Shadow Complex IS Retro

I've been playing the XBLA game Shadow Complex for a couple of weeks now, and I love it.

Set in the near future within Orson Scott Card's Empire fiction, the game follows Jason Flemming as his hiking date in the mountains of Washington goes horribly wrong. What follows is old-school action at its finest, with a few modern twists.

In fact, the game play is both a copy of and homage to one of the greatest 2D games of all time, the SNES game Super Metroid. Not only is the map system nearly identical, but there's even a Master Challenge called "Jason Bailey," in which the player must collect 100% of the items in the game in under two hours. The reference is to a code that could be input into the original Metroid on NES. On the code screen, putting in JUSTIN BAILEY followed by all dashes in the lower section put the player in the middle of the action with 255 missiles, 5 energy tanks, and a rather underdressed Samus. Hence, the icon for the challenge is a pair of tighty whities.

In addition, as I found out in Game Informer, it turns out that Howard Phillips, who helped bring us the original NES, and Metroid, also helped bring this title to fruition.

But the similarities don't end there. Throughout the course of the game, Jason acquires missiles, super speed, a secondary (and tertiary) jump ability, a grappling hook, and even limited invincibility. But Chair went further and threw in an excellent control scheme. The left stick is for movement and aiming, but the right stick can also be used to aim more precisely, and in any direction. This is an option I would've killed for back in the day, and it really makes 2D gaming shine again. I hope more retro-style games adopt this control scheme.

That said, the controls aren't as tight as some of the older SNES favorites, though they are good. The boss fights are also a little lacking. They're fun and all, but killing generic enemies just isn't as fun as taking on a valued henchman like Kraid or Ridley.

But the graphics and special effects are superb, as is the sound. The cutscenes are even passable and can be skipped (for those high speed runs).

All in all, I think this game is fantastic, and should not be missed. If you have an XBox 360, you need Shadow Complex. And developers, if you're listening, you need to make more budget titles like this one. I've got a kid now, and just can't afford to throw 30-50 hours at a full fledged game. But Shadow Complex was just right, and the high replay value of the challenges and Leaderboards means I'll be coming back to it again and again. Keep this kind of thing coming.