Shadow the Hedgehog fails to live up to its pedigree due to terrible controls, an uncooperative camera, and an overall lack of effort.
Let's get this out of the way up front: Shadow the Hedgehog is a game set in Sega's beloved Sonic universe, and yes, you can use all kinds of guns to shoot aliens, robots, and even humans. It sounds blasphemous, but it really isn't so shocking once you see it in action. In fact, the shooting mechanics are completely useless, so you're better off avoiding guns altogether. Actually, unless you're a very forgiving Sonic fan, you're better off avoiding this entire game.
As the title implies, the game is all about Shadow the Hedgehog, who was introduced as Sonic's rival in Sonic Adventure 2 on the Dreamcast. After appearing in a few other Sonic games, the dark hedgehog is now the star of his own adventure. The game follows the amnesiac Shadow as he tries to recall his past. As he contemplates his fragmented memories, evil aliens known as the Black Arms descend from the sky and start to wreak havoc in the city of Westopolis. Shadow isn't exactly tight with the humans and doesn't know the aliens at all, so he doesn't see any reason to get involved in the dispute until the alien boss, Black Doom, shows up and tells Shadow that he must retrieve seven chaos emeralds. Since this Black Doom guy seems to know a bit about Shadow, Shadow decides to play along in the hopes of finding more information about his past.
There are several different paths to take through the game depending on whether you want to fight for good, evil, or a mix of the two. There are 22 levels, each with multiple objectives. For example, in the first level, Westopolis, you can choose to take the evil path by killing all the humans. If you want to take the good path, you can kill all the aliens. And if you just want to get through the level and move on, you can simply run through and grab the chaos emerald. The conditions for each mission are made apparent through your interactions with various non-playable characters that tag along as you play. Sonic or one of his friends will show up in each stage to tell you what you need to do to complete the hero quest, and an evil character, such as Black Doom's evil eye, will show up to tell you how to complete the dark missions. You can switch between these supporting characters by pressing a direction on the D pad, and they usually just hang in the background telling you what to do and where to go. Depending on which mission you complete, you'll move on to one of two or three different levels. This enhances the replay value because you have to play through several times to see each level and each of the 11 different endings. It can take a couple of hours to beat the game too, so there's plenty of gameplay to be had here.
Unfortunately, the gameplay isn't fun enough to warrant playing the game through multiple times. Shadow the Hedgehog plays a lot like any other Sonic game. You run around really fast, collect rings, bounce off springy platforms, and hop on enemies. Shadow can do everything that Sonic does, and he can also wield weapons and perform special chaos moves. As you progress through a level, you can fill up your dark gauge and your hero gauge by attacking enemies, putting out fires, destroying plants, and more. Once one of these gauges is full, you can perform a special move. The hero move is called chaos control, and it zooms you ahead in a level, which isn't very useful because you'll often pass right by some integral part of a mission. If you use chaos control in a boss battle, it slows down time for a little while. If you fill up your dark gauge, you can perform a chaos blast, which kills everything in the surrounding area.
The shooting part of the game is as basic as it gets. You can break crates to pick up pistols, machine guns, bazookas, laser rifles, and lots of other less-conventional firearms. The problem with the guns is that it's difficult to hit your intended target. There is no target lock and no way to manually aim your weapon. Shadow will shoot whatever is directly ahead of him. The guns will auto-aim, but there are usually multiple targets onscreen at a time, and the auto-aim doesn't differentiate between friend and foe. You can also grab torches, street signs, swords, and other close-range weapons, but aside from the few spots where they're required to trigger a switch, the weapons aren't worth messing with.
The most useful attack doesn't involve weapons at all, though. You can perform a homing spin attack by jumping into the air and then hitting the jump button again. If there's a target nearby, you'll automatically attack it. If there are several targets, you can just chain this attack together over and over to quickly eliminate a large group of enemies, but again, the attack doesn't differentiate between friend and foe. The combat mechanics are almost functional once you get used to them, but they're still unnecessarily awkward and imprecise.
this game isn't bad, its just not great. its still fast pace like sonic games should be, well for the most pat as long as you not looking for those dame chaos experiments. the only other problem with this game is the path you choose doesn't matter in the end, after you play through all the routs you end up having a final mission were you end up being good. over all its still a fun game the multi-play is also sort of fun to mess around with.
worst sonic game every close to sonic 06 what is it rated 10+ there's shooting and language in it i dont recomend this.
