The closest Chaotic players will ever get to being in Perim

User Rating: 6.5 | Chaotic: Shadow Warriors (w/Trading Card) WII
By Shade9222 | Review Date:
Since the game's been out for almost 4 years, maybe it's time it got a review on this site. Chaotic: Shadow Warriors is a decent game, and does a pretty good job at putting the player in the developer's interpretation of perim (the chaotic world). To catch everyone up to speed a little bit (just in case), Chaotic was a multimedial Card game. In a similar way to pokemon, Chaotic tried to use its TV show, Card game, and (eventually) video game to create a cohesive world trying to engross players in their game and have them get as much as possible out of it. Chaotic did a fairly decent job, but of course was nowhere near as successful as other's before it. I went into Chaotic: Shadow Warriors expecting it to be junk, but was pleasantly surprised.

Story: 2.5/5
The story behind Shadow Warriors was really nothing more than providing an outline for an adventure in Perim. It was fairly uninteresting and was put there for no other reason than to throw you into the world as if to say "well, go play". You play as Tom (the main character of the show) who just had his scanner altered to take multliple scans of creatures and be able to use them in actual scenarios in Perim. When you arrive in Perim, the Overworld Arsenal has been broken into by Mipedians and you track them down to find the creatures are only shadow like versions of the original. You now go through Perim trying to find out where they came from and to stop them. The Story is quick and painless, but also uninspired and lacking in any depth. It's just a straight forward shot.

Graphics: 4/5
Now we get into the stuff where the game starts to shine. Perim looks good, and the environments were well thought out. It can be fun at times to just look around and see these places that used to be nothing more than cards. The characters aren't done half bad either. Most of the creatures look fairly decent (with the exception of 4 or 5) and are as can be expected when first going from 2D to 3D (it will always seem a little awkward.

Sound: 3/5
Other than in battles and with Mugic, you mostly just hear background and nature noises. I considered this to be a bit of a shame since the battle themes and the little clips of the Mugic sounded pretty good (All were at least on par with the music from the show). This could kind of be expected though since it was produced by Activision (the guys the produced Guitar hero). Had they put in some more memorable travelling and adventure music I probably would have given it a better score.

Gameplay/Control: 4/5
The game works (which was surprising to me, I thought there had to at least be something wrong with it to have metacritic judge it so harshly). Controlwise, there is nothing wrong; the platforming is works and the extra input for the battles work just fine. For Gameplay, you'll find yourself going from platforming in Perim to battles in a similar fashion to the card game. During the platforming sections you'll "explore" areas in Perim, finding secrets, mugic, and battle gear. To make things a little more fun they put regular enemies along the way that you shoot to gain points (which are used to combine scans of the same creature and upgrade them). The game gives you a hot/cold radar that you can use to find everything, but the secret areas are a little harder to get to (which made it a little more fun). The areas however (like the story) are a mostly a straight path and I use word "explore" fairly loosely with this game The battles are well explained, and are probably the main reason you would pick up this game. Each creature is given their own sets of attacks and you take turns hitting each other while defending and trying to get scans of enemy creatures. Even in battle you can perform actions that will reduce damage, increase damage (or like stated previously scan) that will prevent you from just clicking an attack and sitting back to watch. The game works, and can be fun to play.

Content/Replay ablility: 2/5
This is without a doubt why most people score this game fairly low; the game only has about 7 stages and can be beaten in a few hours. The secret areas do provide some extra content, but they're fairly useless considering you can find the mugic and gear in them else ware. Since the game is absolutely linear you would be better off playing it for the battles. The battles do offer some Replay ability, but not much. If you go through the game again it would be to max out your scan of every creature (which you can still do in one playthrough). If all else fails, the multiplayer isn't bad as long as you have a friend or sibling that also played chaotic.

Verdict:
Chaotic: Shadow Warriors isn't a bad game at all. The only problems with it are that it was too short, it's linear, and it had an uninspired story. However if you enjoyed the original card game or the show, it is worth trying out. I managed to pick it up at a pawn shop for $5 and honestly $10 in the bargain bin would probably be pushing it. If you know nothing about chaotic, this probably isn't the best game for you and would get much more enjoyment else ware.
Recommendation: 3/5 If you're a fan it's worth a shot, but get it cheap.
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