Shadow the Hedgehog for Nintendo GameCube

Shadow the Hedgehog for the Nintendo GameCube; 3.8







Developer: Sega Studio USA
Publisher: SEGA
Designer(s): Kazuyuki Hoshino, Hiroshi Nishiyama
Composer(s): Jon Senoue, Yutaka Minobe, Tomoya Ohtani, Mariko Nanba
Platforms: Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft Xbox, Sony Playstation 2
Release Dates:
NA: November 15, 2005
PAL: November 18, 2005
JP: December 15, 2005
Genre(s): Platform, Action-Adventure, Third-Person shooter
Mode: Single Player, Multiplayer
Ratings:
CERO: A
ESRB: 10+
OFLC: PG
PEGI: 12+

Shadow the hedgehog is the stand-alone title for one of the Sonic series’ most popular characters of the whole franchise named ‘Shadow the Hedgehog’. The game was literally infamous for messing up the Sonic series more than it was amongst critics and most fans. Despite the game being reviewed negatively by most critics, the game still met with positive sales and managed a ‘Player’s choice’ on the Nintendo GameCube and other titles in other consoles the game was released in.

But why is the game so infamous? One of these reasons is the change of atmosphere in the Sonic series. The game introduced a much more darker plot not seen in the Sonic series before, packed with mild swearing, blood, and the use of firearms; all this causing the fandom to meet the game with skeptical eyes.

One of the most known features of the game is the fact that you choose the destiny Shadow takes. Shadow can choose from neutral paths, to dark paths, and to hero paths in all missions; characters both good and bad, help Shadow in this through the missions. Missions either revolve around doing a specific task or just to reach the end of a level. I’ve heard there are more than 300 different combinations for ending a specific destiny point; which, despite the game being rubbish, does increase replay value by tons.

The story itself takes part of Shadow’s amnesia problem and focuses on revealing the character’s past. Choosing a different path will enable you to view different alternatives for his past. In all of this, there are these alien creatures called the ‘Black Arms’ who claim they have knowledge of Shadow and his past which are not known to him; these ‘Black Arms’ are also blood-thirsty and enjoy destroying the whole planet and encourage Shadow to do the same.

Depending on the mission you want to complete in each mission, you’ll fill two gauges: The Hero gauge and the Dark gauge. Both gauges have different purposes; the dark gauge is used to destroy near-by enemies, while the hero gauge is used to zoom around the stage and completing missions faster. One thing, though: The Hero gauge is worthless if you’re playing hero stages. Most hero stages force you to do tasks around the stage, while the hero special just makes you zoom around the stage missing the tasks you had to accomplish to finish the mission.

In the game you can only play as Shadow the Hedgehog; as mentioned, you can use weapons to defeat enemies. The gun mechanics in this game are abysmal. Controlling in were the guns shoot is literally impossible, and sometimes, even if you’re shooting in the same direction an enemy is; you’re guaranteed to miss because there is no aim. There’s an urban legend stating that the guns do actually have an aim that you can activate in the controls, but I say ‘legend’; because I’ve never once in all the years of owning this game, seen this feature.

Long-ranged weapons such as swords have incredibly low ammunition making them almost worthless through the whole game. You even loose ammunition if you don’t hit anything, which at the same time doesn’t make sense since I’ve never seen a sword you need to re-charge in real life.

In the game you also have access to vehicles. You won’t have an use for most vehicles anyway, since most of them go even slower than Shadow and don’t really do anything.

Then there are the controls of the game. The Controls in this game are literally broken, no doubt about it. The controls are extremely sloppy, causing Shadow sometimes to fall unnecessarily in pits, or simply feel awkward when you’re moving him. When Shadow runs too fast, it’s impossible to move him and avoid obstacles that take damage away.

The Camera also takes a big responsibility in making the controls look awful. Sometimes the camera will put you in strange angles causing you to fall or have difficulty in shooting enemies. It is as if the camera didn’t let you see enough of some areas you could be cautious of where you will jump or evade falling.

These are one of the worst graphics I have ever seen for 2005; eye bleeding bad. It’s as if they’d make fun of you, because the game’s opening features decent GCI cut scenes; but the in game graphics are just awful. While there are breakable objects, the whole game looks ugly and dull. Features on humans look blocky and the human soldiers even resemble legos’s.


You thought all of that was bad enough? The voice actors are even worse. Without the ability to change the game’s language (A feature that was shown in other Sonic games for the Nintendo GameCube), you’re stuck with damned awful voice actors that are just inadequate and cheesy. The music isn’t bad, but sometimes they don’t even fit with the stages they’re shown in. The only musically productive things in this game are the songs with are sung, my favorite being the one by the Metal band, ‘Powerman 5000’.

The worst thing about the game is just how boring it is. Shadow the hedgehog doesn’t have any redeeming qualities because it’s flat-out dull. All these problems just make the game unplayable and not worth your time. If you were actually one of the titans who managed to complete all the basic endings in the game, you’ll be rewarded with a last mission.

Before I forget, the last mission takes place after the second ‘Hero’ ending; Which completely obliterates the purpose of having multiple endings.

Gameplay: 4.0 Boring and dull, the only interesting feature is choosing different paths through the game.

Graphics: 4.0 Blocky, feature-less, and not pretty to look at.

Controls: 3.5 Lame and broken controls which may cause accidental deaths and difficulty to manage.

Sound: 5.6 Horrible voice-actors and inadequate music for some stages. Sung songs aren’t half bad, though.

Overall: 3.8 This game sucks ass. There’s no fun while playing this game, this game gets saved from a 2 because of the music and the interesting outcomes of the different paths you can take.

StarFox Adventures for the Nintendo GameCube

Starfox Adventures for the Nintendo GameCube 7.0




Developer: Rare
Publisher: Nintendo
Designer: Lee Schunemann
Artist(s): Kevin Bayliss, Johanni Christensen, Keith Rabette
Composer: David Wise
Series: Starfox
Platform: Nintendo GameCube
Release Dates:
NA: September 23, 2002
JP: September 27, 2002
PAL: November 22, 2002
Genre: Action-Adventure
Mode: Single Player
Ratings:
ELPSA: 3+
ESRB: T
OFLC: G8+
PEGI: 3+


Starfox Adventures may very well be one of the most memorable games for the Nintendo GameCube; it was mostly known to exchange the flight combat mechanics present in Starfox games to a more action action-adventure game with the result of being a game that could have been overall better.You might probably not know how Starfox Adventures came to be, so I’ll explain it quickly.

Starfox Adventures was originally planned to come into the Nintendo 64 by the name of ‘Dinosaur Planet’, a game that had nothing to do with the Starfox series. When Nintendo realized that the character designs were strikingly similar to Starfox’s, Nintendo made a deal to make ‘Dinosaur Planet’ what we know today as ‘Starfox Adventures’ for the Nintendo GameCube.

The story takes place eight years after the death of Andross from Starfox 64; Fox McCloud and his buddies live a life patrolling the Lylat System. Bored out of their wits, they’re simply begging for a new mission to come aboard. Suddenly General Pepper calls for a mission in which a planet called ‘Dinosaur Planet’ was literally falling apart and was being ruled by a tyrant called ‘General Scales’. It is up to Fox to destroy General Scales and stop the planet from falling apart (Literally, as in, you can see chunks of land in space related to the planet).

So when you start the game, you’ll first be playing as a fox girl called ‘Kystal’; now I’ll make a whole story short and say that it’s not long until she gets trapped and Fox finds out he needs to rescue her. In all of this, Krystal dropped her staff in the starting point of the game; a staff which will be ultimately Fox’s main weapon through the game.Fox can use the staff to attack enemies, block attacks, and solve puzzles. When you attack an enemy, you’ll be fighting with combo mechanics, and although this might sound fancy, there is no difference in damage dealt to an enemy, so it’s just button mashing. You can block attacks by pressing the ‘Z’ button, but this is completely worthless, I mean, you’ll never use it in the game; and finally, you can as I said, solve puzzles with the staff.

The staff runs on its own meter which can be refilled by gems found in the planet; you’ll acquire different attacks you can use like the ‘fire blaster’ (Which enables you to shoot fire balls at special panels) or the quake (Which you can use to defeat larger enemies or solve puzzles related to the ground), and plenty more of other attacks. Now here is when the controls fail. Some attacks of the staff force you to zoom in on targets, and the controls are so sloppy, the aim will start to move on its own, thus forcing you to be exactly precise when shooting the target; this just makes your staff bar loose more energy than what you had planned. Then there’s another problem with the controls: You can access the inventory while playing the game in motion with the ‘C’ stick. To use the item or action selected within the inventory you have to press the ‘A’ button; and to attack an enemy with the staff you have to press the ‘A’ button as well. Here’s an example if you don’t get it.

Let’s say you’re fighting an enemy and you need to use an action in your inventory. You use the ‘C’ stick, check on your inventory, choose the action and press the ‘A’ button; if you’re not lucky here, you’ll end up attacking with the staff instead. Sure you can command an action or item to be used on the ‘Y’ button instead of the ‘A’ button, but it’s only temporary, and you’ll make this mistake tons of times through the game.

It won’t be soon in the game when you discover your greatest ally in the game, a dinosaur called ‘Tricky’ who’s prince of the EarthWalker tribe. He can help you by solving puzzles, finding secrets, and even aiding you in battle. Tricky runs by a meter called the ‘GrubTub’ meter where you have to find little mushrooms in the game to refill it. There’s not much to say here, so let’s move on.

Now here’s something that just blows my mind. In this game, Fox can’t jump. This is an Action-Adventure game, jumping should be one of the most important aspects of the whole gameplay. Well guess what, Fox jumps when necessary. This is just weird in my opinion; I think the game could have even been more fun if Fox could have jumped.

You can pause the game and you’ll be encountered with a number of accessible options; these which are a save and an exit along with talking to your comrades from the Starfox team. You can save the game, and to be honest, I really don’t get this; while you can save the game at any given time, you’ll be transported in some area of the game were you didn’t save on, it just saves the game’s progress. It’s like having both benefits and no benefits from saving.

You can talk to General Pepper in which he gives you the overall progress of the game, what you have and what you don’t; you can talk to Peppy Hare, when he’ll show you the map of the game; and finally, you can talk to Slippy Toad, where he can tell you advice of the situation in which you are in the game. You know what sucks? Sometime’s Slippy Toad’s advice is so horrible; you won’t be able to understand him at all. I actually had to use Gamefaqs because he shows no help whatsoever at times.

Some missions require you to move from Dinosaur Planet to chunks of land in space which are related to it; in the time it takes you to go to the chunks of land, you’ll be playing bonus missions with the arwing. This is a bit of a tribute to the original Starfox games where you can shoot enemies and even get power-ups. The main objective here is always to get a number of gold rings in order to successfully enter a chunk of land.

The game is graphically-wise impressive; it offers one of the greatest visuals I’ve seen in the Nintendo GameCube and the game’s from 2002, it showcases fur and features tremendously well and is one of the strong points of the game.

The music is okay, it’s simple game music with ambient related sounds and it really isn’t half bad. But then there are the voice actors, and here is where the game gets horribly cheesy. There’s a point in the game were Slippy makes a translator and you can understand people from Dinosaur Planet, and instead of them speaking ‘Dinosaur Language’, they’ll just speak English.But most of the voice actors don’t even fit in with the character they’re speaking! At least in the dinosaur language they sounded well. Here you get a strange mix of Irish/Scottish accents with characters they don’t even fit well, Good job Slippy!

Gameplay: 8.0 While Fox can’t jump, you’ll encounter a lot of interesting puzzles and the game is actually pretty lengthy.

Graphics: 8.5 Superb; great graphics, one of the strongest points of the game.

Controls: 6.5 Unorganized and sometimes sloppy controls, really could have been better.

Sounds: 6.0 I really don’t get it. While the music sounds fine, voice actors are horrible. Too bad Dinosaur language gets discarded WAY to early into the game.

Overall: 7.0 It’s really an okay game, but when you play it enough to realize all the faults the game has, you’ll realize the game deserves a 7.