I’m not big on downloading Xbox Live arcade games.  More often than not, I wind up dissappointed with how poorly the games of my childhood hold up in comparison to the latest modern console releases.  A few weeks ago I downloaded TMNT: Turtles in Time thinking it would be a blast to play with my boys, since at their age I wasted countless hours on that game playing co-op with my brother. Sadly, the game doesn’t hold the same excitement level as it once did. When you can run around in an Spartan armor suit with regenerating health, rocket launchers, and space vehicles battling endless aliens in a fully 3-d environment- being a 2 dimensional turtle with a sword seems a bit stale.  After reading about how great the new Xbox Live arcade release Shadow Complex is, I decided to take the bait. Let me just say now that I’m glad that I did.

GRAPHICS 8/10

The graphics on this game are excellent. While they aren’t on the jaw dropping level of say Call of Duty or Gears of War, for a 2-d side scrolling shooter, they are top notch. In fact, the graphics here definitely raise the bar of what to expect from future XBL arcade games. At first glance, you’d think the game was picked up at Gamestop for $60, it looks that solid.  The environments are surprisingly detailed with solid texture work throughout. As the game is restricted to its 2d viewpoint, there isn’t much more detail that can be given to the graphics based on the vantage point of the game. However, if the same graphics were in a FPS, I’m sure they would look just as good as any game out right now.

GAMEPLAY 10/10

The game play is side scrolling 2d shooting/platforming…but with a slight twist. The backgrounds are all in 3d. You can see bad guys standing out on ledges that you can’t access but you can still shoot. The 2d/3d effect reminds me of Street Fighter IV. The characters are limited to the 2d scale of movement, but everything else takes place in a 3d environment. While it originally took some adjusting, once I picked up the control scheme it felt quite natural.

The game has a heavy Playstation 2 type vibe to it.  If you took the environments and characters of Metal Gear Solid, the area exploration and progression of games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Super Metroid and combined them- Shadow Complex would be the result. Not since the original Playstation have I wanted to actually explore a video game world to discover every nook, cranny, and secret area as I do with Shadow Complex. While  nearly everything about the game is comparable to more modern offerrings, the explorative fun factor that is inherent in the games design is definitely old school. Remember in Super Mario games where you wanted to find hidden levels? Or in the old Metroid games where you wanted to discover a way to access certain areas of your map? That same exploration vibe is present here in Shadow Complex and it is not only what drives the action and flow of the game, it is also what makes it so great.

SOUND 8/10

The sound isn’t bad, but also it isn’t too impressive either. Guns sound like guns, explosions sound like explosions. Given that there is so little variety in weapons available, the sound seems to fit well with the limited selection. the voice acting during cutscenes is a bit cheesy also, but it still gets the job done.

REPLAYABILITY 10/10

It isn’t often that after you complete a game’s campaign mode you want to drudge through it again. With Shadow Complex, I was eager to get right back into it and try to access all of the hidden areas that I couldn’t previously. This is a game that you will want to complete 100%. While I’m usually content to just complete the campaign and see the ending, with this game I didn’t want to stop until I discovered every area and hidden weapon powerup there was.  By modern standards, the gameplay is a bit simplistic, but it is some of the most addictive game action you can find.

There is also a mode called Proving Grounds. These are training sessions in which you are given a certain amount of time to complete an objective. Leaderboard whores will no doubt eat this mode up. It also serves as an excellent tutorial for the campaign mode, especially since there is NO tutorial in Campaign.

OVERALL 9/10

The bottom line is that this game is going to raise the bar for future Xbox live releases. With fresh, new, original, and quality content such as this, XBL arcade will no longer be viewed as the oldschool video games graveyard, but rather as a new distribution point for the latest and greatest video game software coming out.  Shadow Complex is not perfect by any means. It does, however, do so many things right that it is hard to even remember whatever nit picks you may have had about the game. For 1200 microsoft points, this is a modernized walk down memory lane. You can experience all of the old school excitement of video game exploration without feeling like you’re stuck in the past. Shadow complex manages to blend both old and new into something innovative and exciting.