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Dom Robinson reviews
Acclaim
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1
The original Shadow Man was a game I wasn’t party to, but had heard many good things, so looked forward to this sequel.
You take on the role of Shadow Man, aka Mike LeRoi, in a game which has youbattling a group of demons known as the Grigori. If you die and they win, theywill raise Asmodeus from The Pit and humanity will be destroyed in an unimaginablecataclysmic event. I think that sounds like bad things will happen.
What can you do to stop them? Well, if zombies get in your way you can shootthem with the implements of destruction that you collect in the game, startingwith a nail gun, or thump them bare-fisted. While it looks good with adark, eerie atmosphere and, if the camera gets up close to you, your beatingheart looks very cool indeed, you’ll come across the zombies early on andthat’s where the disappointment begins, since a bit of flailing of left andright hooks will quickly demolish them, sometimes cracking apart into severalpieces.
The sound isn’t a great deal to shout about, either. An ambient tune playsin the background, but it doesn’t really seem to fit in with this game. SoundFX of shooting or thumping someone is incredibly lacklustre too.
The movement of Mike seems a little bit stilted at times when you need toturn round while moving forward because he stays facing forward and as wellas not appearing to turn round the control just doesn’t feel right. Programmersfacing this dilemma should take a look atGrand Theft Auto 3for how to avoid this experience and get it right. On the plus side, though,you can swap the analogue joystick controls over in the set-up menu, whichhelps both left- and right-handed gamers.
As the game progresses, you collect other items and documents along the waywhich will aid you in your quest, but it’s all done in a very linear fashion.You can go exploring a little in some rooms, but that’s mainly just to defeata few tertiary enemies and pick up power-ups.
For the most part, it’s all been done before and if you’re going to have theplayer trudging down dark alleyway after dark alleyway, you need to createan atmosphere. If you want to make the player scared by the approaching zombiesthen do something that’ll make them shit themselves at the first opportunity.Games such as the first Resident Evil andThief 2: The Metal Agedid that for me, but it’s a rarely-repeated experience.
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.