i have turned into the joker: Shadow the Hedgehog (PS2/GameCube/Xbox, 2005) Review

 NOTE: This review is part of a retrospective of the Sonic franchise. Feel free to read the other Sonic reviews I’ve done here - https://expithecat.blogspot.com/search/label/sonic%20retrospective

we really do live in a society.

Background and History

I couldn’t really find much about this game’s development, but with this game, Iizuka, who led the game’s development with Yuji Naka, had wanted to attract an older audience for the Sonic series. The team had decided to make a game featuring Shadow that story-wise would build on his characters from the previously unsolved mysteries that were revealed in Sonic Adventure 2 and Heroes.

Supposedly, Sega had originally aimed for a T rating, but around that time the ESRB created a new E10+ rating, so they decided to censor some of the content to allow Shadow the Hedgehog to achieve that rating. Honestly it feels kind of odd that this game and Super Mario Odyssey have the same ESRB rating but… whatever.

The game was officially announced on March 8, 2005 during the inauguration of the “Walk of Game” exhibit in San Francisco. In a trailer featuring a look back on previous games in the series - Sonic 1, CD, 2, Heroes, Adventure….

Before that legacy is literally shot at.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA

Personal Experiences

Truth be told, I had never really played this game prior to this review. I kind of just avoided it for a long time despite having a GameCube, partially just because I didn’t have a disposable income and when I bought games, I generally stuck to ones I felt I was going to have a good time with.

However, I remember this game always being one of the most disliked games in the series. There were fans of it here and there but in general I remember a lot of people between 2012 and 2015 or so declaring this their least favorite game in the series, or at the very least, among them.  I mean, even nowadays in an age where the Adventure and “Dark Age” fans have grown up and games like Unleashed and Black Knight are a lot more loved than they were previously, I still really don’t see much praise for this game. In a lot of cases I found that this game was more of a joke or meme than anything - I can’t even tell how many times I’ve seen that “damn fourth Chaos Emerald” being posted around.

But… now that I’ve grown a bit older and had more disposable income in previous years, I decided to pick this game up - seeing as how I wanted to do this Sonic marathon thing that I haven’t been doing a good job of keeping up with.

And, well…

Plot

A few months after the events of Sonic Heroes, Shadow has decided to figure out the truth of his past - with the only other things he remembers being his name and Maria’s death. But while he’s reminiscing, the sky opens up and a figure named “Black Doom” appears in front of him, telling him to bring him the Chaos Emeralds “as promised.”

From there, the story largely depends on the actions of the player - whether they complete the hero or dark missions, or just play the level as normal. There are ten routes to choose from, and completing all of them will unlock the “Last Story.”

Now, I’ll probably go into the whole “ten routes” thing as it pertains to the gameplay but that is something I wanted to touch upon. Thing is, I don’t necessarily mind this as a concept - having different endings is something that does have the potential to increase replay ability and look for new things to do. But I feel like including a “last story” you have to play the game 10 times for makes that whole idea… pretty much pointless. Imagine if in Undertale, you had to play through the all three major runs - Neutral, Pacifist, Genocide - in order to unlock an extra story which contained the “true” ending. It makes the whole morality system and replayability pretty much pointless when you’re basically required to play through every single route, and this is what Shadow the Hedgehog does.

And the story itself? I don’t care for it. I know I’ve said previously that I don’t really care that much for stories in Sonic games, but I kind of feel like with how hard this game wants me to take it seriously I have to talk about it. Black Doom as a villain is completely uninteresting to me and feels very cookie-cutter with a generic feeling design and name, and the writing is full of weird inconsistencies and plot elements that just aren’t explained very well. The whole thing between the GUN Commander and Maria… doesn’t really make sense (why did he decide to work for GUN if he’s mad over them killing his friend? why is he going after shadow even though he tried to save maria?), sometimes certain cutscenes will contradict the actions you’ve made (i.e, Shadow being beside Black Doom when you “betrayed” him) and I feel like a lot of it could’ve been solved if Rouge or someone just told Shadow what was going on.

I will say on a presentation level that the FMV cutscenes do provide a step up from a lot of the in-game cutscenes in previous Sonic games, although there are still in-game cutscenes which feel about the same as Heroes did.

Also, as noted by many, you’ll fairly often find characters saying “damn” or “hell.” And on that note, a lot of the dialogue in this game feels pretty… for lack of a better word, cringey. A lot of people often joke about the “DAMN fourth Chaos Emerald” scene, but there’s also one scene where Shadow literally says, “This is just like taking candy from a baby, which is fine by me.” And okay, I do get that in the context, he was saying that he was fine with how easy it was to steal the Chaos Emerald, but the way he enunciates it makes him sound like an Elementary School bully. This game’s story feels like a bad attempt at being edgy… and frankly, the game itself does too.

Presentation

Visually, this game is… not great. The character models are ripped straight from Sonic Heroes - and while I know some didn’t care for Heroes’ art style, I didn’t mind it too much.

For Heroes, that is.

I feel like the way this game tries to mix “colorful” character models with the rest of the game’s dark colors makes the whole art style clash, and in general, the game’s environments feel extremely drab and dull. I get that this game was going for a more mature tone compared to other Sonic games, but the environments in this game just feel extremely uninteresting to look at with it’s use of black, gray and brown palette that’s used throughout it. The stage themes tend to range from “fine, I guess” to uninteresting, with some of them just feeling ripped from other games - particularly Circus Park just feeling like a less interesting rehash of Casino Park and Bingo Highway from Heroes.

The soundtrack is also pretty forgettable to me. I know there are some who enjoy it, and that’s fine, but… I don’t know. The only track that really stuck out to me at all was “All Hail Shadow” - just not really my cup of tea overall.

Gameplay

I think it’s safe to say that the first thing most people noticed when it came to this game was… well, guns. Once again, the game was trying to target an older demographic, and the incorporation of guns into the gameplay definitely played a part in that. And I think this is particularly why the game is sort of seen as a joke or meme by some - the whole concept of a cartoon hedgehog carrying guns just sounds ridiculous. 

I have seen some people make the argument that there were guns in Sonic before, but I feel like most of the examples they refer to are stuff like the mechs in the Sonic Adventure games or Nack the Weasel, and in both of these cases… I don’t really think this argument applies. I mean, with that sort of stuff, they were implemented in a pretty cartoonish way - the mechs used missiles, Gamma used futuristic laser guns, and Nack the Weasel was… more or less treated as something akin to Yosemite Sam in Looney Tunes. You didn’t have characters just carrying around realistic pistols and SMGs, but you sure do in Shadow the Hedgehog. The only time I remember a “realistic” gun being used at all in the Sonic series was in that one scene of Sonic Adventure 2 where Eggman was threatening to kill Amy, but even that had some cartoony elements to it.

On the bright side, you don’t necessarily “need” to use the guns, but the game does encourage them - especially when doing the Hero and Dark missions involving taking down a certain amount of enemies. To be entirely fair, the gunplay isn’t necessarily too bad or anything - albeit a lot of the time I feel like it just feels like I have to aim in a certain direction and use the fire button but I can cut it some slack since it is on a console. I will say though there were times where I feel like the “auto aim” function would cause me to accidentally lock on to another enemy that was nearby just because they were slightly closer to me or my direction was slightly tilted towards them, which did get annoying sometimes especially when the character near you would yell at you for targeting a good guy instead of a bad guy or vice versa.

The thing is though, surprisingly, I… didn’t find the guns to be my biggest problem with this game. I mean, it’s still a stupid concept, no doubt about that, but it was sort of the last thing on my mind as I played through the game.

With Sonic games, it’s usually the level design that I’m most in for. I praised the last major console game, Sonic Heroes, quite a bit for it’s more classic-styled level design, and in general, I do like Sonic games that have open level design with different paths to play through.

Thing with Shadow though is that it’s a lot more linear. And okay, that’s not inherently an issue - there have been linear Sonic games in the past, Sonic Adventure 2 particularly, that did pull it off pretty well by having ways to maintain and master the speed and flow of each level. Problem is… Shadow the Hedgehog doesn’t even have that going for it. Pretty much in all my time playing this game, I found that a lot of the time I was just going in straight lines and occasionally bumping into a bunch of enemies I had to kill. Outside of those, the levels just felt almost completely barren to me when trying to go from point A to point B. At the very most, the game would throw an alternate pathway here and there that… basically just felt the same as the other pathway. 

But at the same time, there were some levels that had the exact opposite problem - feeling like giant, confusing mazes. Lost Impact was easily the most notable example, and especially when doing the hero mission - where you have to hunt down all 35 of the “Artificial Chaos” enemies in the stage (some being hidden in nooks and crannies) - playing it just led me to getting lost and not understanding where to go, with the only indication being a crude, low-res map on the wall in some areas.

On that note, let’s go to the missions. The neutral run… well it’s pretty boring with levels being just dull and barren, but as mentioned previously, the game also is split into 10 different paths with their own endings, and the path you go depends on your actions. There are certain missions you have to do that are labeled based on “dark” missions (where you side with Black Doom) or “hero” missions.

The most obvious comparison to make with this game’s Hero and Dark missions is Team Chaotix in Sonic Heroes - which also had you play levels based on missions rather than just going from point A to point B. Problem is… I really didn’t care for this portion of Sonic Heroes. I mentioned in my review that some of the missions did get pretty tedious to me due to having to hunt down a certain number of enemies and or objects.

And… guess what? That’s basically what you’re doing for most of the Hero and Dark missions in this game. If you’re doing Hero or Dark runs, missions involving just reaching the end of the stage are practically the minority of missions you’ll be doing. And once again, it gets tedious. Sometimes you have to defeat every “bad” or “good” enemy in a stage, and if you happen to miss one, you basically have to scour the whole level over again just to find that single enemy you missed. Sometimes enemies wouldn’t spawn in, sometimes I would miss enemies due to the camera obscuring my view, and sometimes these enemies were in extremely maze-like levels that had me getting lost and not knowing where I was going due to the level being built with dull, repetitive structure. And yes, I’m talking about Lost Impact in particular here.

Another mission that sort of annoyed me was the Hero Mission for Casino Park - where you have to collect 400 rings. But you can’t just collect them - you also have to hold on to them. And there are areas of the level full of enemies shooting projectiles at you. At the very least, if you have a high amount you’ll only lose a small portion of your rings, but even then, I found myself wandering through the level multiple times looking for rings because I had been hit by an enemy and lost rings I had collected. Oh yeah, and sometimes I would die and have my ring counter set back to 0, meaning I would have to collect 400 rings all over again.

And with everything I’ve said about the level design in mind, it also doesn’t help that Shadow himself controls like ass. The handling and turning often feels like it goes from 0 to 100 - where he either feels extremely slow and sluggish or extremely fast and slippery with little in between, and returning moves like the homing attack, triangle jump and spin dash feel slow, sluggish and clunky to use. As it is, the levels have little flow to them with how they’re designed, and frankly, it really doesn’t help that the controls also feel sluggish and clunky.

And that’s the thing - I feel very little incentive to replay these levels. Playing them normally leads me to just feeling empty with how dull the level design feels, but playing the missions leads me to feeling frustrated most of the time due to how items and enemies are laid out.

But at the same time, the game *wants* you to replay it - 10 TIMES in order to get the Last Story and “truly” beat it. You can’t just select an individual and get a different ending from there - you have to replay from the start to the end of each path. On top of that, there are technically 5 routes, but you have to play them TWICE in order to get all 10 endings. And that means you have to play the first level - Westopolis - 10 times. If you thought Heroes was ridiculous for having your play four times (through each “teams”), this is somehow even worse.

I’ll be honest - I decided to just play the neutral and “true hero” paths for this review, and by the end of those, I was already tired of playing the game as it is. Even by the end of those, I just wanted to move on and I really didn’t have any motivation to unlock and play the Last Story. At least with Heroes, the level design was still fun and the controls were still fine to use. Here… I gotta be honest, this game just didn’t really make me want to go back to it.

Also could probably talk about the fact that in total, there are 326 routes to go through even if there’s just 10 endings. So if you want to “truly” 100% complete the game, well, good luck with that.

Conclusion

I don’t have too much else to say here. I’ll be honest, I didn’t really have very high expectations for this game but… somehow it ended up being worse than I expected. The game offered me pretty much nothing to really enjoy about it - level design was bland, controls were poor, and overall I just did not feel like it was a very good experience. Shadow the Hedgehog is one of my least favorite Sonic games, hands down. Even putting the ridiculous concept and forced edginess aside, it just really didn’t appeal to me in almost any way I can think of.

Truth be told, unless you are a big Sonic fan and want to experience all the games, I wouldn’t recommend this one. But I should mention that if for some reason you do want to play it, the PS2 version is definitely the worst version of the game. With Heroes, I could cut it some slack for just running at 30FPS but at least having a stable framerate, but here the framerate is pretty much all over the place and it is definitely distracting - possibly even worse than Unleashed PS3. The only reason I got the PS2 version over the others was because it was cheaper and my local game store only had that version in stock. But given the option, I probably would’ve chosen to spend an extra few bucks. Although regardless I really don’t think this game is worth the money.