Gun Metal Gaming Chapter 10: Manufacturing Descent

In “Gun Metal Gaming: A 2009 Retrospective,” Wolfman Jew covers one game from 2009 a month for all of 2024. Each is one he’s either never played or played for only a few forgotten minutes well over a decade ago; he’s coming into these about as fresh as a player can. Hopefully, his experiences will give us a good view of one of gaming’s lesser years.

“Come on, Jason, think… go back and get some of the stuff you missed.”—Jason, Shadow Complex

Over the past two years, I’ve become slightly frustrated with Microsoft. Their place in the industry feels artificial, their business practices are wildly unsustainable, they’ve made dangerous acquisitions to manufacture a brand they cannot organically build, paid for those with thousands of layoffs, and their Game Pass subscription service is central to one of the more pressing issues of the industry: the devaluation of the worth of games and all that goes into them. They’re the company that made the goddamn console fridge. They vex me, Xbox Series X owner that I am. But there’s good things, too! Xbox is a leader in accessibility efforts, the backwards compatibility of Series S | X is a wonder compared to Sony and Nintendo’s pathetic efforts, and their online storefront used to be one of the coolest places around. Back in the era of Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade was really special. It’s gone now, with only some of its games eking out life on the Xbox Store or having been ported elsewhere, but its greatness remains. And as the original home of Shadow Complex, it’s crucial to today’s chapter.

Image: Source Gaming. Shadow Complex. 2D, gridlike map in the corner, health bar, an EXP meter… put those together, you’ve got an XBLA going! Strangely, the modern Xbox store thinks it comes from 2010.

It might seem quaint today, now that we have Steam (which did exist but hadn’t become gaming’s default station) and Itch.io and GOG, not to mention thriving online stores across consoles and mobile, but XBLA was important as a precedent to the world of digital gaming media we know now. It was originally simple, a store on the original Xbox for retro titles, Japanese arcade releases, and Bejeweled. And when it relaunched on the Xbox 360, it appeared much the same. Within a few years, though, the system exploded in popularity. In 2007, the attach rate put the average 360 owner as owning “6 – 7” digital games. And while many of these were simple things like Uno or Hexic, it also included a laundry list of classics—to this day, the best way to play Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is arguably through its XBLA port. Things got even more notable in the 2008’s “Summer of Arcade.” It was a silly marketing gimmick where purchasers were entered into a digital lotto, one Microsoft continued in 2009 and 2010. But what mattered were the games these events promoted and sold: a selection of icons, trailblazers, and innovators that laid the groundwork for the ongoing indie boom.

Bastion. Limbo. Super Meat Boy. Fez. N+. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved—and while its sequel is no less important, the first one was right there on launch day, 2005. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Peggle. Dust: An Elysian Trail. Mark of the Ninja. Bionic Commando Rearmed. ‘Splosion Man. Castle Crashers. Orcs Must Die! Braid, too, even if I detest it. And while you could also buy digital versions of the big budget games and ports of old standards, this was a strong marketplace for new experiences. With Steam in a very different position, this place became surprisingly amenable to smaller studios. Microsoft’s high profile exclusivity deals and publishing duties helped; it made the space appear curated, supported a few artists who became icons, and had a very high batting average. One of the games they supported, Shadow Complex, is not as good as the best of these (it’s also absolutely not an indie). But it is still good and, even more so, a wonderful example of what the service could offer.

Image: Source Gaming. Jason, our hero. So, okay, obviously his haircut was glitching out in the final cutscene of the game, and I am including it as a joke, but I do like this game. This is no more than a mild poke.

So on its own, Shadow Complex is a pretty standard Metroidvania. You play this dorky climbing enthusiast who has to rescue his girlfriend from a silly terrorist organization on the cusp of overthrowing the American government. Their ridiculous and ever-descending underground compound is a giant maze of looks whose keys are, naturally, abilities you acquire. So while Samus would get Bombs to blow up conspicuous rocks, Jason tosses a grenade. There’s a jetpack for a midair jump, a foam that freezes objects, a flashlight to suss out secrets, gear that lets you breathe underwater, tons of optional upgrades, an escape sequence, and rooms that trap you for a bit until you figure out how to use a new power. That part in Super Metroid where you can only progress by learning that you have a run button? That’s here, if inelegantly implemented. There’s even a prologue that starts you off with all your powers, but instead of Ridley or Death stealing them you just play as some loser who swiftly dies.

As it stands, it’s pretty mid-tier, especially now that we’re drowning in “exploration action” games. The complex lacks a lot of seemingly obvious points for doors and shortcuts, leading you to backtrack for long stretches because there isn’t a doorway between two adjacent areas. Jason’s double (and later, triple) jump is ungainly, making precision platforming hard. You can see these two converge with an optional missile upgrade in the middle of a death pit—unlike most Metroidvanias, Shadow Complex features insta-kill spaces, which rarely feels right for the genre and does not here—next to a save room that connects to another area. Your wall jump inputs won’t always be read, the Hookshot won’t consistently attach to the wall, and what should be a great shortcut is effectively unusable. I’d also say that the level design often looks samey and the game waffles on how linear it is from area to area, so while I appreciate that you can turn off the recommended route to the next objective, I did have to use it occasionally when it wasn’t clear where to go. And speaking as someone who finished his annual tradition of mainlining all three DS Castlevanias around Halloween, an experience points system is unnecessary for the genre, and it has never been more unnecessary than here. In an era where Hollow Knight, Animal Well, Metroid Dread, and those very Castlevanias are easily available, it doesn’t have so much punch.

Image: Source Gaming. The Unreal 3 lighting is really good, but it has a problem of obscuring a lot of environmental features, including parts of the critical path.

There’s also a graphical issue that comes from the game’s role as one of the classic examples of “2.5D,” 2D games with 3D graphics. It was a really ungainly term, and I’m glad we’ve mostly abandoned it. There are plenty of reasons why games do this: they’re easier to produce than polished pixel graphics, there are techniques to make them look really good, many engines are built for them, and the ones of this era more easily fell into the aesthetic style at the time. The era of “Gun Metal Gaming” was often disdainful of anything retro, something this game and the XBLA both pushed back on, so a throwback looking so contemporary might have been something of a compromise. What’s fascinating, though, is that this goes one step further by building an elaborate system where enemies can be part of the background, and you can shoot at them. It’s actually rather incredible seeing your laser sight swerve into the background when someone’s there, shoot them, and seamlessly go back to 2D sidescroller aiming. Problem is that it’s inconsistent when your guns or bombs will actually work, and since this game gives you a lot more upgrades for your bombs than for your health, you have to move with a surprising amount of care. The graphics have issues of clarity, too; it’s hard to discern the physicality or existence of entrances, objects, and parts of the map. The game’s staff didn’t want to perpetuate that “bomb every wall” trope from old school games, but several of their hints are near unreadable. Future 2D games with 3D graphics would be less ambitious but a lot clearer.

That being said, I did like it. Shadow Complex is a pretty good game, largely because it really knows how to scratch that itch. You find upgrades, secrets, and new areas at a fast clip. It fixes one of the few irritants of Super Metroid in that your map makes clear when an item in a room has or has not been found. Similarly, your basic level of attack improves as Jason finds new guns, instead of being largely useless for the fights against Kraid and Crocomire. Its decidedly laid back and campy tone is also nice. And while I did find the majority of the adventure a bit too linear, its final act opens up wildly into a fully optional Metroid Prime-esque chase for hidden upgrades, all of which I did track down. And of course, that doesn’t even account for the option for sequence breaking or the secret fake ending, the one where you simply turn left at the start and immediately hit the credits.

Image: Source Gaming. Shadow Complex‘s version of that classic Metroid trick of trapping you until you learn how to use your bombs. The flashlight is like the X-Ray Visor; it color codes barriers based on their weaknesses.

But ultimately, a discussion of its quality obscures potentially more important questions: when, where, why, and by whom. It came from the somewhat hilariously named Chair Entertainment, an Epic Games subsidiary, and co-published by Microsoft as a marquee exclusive for XBLA. Chair’s staff were invested in the idea of making an homage to Super Metroid, a game that was influential and adored and yet felt like a stranger. Metroidvanias existed; they were just on the margins. And so they looked to Nintendo’s 1994 classic with a deep obsession. So much of the development process involved replaying entries in the series, making a giant map on paper—one that could be scanned into Unreal Engine—and figuring out the ways a character could move about it. The process was heavily gameplay-first. The most fun parts, like blasting through rooms with Hyperspeed or realizing after several hours that this early room had a hidden upgrade all along, are built off a study into one of the greatest games of all time. So although it’s a bit derivative and doesn’t add a lot new to the space, it’s still a respectable entry in a genre and filling a niche Nintendo was decidedly not.

That development is where the game’s controversy comes in, as it was a collaboration with Ender’s Game writer Orson Scott Card, who had recently outed himself as a visceral homophobe. Before Chair existed, its staff had worked with him on the forgotten 2005 shooter Advent Rising. Card looked over this one’s plot, gave some brief notes, and became excited enough to write not just one tie-in novel but two (the actual writer of the game is comics scribe Peter David, the man who cut off Aquaman’s hand). Given that the 2006 novel Empire is an action spectacle about the dangers of theoretical liberal extremism and Shadow Complex is G.I. Joe with the serial numbers filed off, complete with Graham McTavish playing the metal masked “Commander Lucius,” you can see the connection. Chair was certainly proud of it; they even went out of their way to keep the plot within the canon of the books that were based on their project. And so they, Epic, and Microsoft were stuck giving noncommittal answers over why they partnered with a man trying to unseat Frank Herbert as sci-fi’s most viscerally anti-gay writer. A bit like modern day Warner Bros. executives flailing to pretend that J.K. Rowling doesn’t exist. It was wrong of Chair to work with him, and there’s not really a way around that.

Image: Source Gaming. Though credit to David; solid Cubs joke. The little segues where you overhear the bad guys’ dopey conversations are fun.

At the risk of a somewhat insensitive segue, a topic that’s less upsetting was the challenge of making a Super Metroid homage at all. Because the Metroidvania renaissance hadn’t happened yet. Cave Story and La Mulana had come out in 2004 and 2007, respectively, but they were super-niche Japanese games. As for the two names that make up the genre, the last 2D and 3D Metroid games had also come out in 2004 and 2007 with less of that exploratory spirit, and the common reception to the newest DS Castlevania was a collective feeling that the formula had worn itself out. Then a year after this we got Metroid: Other M and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Weird time to be a fan. In such a space, Shadow Complex (and Arkham Asylum if we count 3D games, which we absolutely should) was important for popularizing this format for a new generation. And not as a retro artifact, but something that came in Unreal and felt modern. It could have a giant map with no obvious load screens between areas. It could hint at its secret walls through lighting and graphics, though that doesn’t actually work in a number of cases. It could be its own thing and a clear homage at the same time, the product of a studio obsessed with Metroid’s underground lairs, just not so much that it prevented them from manufacturing their own.

But though I’m unsure of how deliberate it was, the style and attitude of the game also created something really interesting: a pairing of genre and era that is truly impeccable. Let’s start with our hero. Jason’s way too light hearted to be a Bald Whitem’n, but you take the fashion, the vague look of an Ashmore brother, the vocal performance courtesy of the ubiquitous Nolan North, and the strange “badass pacifist” backstory that allows him expert knowledge of firearms and jetpacks, and you wind up with a sort of Bald Whitem’n in training. He is a happier version of every single protagonist from this time. And his adventure has modern, gritty graphics in 2.5D; there’s no retro pixel art. You’re using pistols and assault rifles instead of big energy blobs. And that stuff’s typical, but, like, this game has cover mechanics. You don’t magnetize yourself to a wall like in Matt Hazard or Blood on the Sand, but there are giant conspicuous boxes you’re meant to crouch behind to avoid fire. Its design, essentially, sticks a cover-based third person shooter into a sidescroller.

Image: Source Gaming. The deeply strange use of cover mechanics is something of a galaxy brain idea. It’s super ambitious and doesn’t really work and, well, I’d love to see someone take another shot at it.

…This game stuck a cover-based third person shooter into a sidescroller! It’s wild! It doesn’t really work since hitscan weapons don’t mesh well with the movement and the graphics can be very unclear as to what’s in the background and what isn’t, but so aggressively following its era’s aesthetics makes Shadow Complex one of the more distinct Metroidvanias I’ve played in a while. Games in this genre do not look like this, even ones that have 3D graphics and engines. They don’t have its tone. I mean, some have bits. If Tunic counts, it has top-down 3D graphics, but they’re painterly and the experience is soft and opaque. Bloodstained is also 3D, but its graphics are florid and gothic. Guacamelee has the irreverence and little else; same goes for the Shantae games. They feel different. Even Super Metroid feels different thanks to its tighter controls, darker atmosphere, and focus on movement over combat. If you want your 2D exploration action game to be both a gritty, realistic shooter and a lighthearted, campy romp with Die Hard references, you’re probably limited to this one. Fortunately, it’s exceptional at being just that.

Shadow Complex was, by all metrics, a smashing success. It was well received by critics wanting that sweet Super Metroid goodness and appears to have been one of the XBLA’s biggest hits. Years later, it got a remaster that didn’t add much but finally let it be available on PC and PS4, not just a Microsoft storefront whose prominence was on the wane. That didn’t fully percolate down; Chair Entertainment also made the Infinity Blade trilogy for mobile, only for all three games to be delisted in the wake of Apple and Epic’s legal disputes (it would later be referenced in Fortnite via one of the game’s single most controversial features). They haven’t released a game since 2018, and information on them is hard to come by. Epic’s broader issues are, of course, very public. But this entry of theirs remains a well remembered part of this Late-Aughts era, and I’m happy to now count myself amongst its fans. I really liked Shadow Complex, and while I’ll probably only play on Easy for the foreseeable future, I certainly intend to fold it into my large rotation of Metroidvanias.

Image: Source Gaming. The goofy toy commercial aesthetic was also fairly special back then. In a post-She-Ra, post-Shredder’s Revenge world, it’s a bit easier to enjoy modern (and good!) versions of these shows. But this game manages to feel distinct from its painfully obvious G.I. Joe influence. Not so much with the bad guy here, but that’s okay.

You know, Super Metroid was as old when Shadow Complex came out as Shadow Complex is now, fifteen years. It was an old fogy in the fast paced games industry. And even if you were an Xbox fan with no interest in Nintendo, you probably read stuff by journalists, critics, and bloggers who touted it as this true and irreplicable work of art. A standard of quality that seemed to have gone by the wayside. As someone who first played it on the Wii’s Virtual Console, I can confirm its reputation preceded it. So even at a time where Metroid was considered old hat—a 2D, pixelated, open-ended Nintendo game with maybe two lines of dialogue—it had power. And this game exploited that very well, presenting it in a way that was true to the era and very accessible. This may have been a 2D throwback, but it also had the dulcet tones of Nolan North, voice of a thousand gaming heroes. It had big guns. It had a 360° aiming system, something Samus wouldn’t get until 2017. It even has an era-appropriate stupid twist ending: after the final boss fight against the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier hiding at the bottom of the lake, Jason’s love interest shows back up to kill the bad guy because she’s actually a secret agent who brought him along as backup against the diabolical Restoration.

I don’t know how influential the game was in terms of its gameplay. I’m a bit suspicious and don’t really see obvious references, since its big “shoot the background” innovation is mostly nowhere to be found. But it was likely influential in one respect, which is that it invigorated a genre that had been exclusive to two franchises and a few independent works of limited commercial presence. Whether because of or despite its sensibilities, it topped the charts of this one market and was proof positive the genre had broad commercial appeal, even to people who might never have cared about Metroid or Castlevania. And a few years after this came out, we saw a flood of indies that had gear-gated exploration, tight action, and wildly diverging aesthetics. Shadow Complex laid the groundwork for the likes of Ori and the Blind Forest, Dead Cells, and Axiom Verge.

Image: Source Gaming. Naturally, the game also has a dopey turret section. These are rarely fun, but Shadow Complex is appreciably pretty generous with the mechanics here.

But now I’m left thinking of the Xbox Live Arcade, and its legacy. Nowadays, the Microsoft online store is a strange thing. At its best, Game Pass has justified the productions of games like Pentiment and brought people to things they might not otherwise play. But it’s also undeniable that, like every major streaming service, it’s a money hole that wildly depreciates the value of its products and employs a shifting mendacity in its promotion. In an era where games cost more than ever, money is tight across consumers, years-old free-to-play games take up obscene amounts of our time, and “sure things” are anything but, that’s a precarious place. The statement by that one Ubisoft executive (months after his company fully destroyed The Crew) gave the game away: we have moved into an economic model in which we buy more yet own far less of what we buy. Subscription services like Game Pass (and PSN, and Nintendo Switch Online), storefronts like Xbox’s (and Steam, and iOS), and digital-only hardware are at times built around this. This is a very scary time for consumer ownership and sustainability.

XBLA wasn’t so far off, I suppose. Microsoft’s huge exclusivity deals might’ve been good for some directors—a couple of whom, like Braid‘s work thief / conspiracy theorist Jonathan Blow, later deep-sixed their own careers—but given their track record I can’t imagine that was a sustainable practice. Plus, the games they did support were relatively few and far between in a rapidly expanding ecosystem of artists, many of whom could’ve used the financial backing a lot more than a giant like Epic. Again, this was not an “indie” game by any means. Given the problems of our increasingly digital only market, in some ways it also feels a bit like the start of darkness. We start buying fun time wasters alongside retail releases of Crackdown, and twenty years later you have digital-only games delisted forever and legally mandated explanations that we don’t actually own any of what we buy on these shops.

Image: Source Gaming. I really appreciated the game’s quick and dirty boss battles. It’s fun to just use up your entire salvo of missiles and take (some of) them down in a matter of seconds.

And yet, it also helped make a lot of games accessible to new players, launched the careers of a few studios who are still working today, and, for a time, created a lucrative market where a small, niche game was given the same attention as a blockbuster that needed to sell millions. Though it was full of problems, it was an early form of something this industry absolutely needed: a pool that could be both big and small. Today, a game like Shadow Complex fits naturally in the massive world of Metroidvanias; that Epic could sell it a second time to positive reception highlights that. But it was an anomaly in 2009, one whose success wasn’t guaranteed. I think we probably needed a storefront like that and games like this. Steam hadn’t become the hotspot for up and coming developers. WiiWare was actively antagonistic to them. The XBLA had its problems, but it was a useful space, and I’d like to think we as an industry took good lessons from it, not just bad.

Next game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Read all of “Gun Metal Gaming” here.