Never thought I'd give a game with so many problems this high of a rating.
I think because it is fun, a lot of people are ignoring the myriad of issues with the game.
1. This is not a 10 hour, 8 hour, 6 hour game - its a 4 hour game.
2. Glitches. From loosing oxygen while on solid ground, to glitches that prevented completion of the game - they were there, and shouldn't be ignored (running into 3 major glitches in 4 hours makes me wonder if this game even went through quality assurance).
3. I've seen these designs elsewhere. The artistic development borrows heavily from GI JOE, ghost in the shell, and metal gear.
4. Bad animation. From the terrible swimming animations that look like Nathan Drak- I mean Jason Flemming is being pulled through the water by a tow cable to the awful character acting - the animation was inconsistent at best. To ChAIR's credit, they did avoid a lot of the facial animation issues by making the majority of characters wear full masks.
5. The story was completely generic and uninteresting.
6. Rips so much off Metroid that I can't really say its paying homage to it. Its harder to find an instance that this game isn't ripping off of Metroid than it is to find an instance that it is. Obviously Metroid is a great game, so ripping off of it isn't the worst thing you could do - but it fails to successfully copy a few aspects of the game. Shadow complex's graphics are good, but the design is uninspiring. There are 4 locations you'll remember - outside, inside and clean/futuristic inside, and underwater. You will not remember locations as this area, or that area as you do in Metroid - and the environments get really redundant. The jumping mechanics don't work nearly as well in shadow complex either. In Metroid, the longer you hold the jump button down, the higher you jump - in shadow complex you jump short, or jump high, there's nothing in between. This problem is negated by removing the enemies from knocking you back when you touch them - which was a fun aspect of Metroid. The bosses in the game tend to take a lot less strategy as well - sometimes you can even hide behind an object and take the boss out without him being able to hit you.
7. The game looks good, but not good enough to zoom in as close as they do in the in game cut scenes.
All complaints aside, I hope the success this game is seeing means more developers end up investing in large budget 2 1/2D Metroid clones. The gaming industry could use more of them - and clocking in at 4 hours - this game seems more like its somewhere between a demo and a full game.