Shadow Man and I have a love-hate relationship. When I first played Acclaim’s atmospheric third-person adventure back on the N64 in 1999, I was taken aback by the grim atmosphere, the fantastic setting and characters, and, for the time, the gameplay was pretty solid too.
However, the game hated me. It was hard, the controls could be tricky, and the performance, although a damn sight better than the awful PS1 version, was still pretty shocking at times.
To call it punishing is an understatement. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but by the time I had finished it, I wondered why I had been wasting my life gaming.
And yet I would still rate it as one of my favourite games of the fifth console generation. It is essentially an abusive relationship where the sex was incredible. In time, you forget the arguments at 2am, the crockery thrown at your head, and only remember making up afterwards.
So how does Shadow Man hold up? Pretty damn well. In no small part, this is thanks to the efforts of Night Dive Studios. The excellent team behind the recent Turok remasters has again used its considerable talents to capture the look and feel of the original while providing a slew of meaningful quality of life improvements.
These include higher resolution textures, upping the frame rate to a silky smooth 60, improving the lighting, modern bells and whistles like ambient occlusion, and ditching the original’s Tomb Raideresque tank controls for something more akin to a modern third-person shooter. (though you can turn them back on in the options if you want.)
Shadow Man Remastered has manual save states too, which is a handy edition because the original checkpointing in the game was not great, and it may stop you from throwing your controller through the damn TV. (*cough*save before the final boss *cough*)
They’ve even added content cut from the original, including new levels, boss battles, and music from the game’s original composer Tim Haywood.
For anyone that remembers slugging their way through the original, all these improvements are very welcome and let the game finally shine in a way that the old console ports never could. Regardless of platform Shadow Man Remastered is the best way to play the game by a country mile.
Put in the role of Mike LeRoi, the titular Shadow Man, you must scour Deadside (the land of the dead) for Dark Souls (not that kind) to stop a plot by Legion, Jack The Ripper, and a group of psychos (based on real-life serial killers). This happy little band need the souls to power a big evil powered engine to raise an invincible army of the undead so they can invade the world of the living and kick start the apocalypse. Confused? Oh, you will be.
Deadside itself is a purgatorial wasteland constructed of bone and viscera. A grim and oppressive place full of winding passages, echoing caverns, and rivers of blood, populated by shambling husks and vicious monsters.
It’s a world you’ll want to get lost in; trust me, you will get lost. The world of Shadowman Remastered may be atmospheric to a fault, But the sprawling would of Deadside is about as easy to navigate as your average hospital. Everything looks the same, the signposting is minimal, and there are few friendly faces to ask for directions.
In short, the one quality of life improvement sorely missed is a map, but maybe that’s the point. The setting is purposefully ominous, uninviting and full of death; it was never going to be a simple jaunt down the shops.
It’s also a product of its time, as anyone who has any memories of early 3D games will attest to; signposting was all but non-existent. That is what hand-drawn maps and strategy guides in the back of CVG were for.
Is Shadow Man Remastered a bad game? Well, no, far from it. In fact, if you like collecting another kind of Dark Souls, you’ll probably welcome its winding map and challenging combat.
For everyone else, if you haven’t played it before, at least, it’s a slightly tougher sell. The map is mazelike and full of deliberately obtuse puzzles, there’s a lot of backtracking, and no hand-holding, in fact, the game bites it at every opportunity.
However, underneath its crotchety old exterior is an ambitious, well-written (especially by 90s standards) game, packed with memorable, twisted characters brought to life by an accomplished voice cast. (also a rarity in 1999, especially on the N64)
Shadow Man has always been a cult classic, and that hasn’t changed, but now more so than ever it feels like it’s stuck in a strange kind of limbo. When it was released in ’99, Shadow Man was an ambitious game, but consoles at the time could barely run it. Now, twenty years later, it runs wonderfully, but its mechanics, and to a lesser extent tone, seem almost antiquated.
That said, it’s clear that Shadow Man was a labour of love for everyone involved in its creation. If you want a trip down memory lane, have a bad case of 90s nostalgia, or want to play something not designed by committee for once, you could do a lot worse than taking a trip to Deadside.
