Ranking Every Shadow Level (Part 2)
For this article, I went and emulated the game for some better screenshots, but I’ll be writing about my experiences with the physical PS2 as usual. A few images and videos will still be crust-filled nightmares (so that I don’t have to redo the entire game). I might grab “HD remastered” images for Part 1, but I’ll worry about that decision later.
It might not be surprising, but I still want to note that PCSX2 - even freshly installed - runs Shadow the Hedgehog far better than a regular PS2. Should you want to try out my favorite bad game, emulating it might give a smoother experience (relatively speaking, of course).
The Doom
Aesthetic
The Space Colony ARK is an immensely cool environment that I usually love to explore, but The Doom sucks all the thrill out of it.
The level design is so copy-paste, that everything bleeds together. Any cool aesthetic the ARK is known for is now on the same level as Central City’s.
Not content with being ugly, The Doom is also a giant troll with its shortcuts. They loop through the level so that it can be a maze, but it makes for a weak and irritating one. The best approach is to run through it as linearly as possible.
The “thrill” doesn’t end there. The Doom is one host to the worst possible elevators a dev could put in a Sonic game. They scoot along their vertical tracks at such a slow pace, that they could compete against Sonic ‘06’s loading screens.
Oh, and bullets sometimes pass through them, so pray that nearby GUN soldiers don’t toss you overboard (into a pit conveniently placed underneath).
This song doesn’t really stand out, but it has an infectious beat that makes it easy to listen to for extended periods.
Hero Mission |
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| Moderate Nuisance | Boring | ||||||
10 incapacitated ARK residents need assistance by tossing “Heal Unit” capsules at them. Even though they’re somewhat clunky to handle, the level design is harder than the actual mission.
Fortunately, there’s an unlockable pseudo-bazooka that fires larger healing bursts (it just has the usual bazooka jank).
The Doom is also extremely lenient with this mission. An A rank requires a paltry 4.5k Hero points, which is among the top 3 lowest thresholds in the entire game.
On a complete tangent, Maria can damage GUN soldiers (regardless if she’s controlled by the CPU or P2). It’s a hilarious feature coded into a character who I’m sure would avoid violence at all costs.
Dark Mission |
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| Obnoxious | TRASH | ||||||
It’s another one of the ol’ 60-enemy culling missions! I don’t know what else to say other than it’s awful! It’s a prime example of the tedious side of Shadow game.
I find this mission easier to tolerate than Central City, only because its looping routes can be avoided. It’s a weak compliment, but it’s something.
Secret Door
At first, opening this door is insulting. Behind it is a single round switch that doesn’t communicate what it unlocks in the first place. I didn't grab all the keys in The Doom until I played the PS2 version, so not even I knew what touching this thing accomplished.
I own the Prima guide to this game, and it’s equally useless. There’s only one solution: to GameFAQs!
It turns out that the switch unlocks a cage holding a single ring. Grabbing it activates a lift for a massive time advantage to the goal ring. While unnecessary for reaching the Neutral mission’s A rank, it’s a welcomed option nevertheless.
Sky Troops
Aesthetic
Much like its brother Glyphic Canyon, Sky Troops is all dirt brown against a cloudy sky. The interior of Black Doom’s airships are still cool.
This song has so much epic energy to it. It’s a perfect fit for the stage’s vast open skies and massive airships locked in combat. I still hum it to this day.
Hero Mission |
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| Insultingly Easy | Boring | ||||||
Instead of touching the bulbous vivid green gems in plain sight, you destroy them here.
Dark Mission |
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| Insultingly Easy | Filler Content | ||||||
Shoot at the ginormous slow-moving Eggman ships with turrets. You can destroy the cannons mounted on the vessels, but the turrets have plenty of health to simply face tank the damage.
I'm grasping at straws, but I guess it's more fun to mindlessly shoot at a bunch of floating boats than gems.
Secret Door
A Black Volt flies Shadow along an alternate path towards Eggman’s flagship. It’s negligible as a time saver, but a far more entertaining option over the boring turrets. I wish Volts were available for the entirety of this level.
Mad Matrix
Aesthetic
Mad Matrix’s presentation is cursed like The Doom. The fun cyberspace assets are recycled here, but the largest section of the map is an empty wasteland of thin rails and small floating islands. The highest-detail zones are inside of the large terminals (that you won’t even visit during the Dark mission).
The various tile “puzzles” don’t save the experience. They simply need to be assigned the same color. Even for a kid’s game, they’re insultingly easy and a waste of space.
However, Matrix is blessed in one way, at least in my PS2’s opinion. Despite the large map, the stage runs surprisingly well with minimal asset pop-in. Having clear sight of the tracks and landmark terminals means that navigation isn’t a total nightmare.
I don’t care for this song, but I can’t elaborate why. It’s just not my jam.
Hero Mission |
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| Wishy-washy | Fun, I guess? | ||||||
The amount of tedium in Mad Matrix depends on your luck with its many cheesy death pits and the game’s usual slippery controls. Even when I “de-rust” my gaming skills, Matrix has a temper at times, and I’ll find myself losing lives in rapid succession.
Activating each terminal’s core is the straightforward goal here. While the rail system is annoying, it’s manageable when you simply have to point yourself towards the giant towers along their matching colored routes.
Each terminal contains a short platforming section with a bunch of pesky color tiles. Again, these segments can be rage inducing on a bad day, but also aren’t that hard. They at least deliver the bare minimum for what should be a platforming game.
Fortunately, Hero Mad Matrix has the record lowest A Rank requirement at a shocking 3k points. You can take full advantage of Shadow’s walking and jogging animations and (probably) still hit the goal (I’ve never actually tried it myself).
Dark Mission |
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| HELL | TRASH | ||||||
If you hate the tangled mess of digital circuits, Black Doom is here to tell you “tough shit”. 30 floating flesh mines are scattered across the maze to be popped like balloons. Once again, Shadow is the only one capable of doing so. The Black Arms are the most useless biomass aliens ever.
Sometimes, I debate if 60 GUN soldiers are better to track than these stupid mines. This mission has a silver lining, but only for completionists: it too has an insanely low requirement for an A rank at 4,000 points. You can take over 15 minutes to clear the stage and still hit it. Even the devs and QA testers understood how painful Mad Matrix is.
Secret Door
A shortcut takes you straight to the red tower, which isn't much of a problem to navigate towards in the first place. It's a complete waste.
Death Ruins
Aesthetic
I guess this stage is an okay palette cleanser from all the industrial and futuristic themes I’ve covered in these articles. But Death Ruins is wholly uninspired from a design standpoint.
The architecture doesn’t particularly stand out. A few stone snakes randomly decorate the area, but they feel more like nods to previous games like SA2’s Egyptian-inspired stages.
More Black Arms biomass is featured here, but it's equally underwhelming. Giant abstract flesh clumps stand isolated from the buildings, rather than winding through them akin to Lethal Highway’s.
Most of it exists as floating rails that automate a good chunk of the level. At the very least, they’re aesthetically better rails than the ones in Sonic Frontiers.
Technically, there are several vertical structures to explore near said rails, but in my experience they aren’t worth the effort. They aren’t important for A ranks during any of the missions.
The only other noteworthy landmarks are plant-like slingshots during the “roller coaster” segments. Only a couple of them troll the player at the very end of the stage, requiring timing so that Shadow doesn’t get launched into the death pit below.
The guitars do all the work yadda yadda.
Hero Mission |
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| Mostly Painless | Filler Content | ||||||
There are 50 Black Arms to cull here. They aren’t difficult to find, but with a lack of engaging puzzle-platforming sections in Death Ruins, it’s a classic example of Shadow game’s tedium.
Dark Mission |
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| Insultingly Easy | Boring | ||||||
It's just another goal ring, making it even less engaging than the Hero mission.
Secret Door
A bunch of short fleshy rails hover over a pit with item boxes to jump towards. The level-ups are nice, but I’m not concerned about grabbing them when Death Ruins is mindless to run through.
The ARK
Aesthetic
The space colony’s exterior is always a fun choice for stage design. It’s represented far better here than in The Doom.
What elevates this version of the ARK is that it has a dedicated shmup theme with a Black Volt. Controlling the Volt is janky, but it’s the “good” kind of jank that’s satisfying to overcome.
This is one of Shadow’s god-tier theme songs; it’s instantly catchy and the perfect backing for a shmup. It was proudly featured in a teaser trailer for the DLC in the Sonic Generations remaster, and for good reason.
(Hero Mission n/a)
Dark Mission |
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| Moderate Nuisance | Entertaining | ||||||
Once again, the slippery controls are the only blemish on The ARK. Fortunately, getting to rack up the score via dozens of clustered enemies (that give the PS2 a panic attack) more than makes up for the struggle. I’m critical of classic Sonic games not motivating me enough to chase high scores, but I’m gripped by it in The ARK.
(Good news for emulator enthusiasts: PCSX2 runs this stage off on an ISO buttery smooth, compared to the physical hardware chugging off of a disc. Even with this boon, however, the challenge for an A rank is preserved.)
Aside from Dark score points, Black Doom wants Shadow to destroy 5 giant green drones. They can’t be missed, and even if you do fly past them, Black Doom will snap at Shadow.
Secret Door
“But Bean, it’s three 1-ups” doesn’t sit as well for me when a Game Over simply restarts the level with 5 more lives (unlike in the past where the whole game resets). The ARK is a short level, so redoing any of its content isn’t the end of the world.
However, 3 bonus lives back to back are infinitely more useful than some of the offerings from previously discussed doors.
Air Fleet
Aesthetic
Air Fleet is okay aesthetic wise, but I feel that I have to squeeze blood from a rock to mention anything noteworthy.
I do like the color palette used in the stage, especially the aggressive orange skies filtering through windows, entryways, and glass walkways. I also like the design of the blast doors with GUN’s insignia lighting up as they open.
Another song that may not be that memorable, but is fairly catchy.
Hero Mission |
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| Moderate Nuisance | Boring | ||||||
Air Fleet’s annoying factor is solely due to its death pit sections. It’s probably just superstition, but Shadow’s controls almost always misbehave around any moving slab of metal.
These sections are some of the easiest places to rapidly chew through stockpiled 1-ups. No matter how many times I play Shadow game, I always tense up around them.
In contrast to The ARK, having to redo content in Air Fleet is genuinely aggrivating. It doesn’t matter if the stage is completed in 3 or 10 minutes; the rage a Game Over generates here makes it all irrelevant. This is the stage that should have been assigned the triple 1-up secret door.
And now, it’s time for a little whiplash; Air Fleet’s Hero mission overall is easy to complete. The fortress’s narrow hallways are packed with Black Warriors (average height) and Oaks (big & tall), which means they’re impossible to miss. Some of the game’s most powerful artillery is generously provided, so everything melts within seconds.
If it weren’t for the previously discussed cheesy platforming, I’d completely write off this mission.
Dark Mission |
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| Obnoxious | TRASH | ||||||
All grievances with Air Fleet’s design are mirrored here. The major change for this mission is stalking one giant target instead of dozens of smaller ones.
The president’s escape plane is structured similar to the tank in Lethal Highway. You simply have to chip away at its health until it crumbles, but at a painstakingly worse pace here. Shadow always has a steady amount of ammo, but the plane’s defenses are bolstered to counter the overpowered guns.
With a larger health pool than the alien tank, the lack of a visible health bar exacerbates this stage’s poor design choices (nay, this entire game). Only hints of the plane’s structural integrity are given in phases: shiny brand new, damaged paint job, and very damaged.
It’s difficult to gauge exactly how much progress is made when reaching each checkpoint, meaning it’s possible to softlock the Dark mission without knowing it. You have to build a gut instinct for the optimal run through practice.
I’m amused at how the Prima guide struggles to help with this mission. Its strategy amounts to “LOL just shoot it a lot, good luck.” I know that Prima was never the most reliable source, but I think this is another point to communicate how “off” the stage feels overall.
Secret Door
I’m surprised at how long I can gab about Air Fleet, and the secret door will stretch it out even more.
I remember playing Shadow game as a kid and noting electrified rails in parts of Air Fleet. I didn’t bother to investigate, because I assumed a crappy air saucer would be involved.
As an adult, I’ve confirmed that this stage features a secret air saucer % run! I simply had to try it out for science…
AIR SAUCER % IS WORSE THAN I THOUGHT
You get a single air saucer to maintain for the entire level. There are a few repair zones, but its paper-thin defenses don't fully alleviate the stress.
Hovering over the electric rails helps skip the hellish platforming sections, but the tradeoff is another Hell in slowly scooting around, trying to avoid crashing into walls or enemies.
As a control variable, I completed the Neutral mission, first with the saucer, and then running through it as usual. It took me roughly 6 minutes to reach the goal ring on the former, which I guess isn’t too bad. But completing it as a non-idiot saved me 2 minutes and my sanity.
Air saucer % is the absolute worst way to experience Air Fleet. I regret entertaining this garbage.
