toblix

Shadow Complex

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Still, it's a good game, but the reports that some of the developers at Chair share his views is a little worrying.

What reports? Also, that some of the developers are republican is probably hard to avoid with any game.

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Just want to say that Shadow complex is excellent. I have been playing it in small bursts, with the knowledge of it's reasonably short length.

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I still read his blog everyday and he mostly only has good things to say about color theory and appeal but tends to repeat himself each time. He seems to spend more time hitting on female wannabe animators younger than half his age, making weird long posts about how rap music is not really music, and posting pictures of his creepy decades old Hanna Barbara toys that he still has hanging around. I can't wrap my head around that stuff.

Ugh. This was such a disappointment to me... Watching Ren & Stimpy in the 90s is an incredibly fond memory for me. I take it that none of you have bought and watched the Ren & Stimpy "Lost Episodes" DVD? It's a fantastic DVD, and the new episodes are enjoyable, but before each of the them is a talk by John K and, yeah, it's horrible and creepy...

It's either him making crude remarks to his young female animator, him ranting about how Nickelodeon was "run by dykes!" or him and his equally weird and creepy older friends sitting around drinking beer.

I still haven't managed to make it to the end of the DVD... even though he seemed to tone down the creepy/weirdness as it progressed. Shame :(

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So basically he's a crazy Republican who believes same sex marriage to be a "devastating social experiment". And then says giving gay people the right to be married is the end of democracy in America. He also doesn't believe in global warming, supported Goerge W Bush's administration and supported John McCain in the last presidential election. So, in Shadow Complex you could very well be fighting against the evil forces of Barrak Obama?

That pretty much might well be what's going on in Shadow Complex...

After a little research it seems the world of SC is based on the world started in Empire... possibly Card's most controversial novel. Yes, the bad guys ARE "radical lefties". Of course, there's nothing wrong with exploring new territories in art. Some reviewers took Empire as an attempt at showing how damaging political extremism is (on both sides), others saw it as nothing more than a two dimensional story strung together by right-wing rhetoric.

Shadow Complex is a sequel to that novel.

But that's not all (and this is something that the Gamasutra writer should have bothered to find out) the SC universe was NOT created by Card, but by the Mustards (of Chair Entertainment) FOR their Video game. They then hired Card to write a novel set there.

So where does that leave us? I have no idea. The Mustards are apparently big fans of Scott Card (nothing wrong with that, I guess), probably Republican, and er, not actively campaigning against gay rights...

If anybody is REALLY interested, you can read the first five chapters of Empire on Chair's website:

http://www.chairentertainment.com/company/projects/empire

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the SC universe was NOT created by Card, but by the Mustards (of Chair Entertainment) FOR their Video game. They then hired Card to write a novel set there.
Based on Shadow Complex's's "story" so far, why in the hell did they have to "create a universe"? The story's genericness is akin to that of Persian Gulf Inferno on the Amiga. Basically, "there's a guy who has to kill a bunch of bad guys in a underground base". Maybe there's a bunch of story sequences later on in the game, but so far it's not exactly Lord of the Rings.

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Just finished with 100% After having to restart my first play through when I accidently broke the game by getting the foam gun before the game thought I could get it.

It's great fun running around punching dudes in the head :)

Some minor quibbles though:

- The lipsync in the cutscenes is abysmal. I suspect this is because unreal 3 sucks at lipsync. And that I'm spoiled by the excellent lipsync in the source engine.

- Why does the game take itself so serious? An underground base hidden under a lake? I'm fine with that. But don't try to be so serious about it, please.

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As much as I'm loving this, I think we should all put some money in so Chair can afford some QA. Never before have I seen so many bugs reported, and the one that lets you play the full game for free (albeit without being able to save and achievements) is one of the worst I've seen.

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Based on Shadow Complex's's "story" so far, why in the hell did they have to "create a universe"? The story's genericness is akin to that of Persian Gulf Inferno on the Amiga. Basically, "there's a guy who has to kill a bunch of bad guys in a underground base". Maybe there's a bunch of story sequences later on in the game, but so far it's not exactly Lord of the Rings.

Lol, well I've not played it, but they apparently created enough of a story for Card to write two novels about it (apparently SC bridges those two novels)... although some reviewers of the first book may take your side :)

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Skirting around the politics stuff (actually no, fuck it, I think that people should make a decision on how much of a dickhole they think Orson Scott Card is because if the peeps at Epic and Chair think he is good enough to sell the game on then they deserve to have people boycott the game because of he is such a supreme dickhole).

It is great, I'm utterly hooked and I haven't played a better XLA game all year. Possibly Goatsey of the year...

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I fully get not wanting to buy the game because you don't want to give money or respect to Card, but the actual content of the story is so throwaway and irrelevant that it really shouldn't be putting people off, I think. I doubt any of us seriously fears indoctrination from a 2D action/exploration game. There are guys in uniform who want to take over America. They have absurd technology and funds. That's about as far as it goes. If they didn't have "Progressive" in their name, I don't think there would be any evidence of their ideology in the game whatsoever. Then again, I wasn't really listening at all.

I accidently broke the game by getting the foam gun before the game thought I could get it.

If I understand correctly, doing that is actually necessary for doing the 4% run, which is one of the achievements (although it may be an in-game one rather than an Xbox Live one).

EDIT:

Jesus Christ, this is poorly written. Half the words are repeated on the same bloody line! It's horrible! (Disclaimer: I'm only a few sentences in.)

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EDIT:

Jesus Christ, this is poorly written. Half the words are repeated on the same bloody line! It's horrible! (Disclaimer: I'm only a few sentences in.)

Yeah I know, I was kind of shocked. It actually feels like someone's NOTES for a book, rather than a book in itself. Weird.

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That pretty much might well be what's going on in Shadow Complex...

After a little research it seems the world of SC is based on the world started in Empire... possibly Card's most controversial novel. Yes, the bad guys ARE "radical lefties". Of course, there's nothing wrong with exploring new territories in art. Some reviewers took Empire as an attempt at showing how damaging political extremism is (on both sides), others saw it as nothing more than a two dimensional story strung together by right-wing rhetoric.

Shadow Complex is a sequel to that novel.

But that's not all (and this is something that the Gamasutra writer should have bothered to find out) the SC universe was NOT created by Card, but by the Mustards (of Chair Entertainment) FOR their Video game. They then hired Card to write a novel set there.

So where does that leave us? I have no idea. The Mustards are apparently big fans of Scott Card (nothing wrong with that, I guess), probably Republican, and er, not actively campaigning against gay rights...

If anybody is REALLY interested, you can read the first five chapters of Empire on Chair's website:

http://www.chairentertainment.com/company/projects/empire

The Tanks in that cover are Scorpions from halo I believe... fuck that halo has better writing than that shit.

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I couldn't read more than a couple of paragraphs. I wrote more cohesively at the age of ten.

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Good grief. This is the most popular/"helpful" review of Empire from Amazon.com:

I don't mean to scathe an author I have for so long respected, but given my reaction to this book I don't see how I can do otherwise. On one hand, plot mechanics and the language of the book are blatantly recycled from his Ender series. The obsession with the word "jeesh" and certain actions with .22 pistols are laughable distractions for anyone who's read any other OSC.

The other hand, the more important hand to me, is that Card's language throughout is blatantly offensive to my value system. Card and I have opposite sociopolitical views, which I have known for a long time. That said, I have respected him for years because he always argued his value system in a way that I respect. From reading Card's work in the past, I was able to understand and sympathize with Conservative viewpoints. That said, he abandoned his intellectual approach in this book in favor of cheap shots barely worthy of best seller of the week pulp novels. I had to check the cover every few minutes to make sure it was still an Orson Scott Card book.

The only entertaining parts of the book, which ends in a total fizzle, are the action sequences... which are practically written to go straight to a movie. It's strange, the moment the book goes to an action sequence bizarre sci-fi machines come out of the woodwork. Nothing believable ever happens in the entire book, and the action sequences only serve to drop the credibility of the story.

I don't recognize this author as the man who wrote Ender's Game or Xenocide, two of my favorite books. He spends too much time taking cheap shots at modern pop culture, giving responsibility for a bloody and amoral civil war on absurdly single-minded "progressives" (the word "Progressive" is used in a derogatory fashion the whole book) who are bitter about Gore's loss in 2000, and championing the military much in the style of the Transformers movie to make this anything but a cartoonish joke of a novel. The occasional efforts to lighten this radical right wing blitzkrieg with assertions of right wing wrongdoing are pitiful and forced, quite patronizing.

I have nothing against people of different political persuasions, nothing that would cause me to wish extreme violence upon them, and I know no one who does... on either side of the aisle. This is not about my views as a left leaning American, this is about my views as a human. I'm ashamed of Card right now.

Really, I could go on and on, but I'd rather not. Mr. Card, I expected so much better from you. I'm actually a good bit sad right now.

1 star out of 5

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I've been enjoying the shit out of this game. I found out about the controversy after I already purchased the game, but I probably would have bought it anyways. While I do find his views abhorrent - I respect his right to them. Not only that, there's a lot of other people that worked hard on this game who may not feel the same way. If the game was somehow a platform for this agenda - I would think differently, without a fucking doubt.

Anyways - fun game!

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Ugh. This was such a disappointment to me... Watching Ren & Stimpy in the 90s is an incredibly fond memory for me. I take it that none of you have bought and watched the Ren & Stimpy "Lost Episodes" DVD? It's a fantastic DVD, and the new episodes are enjoyable, but before each of the them is a talk by John K and, yeah, it's horrible and creepy...

It's either him making crude remarks to his young female animator, him ranting about how Nickelodeon was "run by dykes!" or him and his equally weird and creepy older friends sitting around drinking beer.

I still haven't managed to make it to the end of the DVD... even though he seemed to tone down the creepy/weirdness as it progressed. Shame :(

Haha, I imagine the "young female animator" would be Katie Rice, who he seems to have replaced in the last year or so with other similar female animators.

I have the first two seasons on DVD and while some of that is there, I think he got more crazy and outspoken by the time of the last DVD set. I'll buy it one day, but I'm not looking forward to it soon, especially since I've already seen all of the lost episodes at a show John K. did in Austin years ago at an Alamo Drafthouse. He talked between episodes and did some Q & A, and while it was funny, he seemed wholly ignorant of anything made in animation past 1995 and did not keep up with any kind of new techniques or way's to utilize the PC.

But on that note, John K. is far from an angry conservative like Orson Scott Card, but has definitely devolved into a creepy old man.

The weird thing I noticed is that especially in the review of Empire Thunderpeel posted, is that this Card is different than the one who wrote Ender's Game in terms of writing and hate. Doug TenNapel and David Sim (in comics) both seemed to have followed that path in (de)evolution, with their work and ideals starting out more open and creative while turning obsessively into sloppy versus and hate speech as time goes on. This is really more part of my own observation of people rather than anything based in evidence, but I'm part of the camp that says if the work is not supporting any of the author's ideals you really disagree with, then it's okay to support, as that sends out a message to the creative individuals behind it that you want more of this than maybe the angry dividing viewpoint that may or may not be behind it (I hope it does at least).

It's when it starts turning into some preachy mess like the way Cerebus did that jumping ship may be a good idea.

That being said, I definitely see why some people may be upset about paying for or playing Shadow Complex. It can get to be a struggle sometimes as other posters have said.

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Am I the only one or does Shadow Complex remind of Crusader: No Remorse/Regret? The perspective is entirely different of course and the gameplay too, but I think there are some similarities.

I never played the full versions of Crusader, I think. That was back in the day where we used to rent crippled (cut-scenes and music removed usually) pirated copies of games from a shady store run by some Russians, at the times when the cops weren't doing a raid there. With the internet and stuff becoming faster, that shop disappeared, maybe also because RENTING some of those pirated games ended up costing more than buying original copies (Blade Runner was 4 CDs and they charged a certain price per disk).

(I don't know why I'm purposefully trying to keep two threads about Shadow Complex on the first page)

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Just finished the game with 100%. The bit where I spent hours getting all the final suit pieces and more hours looking for the final four upgrades sort of spoiled the game for me a bit. I think it's unfair to have the whole system of question marks indicating where all the items are, even revealing all of them when you reach level 20, and then "hide" two items on the same screen, so that if you pick up one you won't see the second one indicated anywhere. Not to mention sticking items in save rooms, in which they are not indicated either. Basically, unless you're super thorough (and lucky) you just know that one of the save rooms or "item found" rooms contain an item you missed. I don't know if they're living up to some heritage or whatever, but to me that's just bad design. If it wasn't obvious that they did it on purpose I'd call it a bug. Maybe they were aiming for a meta-game in which you google forums endlessly for other people missing the same items you are.

Of course, it's my own fault. I should know better than to go for these completionist achievements. Every time I end up hating the game and myself. I still loved the game, of course, and I'm already looking forward to the inevitable sequel.

Am I the only one or does Shadow Complex remind of Crusader: No Remorse/Regret?

I remember the Crusader games fondly, and I think I know what you're referring to. Although I can't put my finger on it, there was something about those games too, where seemingly simplistic gameplay felt very rewarding. Maybe it's the level of polish of controls and game feedback.

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The best part about this whole episode is the people not buying the game, but using that glitch to still play it to it's fullest. God forbid sticking it to the man has some consequences, hearing them justify it is even more hilarious. I understand not paying him if you feel you don't want him to get your money, but yeah don't be a dipshit about it.

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The best part about this whole episode is the people not buying the game, but using that glitch to still play it to it's fullest. God forbid sticking it to the man has some consequences, hearing them justify it is even more hilarious. I understand not paying him if you feel you don't want him to get your money, but yeah don't be a dipshit about it.

They haven't fixed that yet? I kind of figured it would have been fixed a long time ago.

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People are being banned from XBL for exploiting it, but yeah, I expected the glitch to be absolutely nuked before most people even heard about it.

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People are being banned from XBL for exploiting it, but yeah, I expected the glitch to be absolutely nuked before most people even heard about it.

What? Really? Ouch! That's pretty harsh considering it's their fault! What if you stumbled across it by accident (like presumably the first guy who discovered it did).

Edit: Ok, I've read the glitch. It's something that could be innocently done and undoubtedly was the first time. It doesn't alter the game. It also doesn't allow the player to save, gain the achievements, or keep the game without using the exploit every time, either.

You say "people are being banned", where did you hear that? (I reckon it's a load of FUD.)

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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