Have you ever just had a date from hell because of a simple misunderstanding?

Well that is exactly what happened to Jason Flemming and his lovely girlfriend Claire when they decided to take an extradition to the Pacific Northwest in the form of backpacking. The not so happy couple finds some interesting caverns and his overly curious girlfriend goes exploring for the sake of nostalgia. After she does not respond to his calls, he decides to go looking for her and finds a massive military like complex inside the caves.

Claire accidentally alerts the secret complexes security during her exploration that captures her and accuses her of being a spy. Finding this out, Jason decides he has to try to rescue her from this mysterious organization known as Progressive Restoration, which appears to have devious intentions for the government.

Shadow complex is a side scrolling platform based action adventure game published by Microsoft game Studios and developed by Chair entertainment, which was acquired, by Epic Games in 2008. The game has been compared to such classics as Castlevania: Symphony of the night Metroid that are beloved classics.

This particular game uses a graphical style that is a mixture of 2D and 3D, some enemies are in the background and some of them are in front of you affecting the direction you will have to aim the analog joysticks. It is easy to aim for the most part and at the same time frustrating in certain circumstances during gameplay.

Movement is done with the left analog stick as well as aiming in a general direction while moving. The right analog joystick is used for precision aiming as needed. I found that you are able to get away with just the left analog stick for aiming 95% of the time during my play through.

Because of the way the controls are laid out, one-handed gamers might have some difficulties simultaneously crouching and firing their main weapon. Left trigger/Button toggle turns your flashlight off and on, as well as making you crouch.

Basic button layout is as follows below:

Right trigger/button shoots your main and secondary weapons.
A (Green) jumps,
B (Red) is melee attack,
Holding X (blue) makes you run
Y (Yellow) Reloads.
Digital pad selects weapons.
Left analog stick moves Jason and aims.
Right analog stick is for precise aiming without moving.

Throughout the game, turning on your flashlight will cause destructible doors and various other objects to blink a certain color depending on what you need to destroy them. Green is for grenades, red requires missiles, purple requires foam gun and blue requires the boots. This is a big negative for people who are colorblind and should be considered before purchasing the game.

The game features subtitles that can be toggled on or off and cover 95% of the game with easy-to-read text on the screen. Unfortunately, there were some scenes without subtitles but for the most part that was only with ambient speech from the soldiers. In addition, this game can be completed deaf gamers or having the sound muted with no problem.
I especially like the fact that the default difficulty level is relatively easy. On top of that, there is a level, which is eating easier for those people would be considered casuals. The difficulties range from easy to somewhat difficult.

I also like that your main weapon has an infinite amount of ammunition and only requires you to reload after a certain amount of shots. Your secondary weapons on the other hand do have a limited amount of ammunition but that number can be increased by finding the various upgrades hidden in the game. Another nice feature is at any time during the game you can run to a save room and save your progress.

Overall, Shadow Complex is a high quality, fairly accessibility Xbox live arcade game that retails for approximately $15 or 1200 Microsoft points.