Shadow Man 2econd Coming Updated Preview

Those who played the original Shadow Man in its numerous incarnations will surely remember it as an incredibly cool yet technically flawed game. It was quite moving aesthetically, and, from a design standpoint, everything was very solid indeed. The weakness of the engine, however, brought it down quite harshly. Ghastly worlds that could have been a frightful pleasure to explore wound up feeling stilted and choppy, which almost nullified the cool aesthetics contained therein. The Dreamcast and N64 versions did fare a bit better than the PlayStation version, but the fact that the engine was forced to stretch across all three platforms was painfully apparent.

Shadow Man: 2econd Coming, though, seems to be faring much better. There's a whole new engine powering the game, and it definitely seems to bring the game's gritty world to life much more effectively. Everything still focuses on Mike LeRoi, the man whose alter ego, Shadow Man, is charged with protecting the living world from netherworld assaults. The Shadow Man games are built around a very Soul Reaver-like system--both the living and spirit worlds exist alongside each other, and your adventures will often have you crossing the barrier between them. You also make use of both of the protagonist's forms: Mike LeRoi and Shadow Man. Both characters are suitably different, mostly in regard to the weapons they use, but they should feel similar enough to most players.

Shadow Man is a voodoo champion charged with protecting the living world from baneful spirits, and the stories the series is based on incorporate this theme heavily. The first game had Shadow Man fighting off the assaults of a being called Legion, a powerful spirit that was trying to manifest itself in the living world by enlisting the aid of Earth's most depraved criminals. This second game puts Shadow Man in a fairly similar situation. A cadre of demonic spirits is trying to resurrect its unholy leader, and, through a series of auspicious events, Shadow Man's lover, confidant, and zombi master Mama Nettie catches wind of their plans. Shadow Man is dispatched, and he becomes embroiled in something altogether huge. The struggle involves one of Nettie's rivals, a certain Papa Morte, who runs drugs, among other things, from a derelict plantation just outside of New Orleans. As it happens, the uneasy truce that Nettie and Morte have formed is about to be broken quite explosively.

2econd Coming takes place all across that particular stretch of Louisiana, on through Deadside, and beyond. Many characters from the original game will make appearances, and you'll undoubtedly come across certain stretches of land you'll be familiar with. One thing, though, has changed for the better: the quality at which all these things have been rendered.

Acclaim Studios Teeside has developed an entirely new engine for Shadow Man: 2econd Coming, and the results are immediately apparent. The game runs at a consistent 30fps, and everything has a solid feel that was glaringly missing from the first game. A good deal of lighting and particle effects are now present as well, and the mood these things weave does quite a bit for the game's visual tone. When Shadow Man attacks, multihued light trails emerge, and they're accompanied by a subtle motion blur, presumably to emphasize the voodoo-charged nature of his powers. This sort of subtle saturation is present in other elements in the environment as well--as you move the camera about, you'll get to witness all the cool ways that light plays with shadow, and, in the boggy areas of Louisiana, the effect comes off very well. The subtle movements of birds and other environmental creatures blends perfectly with the jagged branches of dead trees, and the mood this paints does a lot to further the game's gritty, supernatural feel.

Much has also been done to the way that you'll control Shadow Man. The new scheme is fairly similar to that of many recent third-person action games--you move about with the left analog stick and control the camera with the right. You're given a good bit of room when it comes to positioning the camera, but, at this point, it doesn't seem to follow you automatically in any way, which is a bit unfortunate. All your attacks, in any event, are mapped to the L1 and R1 shoulder buttons, and you can assign a different weapon to each. You can equip a weapon in each hand or choose to wield a two-handed weapon using the square button. The system, overall, works pretty well, in tandem with the auto-aim feature. If you're wielding two ranged weapons, you can discharge both quite effectively, and the same goes for melee weapons--when wielding one in each hand, you can beat and batter anything in your path quite effectively. The large variety of weapons makes combat pretty interesting, and the fact that your character has two forms--with weapons that behave differently on both the living and spirit planes--keeps the combat feeling pretty fresh. The game's economy seems pretty generous as well--ammo is frequently dropped, in our experience, so you don't have to play very conservatively.

At this point, the biggest kink we've found is a bit of spotty collision detection, especially when it comes to jumping onto objects--it's sometimes be a tad too difficult to clear geometry when you're too close to it. Admittedly, this is a small kink, but it's one that surfaces quite often, so we really hope it's addressed. In all, Shadow Man: 2econd Coming seems to be at least twice the game that its predecessor was, which is a good thing--the series has always been touched by something very cool, and we're happy to see that it's well on the path to coming into its own. The game is set to ship later this month, so stay tuned for more info soon.