This is the cream of the crop for XBOX Live Arcade games. In fact, this could easily be a full retail game. The replay value is incredible and the production values are incredible for a $15 dollar game. Absolutely worth every penny.

I myself have never played anything like Super Metroid. I didn't know what to expect. I was blown away by not only the gameplay, but the visuals where good enough for a full retail game let alone a XBLA game. You Start out with only a flash light and by the end of the game theres nothing that you can't take on. The 2D to 3D works well but the turret sequences could of been better. You can rush through the game in 2 to 3 hours but your gonna want to get everything which will cost you about 5 hours. It seems short but your going to want to play though it multiple times its just that addicting. There is another mode besides the story called proving grounds. These include seperate challenges such as getting through a room with only the foam gun. This game is a must buy for any fan of Super Metroid or anyone that enjoys feeling BA.

This game is amazing! I bought this game when it was a Deal of the Week, and I have no regrets. The graphics are simply amazing, and the detail rocks! This is a great side scroller that does not get boring at all. Yes, you may have to retrace some of your footsteps in the game from time to time, but that's nothing compared to the large levels and great gameplay. Right from the start, the game had me interested! Special effects and sound effects are great, and there's plenty of opportunities to shoot and destroy stuff. I can definitely see why this game was rated so high by GameSpy, Team XBox, IGN, and G4TV!!!

You've heard the comparisons. Super Metroid. Castlevania. These simple names are pretty big compliments by themselves. But does Epic Games' Shadow Complex live up to the hype?

The premise of the game is that classic 2D exploration formula made famous by Metroid and improved upon over the last 20+ years. You start off with a little prelude to the game (along with a glimpse of the cool toys you'll earn later) and then get to the main story involving some random dude filling the role of the one-man army. You'll explore a large underground facility, starting with nothing and ending the game armed to the teeth like a good little Samus wannabe should. Along the way you'll not only find weapons and upgrades but also level up, giving your character things such as better accuracy or better defense. You won't reach the max level (50) in one playthrough so, if you want that achievement, be prepared to sail through a few times.

In addition to the main game, there are some extra scenarios to beat and a few extra in-game awards to try and earn. The main story isn't horribly long (6 hours, give or take) so multiple runs won't bog you down like they would with, say, some huge epic RPG. (Check the leaderboards, the sequence jumpers got the time down pretty low now. Single digit minutes, I think?) Four difficulty levels work to make the game challenging even on that third or fourth run. All this adds up to a lot of replay value, making an already fun and deep game last a long time.

Presentation-wise, the game is up to par with the better XBLA games. The 2D play in a 3D world looks and plays great, and somehow there's enough variety in the base to make each section seem like its own area rather than a copy/paste of some other part of the base. The sound effects don't get annoying but, really, they don't stand out. The music is barely there, only joining in during some cutscenes or to build suspense.

The game does have a few problems. Targeting sometimes feels off and, when you have to target something in the background, can be frustrating. On earlier difficulty levels this isn't too bad but, when a few shots will kill you, accuracy is pretty key. Control near ledges isn't perfect either which, in a few areas involving tricky acrobatics, gets you shot for free. And, finally, I don't like being able to flat-out not be able to get a pretty necessary item later in the game if you trigger one particular cutscene. Forcing a restart seems kinda harsh.

The bottom line is that, if you like good games and are remotely interested in the Metroidvania genre, you owe it to yourself to pick this game up. Plain and simple, worth every penny.

As originally reviewed by modeps on Evil Avatar

Jason Flemming: he is no one, and he his everyone. He is also your main character in Shadow Complex, the last title in the Summer of Arcade line of games for 2009. Created by Chair Entertainment (part of Epic Games and of Undertow fame), Shadow Complex actually takes place within the Empire universe made famous by Orson Scott Card... although there's little here that makes that apparent.

After a brief "Look at all the stuff you'll be able to do later!" segment, the real game kicks off while you are on a hike with a pretty young lady. She goes on ahead then disappears while you follow her trail. Jason is presented as your normal, everyday fellow... thrown into an extraordinary situation and takes it upon himself to stop a rogue group of terrorists, called the Progressive Restoration, from starting the second Civil War (somehow). The story here is not spoon fed to you, and you're always left without that omniscient feeling. You only see and hear what Jason sees and hears and are better off for it.

Jason is so ill-equipped for the task that he doesn't even start off the game with a gun... but why would you if you're on a hike? Instead, you get a flashlight and some climbing gear while you head into the enemy base tucked away in a underground cavern. The only superhuman thing about Jason is that he doesn't take damage from long falls. Instead, as you progress and explore Shadow Complex's rather large map, you'll find new gadgets to make yourself a little better here and there. You'll find numerous gun upgrades, secondary fire modes, a mini booster jetpack and more. Most of these upgrades will allow you to access previously unavailable areas of the map. Additionally, exploring and taking down enemies earns you XP in-game, and at each level increase you'll improve even more with accuracy and health upgrades among others.

The combination of gear pickups and experience based leveling is really one of the strong points here. It never feels like a grind to get to the next level, instead you are always improving yourself in a more gradual progression instead of a stepped one. Furthermore, you can earn achievements for performing a specific number of enemy takedowns which are all tracked on the game's leaderboard system. Once you hit the "achievement" level, sure you'll unlock the achievement, but you're still competing with your friends to see who can melee the most baddies, or get the most headshots. It's a great little meta system.

Using the Unreal Engine, Shadow Complex is really quite a great looking Xbox Live Arcade game, and arguably the best looking out of them all. The mountainside are lush, animations are smooth, and there are no load times once the game gets going. Additionally, while at it's core is a 2D platformer, every bit of the game has some depth to it, some of which force you to attack enemies that are in the background.

While it looks good, SC lacks much of the character found in the games it borrows from... you're just running and gunning like some generic dude. There are also several glitches which really detract from the immersion, like running up to an enemy to melee him, and clipping through the wall, or not having a specific animation kick in when you're trying to wall jump. I even had one point where I had to restart the game thanks to an audio loop getting stuck. There are other points as well where the 3D elements don't seem to make sense... Why do I have to jump off a landing when there are stairs right there?

Shadow Complex borrows just about everything it has from the 15 year old Super Metroid, the exploration and map, to the carbon copy weapon and ability upgrades. It does little to innovate on the formula, but that doesn't make it bad at all. Shadow Complex is a solid, great looking "Metroid-vania" game that could have spent some more time in the cooker to iron out some weird glitches that take place. Most importantly, it is a fun game. If you've ever played post-Symphony of the Night Castlevania titles, or Super Metroid, you know what you should expect here and can decide if you want to do it again or not. Those of you who haven't, give it try and see why exploration games of this ilk has become beloved by many over the years.

I downloaded this game at launch, and played a little at a time until I beat it. While this game doesn’t bring anything new (with the exception of a few things) that Super Metroid didn’t do better in 1994, it’s still a damned impressive Xbox Live Arcade title. Without giving away too much, you play as an individual named Jason who pretty much gets sucked into this terrorist plot to take out San Fransisco (hmm … nope. Not getting into that shit.). The game is in 3D, but is played from a side scrolling perspective that mostly works. But it uses the Unreal Engine which really helps bring everything to life, albeit in a lot of greys that the engine is known for.

For old Metroid fans like me, there’s nothing new in this game though … and playing it and going through the first half of it, it made me dig out my Super Nintendo and play Metroid again. And I’ll probably end up buying Castlevania : Symphony of the Night on Xbox Live Arcade as well eventually.

Graphically, the game is near perfect and probably the best looking downloadable title for any system. The Unreal Engine really shows it’s strengths with this one and, for the most part, makes the side scrolling perspective in a 3D environment work perfectly. There are some quirks with aiming at things in the background, and with aiming PERIOD … they aren’t glaring, but they do tend to get annoying. The attention to detail is top notch, except that during the cutscenes the characters have a really creepy video game look to them most of the time. But the detail of the various enemies that you have to deal with are something else entirely. The robots and death machines and whatnot almost look like they could pop out of the screen. The environments look outstanding, the animation is near perfect. And the closeups of when you decide to melee an enemy to take him out look great. Even though it tends to repeat the same ones over and over again, it never bothered me in the least. There is the occasional instances of the ragdoll physics getting hilariously bad though, something that plagues ALL the games that use them it seems. The enemies you take down never seem to actually fall realistically, hence the term “rag doll”. And seeing them under water is … weird. Oh, and the explsions of the boss enemies were particularly satisfying.

The only real complaint I have in the graphics department is that everything seems to be in that typical Unreal Engine grey. Even the outdoor areas that TRY to look lush and green don’t look it at all. Blue skies don’t look like blue skies, the entire game has a pretty muted color palette. What the hell is wrong with making green look green, and making clear blue skies blue?

The gameplay, as I’ve mentioned before is nothing new if you’re familiar with the 2D Metroid or Castlevania games. It’s tight, responsive, near perfect. Except for the cumbersome aiming. There are hidden powerups all over the place that you’ll unlock as you get new abilities, the swimming isn’t painful like it is with most games. And the level design is superb. While the complex isn’t all that big, it SEEMS huge because you get to all these new areas as you obtain various items throughout the game. And it helps with the fact that you’re unrealistically armed to the teeth with your normal weapon being that you can only carry one type of gun at a time with addons like a missile launcher, grenades, a foam gun that’ll either freeze an enemy in their tracks or expand certain places to the point they explode and a hook shot. And there are other things you’ll collect throughout the course of the game like an addon that makes you run REAL fast, another one that lets you do double and triple jumps with the aid of thrusters, a mask that lets you breathe indefinitely under water, and a helmet that’ll help you stay invincible against enemy fire.

And for people who are into that kind of thing, the game has a ton of replay value in the way of achievements and whatnot. Like completing the game with a certain percentage of the items, or completing the game in this or that amount of time on whatever difficulty. In game you’ll see a little popup in the lower corner that tells you how many headshots for example you have compared to someone else on your list. And if you’re like me and have someone on their list who lives and breathes these achievements, you’ll see some pretty high numbers in there. The proving grounds lets you try out the things that you’ll eventually get in the game, and are timed where you can compete against other people’s times. I’m not an achievement guy, though.

The sound is as good as everything else in the game, especially if you’ve got good speakers or a surround sound setup on your 360. The guns have a great sound to them which add to the overall powerful feeling of them. The explosions are as loud soundwise as they are graphically and add to the satisfaction, the music is … hardly noticeable at all to be honest and might as well not even be there. I honestly don’t remember ANY of it other than the subdued title screen music. While the story is kinda just shoved into the game, the voice acting in it is pretty damn good.

And the story … it’s a pretty short game, so there really isn’t much story to it. And it’s all pretty typical stuff. I didn’t really care about any of the characters and the story wasn’t all that impressive to me at all. While I’ve never read the book that this game is a prequel to, from what I understand you don’t need to. And it’s too bad, because a great story would’ve helped this game out even more.

8.0 – Is this the greatest game ever made? God no. Is it even the best game of this generation like I’ve heard some people say? Hell no, Biochock has it beat. Mostly because it doesn’t really bring anything new to the table in terms of gameplay, and quite honestly Super Metroid did it better back in the day. But it is the best downloadable title to be released on Xbox Live Arcade thus far, a great game on it’s own merits, and at only 15 bucks, it’s hard not to buy this. If this were stretched out into a full length game it could easily be a full priced release. On my first playthrough, I got through it in a little over 7 hours … and the game didn’t really get going for me until about hour 2 or 3, so it’s not that long at all.

I’m sure if I go through and play it again it’d drop, and I may play through it again. And now that I’ve finished it, I’m going to go see how I do in the Proving Grounds. But as of now, I got my 15 bucks out of it, and since I’m not much of an achievement guy I don’t care enough to go through and beat it with only a certain percentage of whatever items. But for people who are into it, that will add even more replayability to an already great game.

More reviews on Wasted Seconds

Or Catleroid, whatever you prefer. This genre debuts for the first time in high definition on 360, and is one of my favorites. We begin as a young nathan drake, oops.. actually, I don't know his name, but I hear he's a cool guy, his girlfriend won't shutup about his eyes.

In the same sense as every other game in the genre, you are left somewhere and you need to progress, by finding things and using those to smash other things, all the way home. Stuff can be quite cleverly hidden, especially if your playing on insane and have no help from the mini map. The combat takes the genre to a new level with 3d backgrounds and enemies that aren't limited to 2 dimensions and use of two stick shooting control is a must. The melees are also soo satisfying, in the same vein as uncharted.

Later in the game after some upgrading, everything is alot more metroid than vania or uncharted. This is great though, and the game has plenty of unique quirks of its own. It is mildly glitchy now, but I believe it will be patched up in a few months. My only real complaint is that it ended. But for a downloadable game, I'm VERY impressed, they could simply add more chapters through DLC. My MS points are ready.

In some ways I'm amazed by how good this title turned out. Undertow had mixed reviews, but Shadow Complex just blows it out of the water.

It looks great, it sounds great and it plays great. It's an excellent use of the Metroid formula with some neat little twists. I really love how enemies can come from the background and that you can aim at them while they're back there.

A little touch I enjoy is the comparisons against your friends as you play. Get a new record in head shots? It'll pop up unobtrusively and tell you and show your friend's score you just passed.

Had a lot of fun with it so far.

Outstanding graphics with infinite replayability. One of XBLAs classics.

Played about 3 hours of it and it's shaping up to be a really fun game. The amount of exploring the game is huge, as the map is vast and well detailed. The graphics are amazing for an XBLA game. Sound is ok, just wish they had music throughout the game because it's mostly silent when you're walking around the map.

As many people have said aiming is a bit awkward, sometimes it doesn't go for who I want to target but it's not THAT big of a deal. It's only a minor detail compared to how much fun I'm having playing the whole game. Definitely recommend it!

Shadow Complex is a great game that can be enjoyed by all... well maybe not the kiddies.

I have a great time playing SC, I haven't beaten it yet but I think I am about half way done and I have a blast the whole time. The game isn't very difficult to the point where you want to give up, but there are some areas that will give you a challenge. You sneak around through this huge complex in search of your kidnapped girlfriend. By exploring and shooting down your enemies you gain exp allowing you to have better aim, stamina, etc. As you make your way through the complex you find better weapons and armor and gadgets. The form gun is awesome!

There are a couple of problems I have with the game though. The enemies in the background can be pain at times. You hold left stick up and aim for them. But the aim isn't always easy cause if you go to far left or right you back to normal aim. Maybe if it had some kind of lock on button to use for the background guys it would work better. The other think is more of a nitpick, but it just bothers me that when you are shooting upwards the character doesn't look up. Which is odd since his looks every other direction. It just looks weird.

Still I love Shadow Complex! This is production value is now what I look forward to in the arcade library.

I had the opposite problem as jigsawhc, where it wants to target people in the background more than the people straight ahead of you. Probably a function of the distance between yourself and the enemies.

The exploration is fun, I think I would actually go for the 100% achievement in this game. Don't know if I would do all the replays necessary for all the achievements though.

It would be nice if you could warp to the different map rooms around the complex or something, as there are quite a few "rooms" and it can take quite a while to backtrack. The only restriction on warping would be if you have gotten into a new area, where you can't go back the way you came, and haven't found a way back yet.

The bosses/mechs are pretty manageable if you play cautiously, would be nice if they were a little more challenging.

My only other complaint is that the game is lacking a bit when it comes to polish. The jump animation seems very abrupt and unnatural, and I noticed that your arm and flashlight will come through your body at an odd (read: impossible) angle if you try looking around with your flashlight while on a ladder.

Great game that Metroid, Castlevania, Metal Gear Solid, and Splinter Cell fans should enjoy.

Reminds me of my youth playing Super Metroid... this game is great!

Shadow Comples at first looks like a 2D Uncharted, with the character, Jason I think?, being very much like Nathan Drake. The gameplay, however, is totally different, and very much like metroid - lots of exploration, retracing your steps as you become more powerful and have better weapons / accessories, and new sections of the map opening. You move across a 2D plane, but can shoot in 3D - takes some getting used to at first, but using the right-analogue to aim really helps.

Try the demo and I'm sure you won't want to put it down - very addictive and one of the best things to come onto Xbox Live ever!

I was excited about this game since it was announced at E3. If you enjoy side scrolling games such as Bionic Commando Rearmed then you will love this game. The graphics are the best for any arcade game out so far.

Ever since I heard of the game, I was excited for it. I haven't played a 2-D side-scroller adventure for years.

The graphics are very good for an arcade game. But what more can I say? It looks good. The environments are nicely done. And I love the parts of the game where you use the flashlight, since the area would actually be dark.

Everything is seamless and there's no load times. None I could notice, anyway. As well, lag seems to be virtually non-existent, but based on what others say, I may have not seen enough explosions yet.

Gameplay is your typical Metroidvania-kind of game. Exploration, guns, awesome.

But words don't do it justice, download the demo and try it yourself as it goes a pretty good way in.

Yeah, the graphics don't hold up when zoomed in, the story is shallow, and the aiming is temperamental, but none of that stops this game from being loads of fun.

One of the best Metroid style games in years.

Great game with only one minor complaint, as the other guy said the aiming is a little off, but other than that really fun.

Shadow Complex really shows the potential of downloadable games. For $15 you get a game whose graphics, gameplay, and overall quality easily outshines half of the 360's retail library. If I had one issue with the game, I would say the aiming (performed with the right stick) is a little loose, making those headshots a little harder to pull of than I'd like, and also ramping up the difficulty (in essentially a 2D shooter, no less) in an unwelcome manner. But this is a minor quibble; Shadow Complex is a must, especially if you're a fan of games like Metroid and Castlevania, but really if you're a fan of games, period.

I like Shadow Complex. I'm not all the way through it yet, but so far it is great. The cut scenes are really nice for a Arcade game and the action goes into and out of them almost seamlessly.

The only think frustrating at times (besides hard bosses) is the aiming. At times you want to target an enemy in the background but instead it targets one in front of you. This got old after a while, but not to the point I quit playing.