Postmortem

(Note: In my last entry, I somehow failed to mention that Howard Phillips works for Shadow Complex's developer, the bizarrely-named Chair Entertainment. Had I done so, my brief reference to Howard & Nester would have actually made some contextual sense. TIP regrets the error.)

Well, I finished Shadow Complex this morning. I'm even more convinced now it's a great game--you know why? I got to the end and found myself annoyed to have run out of game. That doesn't often happen--even in the case of, say, Mass Effect I was content to wait 3 years for a sequel.

I wasn't kidding about this being a Metroidvania game. The map screen looks exactly, and I mean EXACTLY, like Super Metroid's (and, for that matter, Symphony of the Night's). All the other elements are there too--the starting with nothing and slowly building into a killing machine, the partially-open world that becomes gradually more accessible as you find more powerups, etc.

Sorry to dickride so much, but I'm just blown away at how much effort they put into this thing. This is, after all, a $15 Live release, and a licensed game at that. They would have been well within their rights to just dash something off and forget about it. The benefits they'll reap for not doing so should (but probably won't) serve as an object lesson to film and TV studios looking to cash in on all this newfangled Atari stuff.

That said, it's hardly perfect. Like I said, it's very short. The writing (by Peter David, as it turns out) is perfectly serviceable and knows when to stay out of the way most of the time, but the twist ending (without giving anything away, not that that's any kind of favor) is, as usual for twist endings, fucking stupid. Honestly Pete, I know you're just a work-for-hire guy but you're usually better than that. Also, if anybody out there didn't see it coming about, oh, a quarter of the way through the game or so, please write in and let me know what it's like to be the single dumbest person on the planet. I'm thinking of doing a series of posts where I interview the world's thickest people, and Sarah Palin and Jeremy Clarkson haven't been returning my calls. And why did the player character have to look so much like the guy from Uncharted? Not only that, they're both voiced by the same guy! It's enough to make me wonder if this was originally an Uncharted project they retooled after the rights fell through or something. If that's the case, it's even more amazing the game turned out as well as it did...

And you know what? I think I am going to read Empire now. Oh, I'm not going to buy it (that's what libraries are for)--that "use it to pay a lawyer when you get arrested for soliciting gay sex" bit only works so many times. I know I shouldn't hatchet my counts before they chicken, but just from reading the Wikipedia entry it looks like I'll find plenty of horrible things to say about it. And if/when I do, it'll all wind up here.

Until then, however, I need to get back to unlocking the "Make 'Em Scream" achievement.