If you choose more good, you go down. At greater length, if you choose a neutral path to complete the finish line you will progress straight to the right toward a horizontal stage rather than a diagonal one. Each storyboard slot is a different stage and you can again choose which side to totally ally with. In total, there are about 8 stages to go through, plus some big bosses, that complete your story. This story is saved and can be shared with friends later on as well as unlock those stages for later play. You have to work at unlocking the other stages you have not played on yet though. Each stage is varied and unique from the others with a few exceptions here and there.

With all of this uniqueness, you just have to mention the controls. The controls were easy to work with on an overall scale. There were some bad sides that could work towards improvement, in my opinion, though. One is when you are standing still and working with a rifle, you have little control of turning around quickly. Pinpoint accuracy was not necessary that I noticed though. A few tricks to the controls were also mixing combinations. You might get use to one certain combination such as a homing jump attack followed by another one, but switching to a different attack pattern altogether was a different story. Getting adjusted to the sliding attack was something to work towards to, but not difficult. It ends up being a very effective attack, though you might not pick up on that one too quick or vice versa. So working at what you can ahead of time rather than gambiting the rest out might be worth the while in this title.

A few of the flaws were minor overall. Some were with the annoying allies. When you are sided with good or evil, an avatar escorts you that will hint you with clues at key moments. However, they sometimes block the camera view if you have the camera too low. You basically have to keep the camera high to avoid blocking views. When you side with evil, you can still get picked on by the evil allies' henchmen. Yes, it makes it that much harder to help them to unlock their stages as you get no relief from the attacks you will get. However, with the good guys they can assist you in picking up rings and attacking. If you attack someone, they may attack back. Maybe this is something to explore, but I found mid-way through the game switching to neutral can be nice to unobstruct camera views. You also need to stay clear of anything moving, because it can always knock you down.

The game was overall exciting, fast paced and great to play. Most stages have more varied obstacles to dodge, but this seems to keep in place with some Sonic games. Each stage can be explored again and again, but you cannot progress back in stages to get to a different stage than the path you are currently on - except for practice. You either have to start over to find a new stage to explore or proceed on and complete the game with your choice of ending. There are also many different ways to end the story, and you can choose an alternate ending even if you have sided with evil through the whole game. You might simply wish they could have put more stages to play or even hope that it was online, but with an option of 2 players (only) you can take it to the next level. I'll be awaiting to see more of Shadow. I might give it a 4 1/2 stars, but think it is worth the 5th star. If you like racing games or games that have new turns in them, this one is an action game to take to new heights!