Shadow Man

Other products by Sony

Product Features

• Rated "M" - Animated Blood and Gore, Violence
• 1 Player
• Analog Control Compatible

Product Details

• ASIN: B00000K1V7
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches ; 5.6 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #19,060 in Video Games (See Bestsellers in Video Games)

Product Description

GameSpot

When a publisher lists Sylvia Path as inspiration for a new game, as Acclaim does with Shadow Man, you know you're dealing with a different kind of game (or at least a different kind of development team). According to its creators, the third-person 3D adventure Shadow Man was inspired as much by poet Plath, and painters Bruegel and Bosch, as by Mario.

But wintery New Englander Plath, for all her dark desolation, couldn't be farther from the Southern bayou, savage, exotic feel of voodoo New Orleans, where Shadow Man is set. Main character Mike LeRoi is an English lit graduate, and like many with such degrees, he has trouble finding work in his chosen field. He instead becomes a part-time hit man, spending his days sending men to the shadow world. His career is abruptly cut short, however, when he, along with his family, is killed in a car accident.

Meanwhile, Mama Nettie, a powerful force in the New Orleans voodoo world, dreams of the Apocalypse. She sees five serial killers open portals between the world of the living - Liveside - and the world of the dead - Deadside. And the Five guide the damned souls through the portals, then use them to take over Liveside.

In terror, Mama Nettie creates the Mask of Shadows, resurrects LeRoi, and implants the mask in his chest, transforming him into the voodoo warrior Shadow Man, whose task is to prevent the early Apocalypse Mama Nettie envisioned.

As Shadow Man, you load each hand up with one of 50 weapons, from the Shadowgun to the .50 Desert Eagle, enabling you to kill twice as quickly. Visibility in game environments is remarkable - you see well into the horizon, and the fog is far more for effect than cover-up. Iguana UK attributes this to its VISTA (Virtually Integrated Scenic TerrAin) engine, which takes advantage of binary space partition technology and essentially lets you see all the way to the horizon - without having to shroud anything in fog.

And the seeing is a pleasure when the graphics are as good as these. The version of the game we saw was running on a high-end PC with a 3Dfx card, so the graphics on the Nintendo and PlayStation will obviously be different. But the graphics are incredibly lush - and creepy.

From the Asylum to the London Underground, you'll cross over from the world of the living to the world of the dead, both equally unnerving in completely different ways: Each Liveside location is home to one of the serial killers (like the Florida Everglades, the New York tenements), and each Deadside environment is filled with dead people and zombies.

Because you can use both hands, you'll have the advantage of being able to do two things at once, much like a real person can - you can fire your gun with one hand and pick up keys, unlock a door, or perform some similarly useful action with the other. Or, as Guy Miller, project manager for Shadow Man, points out, you can do all kinds of things like "Killing, with two guns. Killing, with one gun and a voodoo weapon. Killing, with a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Killing, with a gun in one hand as you pull yourself up a cliff face with the other hand. Killing, with a voodoo weapon in one hand as you hang with the other hand from a rope suspended above a chasm.... The killing permutations of the player-character's ambidexterity are pretty much endless."

Shadow Man is a third-person adventure and bears the inevitable comparison to Tomb Raider. There is some similarity in play, but bringing that up seems to irk Miller. "Tomb Raider is fundamentally linear, fundamentally a flick-a-switch shooter, fundamentally annoying in that each jump you make must be pixel-perfect, and you get punished for not making that pixel-perfect jump. Shadow Man is nonlinear, is not merely a flick-a-switch shooter, will not punish you with pixel-perfect jumps, and has locational gameplay, inasmuch as the environments will dictate the type of gameplay." Gameplay, he argues, is instead a combination of Marioesque platform/puzzle-solving (about 50 percent) and bloody gore fests (50 percent).

Also, Iguana UK has designed Shadow Man as a more nonlinear game. You still have certain tasks that must be accomplished before others are even attempted, but you'll also play through sections where the levels can be completed in any order you choose, and some backtracking and zigzagging through levels is required in order to complete the game. But whichever path you choose through the game, all routes lead to a single end. "There's a mystery at the heart of the game," Miller says, "the answer to which'll blow your mind and make you wonder if you're really playing a game at all." (Staff)

--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc.

Product Description

After finding $20,000 in his cab, Mike LeRoi returns to New Orleans and lavishes expensive gifts upon his family. He soon finds out the money belongs to a crime syndicate that wants it back. To protect himself, Mike visits a voodoo priestess who casts a protective spell on him. However, the spell does not protect his family, and Mike falls into a coma when they are killed in a drive-by shooting. After recovering from the coma, Mike discovers that he has become a soulless warrior that must defend the realms of the living and the dead. Since Mike no longer has soul, he cannot die. When he runs out of energy to stay in the realm of the living, he is transported to the realm of the dead. In order to explore every aspect of the world, Mike will have to master the unique characteristics of each world. You take the role of the Shadow Man (Mike), as you run, jump, and shoot your way through the worlds of the living and the dead in an effort to stop the pending Armageddon in SHADOW MAN.

Alternate personalities, vast array of weapons, moves, characters, variety of lighting effects, based on the comic book series of the same.

Release Region: United States
Release Date: August 16, 1999

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Playstation Version Severely Disappointing, October 11, 1999

By A Customer

Durability:2.0 out of 5 stars Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars Educational:1.0 out of 5 stars 

I bought this game on the faith that it just might be of the graphic caliber of SoulReaver. Imagine my dismay when I actually saw it. My first instinct was to snap the disc in half, my second to return it. The graphics are boxy, flat and pixilated, the movements hardly refined and the transitions horrid. I would suggest you buy SoulReaver instead. Now that is a prime example of what can be done for the Playstation. Whatever you do, do NOT get this game for PSX.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shadow Man is scary and fun!, September 25, 1999

By A Customer

Durability:4.0 out of 5 stars Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars Educational:2.0 out of 5 stars 

When I first shelled out the 60 bucks for the Nintendo 64 version of this game I was a bit skeptical. The box made it look good, but I had been disappointed recently by Castlevania 64 and Superman (64). But this game really kicks butt!

Fans of Zelda 64 and Super Mario 64 will love this game, as I did. The game is very non-linear. In other words, you have no set goals at first, just freedom to roam around, searching for items and wasting freakies. The bad guys are pretty cool looking and at one point in time, when I was playing alone in the dark, I actually became scared! What fun!

Definitely get this game because it is well worth the money and will take you a while to beat. I bought a hint book and it's still taken me over 20 hours!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars best game of 1999, June 16, 2000

By A Customer

Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This game is the coolest game of 1999. You get to kill horrific ghouls and goblins while still having to solve puzzles. It is not a game you can just rent and conquer either. It takes a lot of time. So it is even better when you conquer it.