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 Shadow the Hedgehog was released in late 2005 for the Nintendo Gamecube, Playstation 2 and the original Xbox. It was developed by Sega Studios USA (originally known as Sonic Team USA), an American division of Sonic Team that had previously developed Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes. After the release of Shadow the Hedgehog development of mainline Sonic games was handed back to Sonic Team proper. As far as story is concerned, Shadow the Hedgehog follows on from Sonic Heroes. At the end of that game, Shadow found out that Dr. Eggman had been building androids that looked like exact copies of Shadow himself. Seeing as Shadow had no memories of his past this caused him to begin doubting his own existence. Was he the original Shadow the Hedgehog created by Dr. Gerald Robotnik 50 years prior, or was he merely one of Dr. Eggman's assembly line androids? At the start of this game, Shadow's search for the truth is interrupted when an army of aliens called The Black Arms invades the planet. Their leader—called Black Doom—claims to have made a pact with Shadow to retrieve the Chaos Emeralds in the past. Shadow, being the hardboiled lone ranger that he is, decides to use this as an opportunity to find out the truth about himself. Whether he gets it by trusting Black Doom and assisting him in conquering the planet or by helping the military put an end to the alien invasion is for the player to decide. Shadow the Hedgehog is a very bad game. It looks about as good and plays about as well as an early licensed PS2 game. The controls are at once sluggish and oversensitive, level design elements are endlessly cut and pasted (even across different levels), objectives are confusing and often difficult to find, cutscenes and voice acting are all incredibly poorly executed, the list goes on. Even the positive aspects of other bad 3D Sonic games like a decent soundtrack and interesting locales are nowhere to be found here. The game has almost no redeeming qualities which is what makes it such an enticing trainwreck. On top of being poorly executed the game is also rather ill-conceived to begin with. It takes the relatively light-hearted world of Sonic the Hedgehog and tries to make it more "mature" in the worst possible ways. Characters say "drat" and "hell" all the time, the music consists mostly of grungy mood rock, the colour palette is largely limited to dark and smudgy colours and the central villain looks and sounds like something out of Metalapocalyse. On top of all that, Shadow gets honest-to-goodness firearms to fight enemies with. We're talking pistols, assault rifles and even grenade launchers. You still have access to the signature spindash and homing attacks but the guns are simply more efficient combat tools. The game also constantly urges you to use vehicles like jeeps and motorcycles to get around faster. Oh and also Shadow goes around killing human soldiers with absolutely no remorse. Long story short, I wish they would've made Billy Hatcher 2 instead. The Videos:          
JordanKai fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Dec 11, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 21:26
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| # ? May 7, 2024 00:05 |
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This game owns
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Aug 19, 2015 21:40
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The one game I've always regretted not owning was Shadow the Hedgehog.
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Aug 19, 2015 21:41
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Fun fact! Black Doom is voiced by Goku
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Aug 19, 2015 21:42
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This game is incredible e: I hope you get all 326 possible paths for true 100% completion
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Aug 19, 2015 21:44
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I'll be the one to say it: This game is bad, clearly, but it's much better than Heroes (and Sonic 06, of course). I feel bad that you have to play the PS2 version, though. Poor bastard.
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Aug 19, 2015 22:00
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The thing I remembered from this game the most is that mission where you have to chase and destroy a blimp Because that was fun as hell
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Aug 19, 2015 22:03
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drat.
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Aug 19, 2015 22:15
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I actually loved this game except for the missions with the stupid crocodile. Then again, I also loved Heroes so I have no taste.
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Aug 19, 2015 22:15
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Yes, it's me, I'm that weird guy that unironically likes this game. I've offered to give help on this LP, but JordanKai here has steadfastly refused for perfectly understandable reasons. From what I've heard, the PS2 version is by far the worst version. Really don't see what's wrong with the soundtrack; yeah, there's a couple of duds here and there, but I really don't know if there's been a Sonic game with a subjectively bad soundtrack.
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Aug 19, 2015 22:17
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Oh, yes, I've been waiting for this drat LP. drat. Hell. 
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Aug 19, 2015 22:25
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Notice that some of the alien enemies are the same as the iblis enemies in Sonic 06. Specifically, the worm that pops out of the ground.
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Aug 19, 2015 22:41
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I, too, enjoyed this game. In my defence, I was probably like 10 and I haven't played it since.
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Aug 19, 2015 23:42
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This was one of my main christmas presents back when it first came out. I hope this LP can recapture the disappointment I felt that year.  That said, it's a frustrating game but it was still playable for the most part. The main problem is that a couple of paths lead to some ridiculously long and boring levels, and you just wind up getting lost looking for something you've missed about 80% of the time. The horrible controls really don't help either. Looking forward to more!
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Aug 20, 2015 00:26
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James Sunderland the Hedgehog
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Aug 20, 2015 00:43
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Oh yes, this game. Some of the levels in this game have such horrendous design. They work against themselves and are the biggest pain to play through. There are a couple levels that aren't too bad, they're very linear and focus on shooting things. Funny how well the gun mechanics work in this game, it feels like the only thing the programmers put any effort into. Best of all I believe this was the first game to start using the 4kids voice actors, just because it wasn't painful enough. I do think heros is better, not that that's saying much.
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Aug 20, 2015 00:50
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The most incredible thing about this game is that all 326 different paths have a unique, edgy name. drat.
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Aug 20, 2015 00:52
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This game is better than Sonic Heroes because it's way funnier
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Aug 20, 2015 00:57
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I've at times thought about LPing this game because it's ridiculous. I have the halfway-functional GameCube version, but still, hopefully this will convince me to leave this game and franchise well enough alone.
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Aug 20, 2015 01:53
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ThornBrain posted:I've at times thought about LPing this game because it's ridiculous. I have the halfway-functional GameCube version, but still, hopefully this will convince me to leave this game and franchise well enough alone. let's playing or streaming sonic adventure 1 is the rite of passage for everyone in this subforum and i won't hear anything bad said about it
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Aug 20, 2015 02:02
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Just a disclaimer to people who HAVEN'T played the 3D Sonic games, which judging by posts so far is very little of the audience here, Shadow is a Bad Game, but it is absolutely not the worst of the 3D Sonic games. Some people don't even rank it as one of the bottom three (it's in competition with Sonic 06, Sonic Heroes, which if I'm not mistaken it shares most of an engine with, and depending on one's personal definitions, the Sonic Unleashed night levels and Sonic 3D Blast). You will want to hold on to your butts, because this game takes itself way too seriously and that's a recipe for some amazing comedy. Also, yes, every possible combination of paths to an ending has its own unique special snowflake name, as befits Original The Character, Do Not Steal.
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Aug 20, 2015 02:17
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FutureFriend posted:let's playing or streaming sonic adventure 1 is the rite of passage for everyone in this subforum and i won't hear anything bad said about it 
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Aug 20, 2015 02:23
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FutureFriend posted:let's playing or streaming sonic adventure 1 is the rite of passage for everyone in this subforum and i won't hear anything bad said about it More like Sonic BADventure 1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Shadow the Hedgehog is already some high schooler's tough Sonic OC that they drew in their notebooks saying things like "math is a drag" and shooting their homework assignments so the fact that he gets his own special game with guns and cars and evil aliens and stuff seems really par for the course. I love that the president places Sonic and Shadow on a higher pedestal for desk space than whatever family he may have. I'm excited to see what more this game has to offer because I've only heard vague things about endings and plot and such.
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Aug 20, 2015 02:30
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i designed shadow the hedgehog and then junji ito the hogman gave me a highfive and told me he looked "badass" and "slick"
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Aug 20, 2015 02:36
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Where's that drat fourth chaos emerald!
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Aug 20, 2015 02:44
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Wanamingo posted:Where's that drat fourth chaos emerald!  spoilers
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Aug 20, 2015 02:46
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So in that second level, the evil octopus guy wanted Shadow to activate a bunch of generators. The generators were all guarded by his alien soldiers. So instead of getting the chaos emerald, Shadow was supposed to activate the generators, which were all already secured and surrounded by alien troops. Hmm...
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Aug 20, 2015 02:57
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Did they just replace Eggbotnik's mustache with pot and hoped we wouldn't notice?
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Aug 20, 2015 03:50
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I honestly liked this game, thought it was pretty fun, and the guns were cool. Don't know what the problem is, really.
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Aug 20, 2015 04:08
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This game isn't the worst ever, but it's definitely not good. I felt like it was worse than Sonic Adventure 1, 2, and Heroes. One of my metrics for judging Sonic Game Level Design is "How long can I proceed just by running and jumping?" So since Shadow is full of levels where you must stop to shoot and poo poo, that bumps it down. I'm excited to get on this wild ride.
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Aug 20, 2015 04:22
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Oh boy, this game. Just barely above the absolute nadir of the whole franchise despite being by far the most embarrassing thing in it (yes, even above the game where an annoying princess kisses Sonic back to life). It just goes to show what happens when someone decides to cash in on a popular anti-hero without understanding what could possibly make them popular. The whole thing is like some bizarre fourteen-year-old angsty fanboy/girl's creation brought to life.
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Aug 20, 2015 04:24
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I bet Dr. Claw was real disappointed you didn't touch those jewels.
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Aug 20, 2015 04:35
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It's funny how the whole thing was set up to be a gritty, violent, darker sub-series for older fans, but Sega chickened out and dialed back to make it more kid friendly. Kind of defeats the purpose.
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Aug 20, 2015 04:43
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I love watching bits of this game. Everything about it, from the writing to the tone to the overall aesthetic, screams "I'm 13, it's 2005 and I just put up a new LiveJournal entry about my stupid curfew". It's the perfect time-capsule Sonic game.
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Aug 20, 2015 06:08
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Is this your penance for murdering those poor defenseless waddle dees?
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Aug 20, 2015 06:15
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Gertrude Perkins posted:I love watching bits of this game. Everything about it, from the writing to the tone to the overall aesthetic, screams "I'm 13, it's 2005 and I just put up a new LiveJournal entry about my stupid curfew". It's the perfect time-capsule Sonic game. Most of the Sonic games, up to and including this one, were basically crystallizations of their zeitgeists.
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Aug 20, 2015 06:16
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This game is literally someone's fan fiction brought to life. It has to be seen to be believed.
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Aug 20, 2015 06:21
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Do you intend to show off all the endings, all 300+ of them?
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Aug 20, 2015 06:31
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I remember buying this as a moody 14 year old and going "man it's like Sonic for ADULTS that badass" then playing it and going "this isn't about collecting rings and beating the record time it's about being a dick" I never finished it and haven't touched a Sonic game since. Also RE: "What if this was someone's only THE HEDGEHOG game"; I am very close to this I played the original on SEGA quite a lot as a kid then picked up Sonic Heroes as my first 3D one after being given it as a birthday gift. It was mediocre but was fun racing friends and being better then them at a game they never played. As such my opinion is now all sonic 3D games are poo poo and deserve to be burnt. Gridlocked fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Aug 20, 2015 |
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Aug 20, 2015 06:40
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| # ? May 7, 2024 00:05 |
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Stormgale posted:Do you intend to show off all the endings, all 300+ of them? Technically, there are only 11 endings - 10 "choice" endings and the true/canonical ending. The "326" thing just refers to the number of paths it is possible to take through the game, which are logged in the game's library (and you can watch all the cutscenes in that particular order). They all have incredible titles.
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Aug 20, 2015 06:41
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