Shadow of Destiny – Review

Overview

This is a beautifully executed noncombative time-travel adventure made by the team responsible for Silent Hill. It's not for everyone, but if you like to take your time unraveling a complex and involved story, you can't go wrong with Shadow of Destiny.

Gameplay: 10/10

The Basics

Shadow of Destiny is a pure adventure game - you talk to people, trigger some cinematics and actions by walking into certain areas at certain times, and solve some item-based puzzles, but you never fight anything. In each chapter, you have to ward off your death before the ''fated hour'', which involves a lot of chatting and time travel. Note that you need to power up the Digipad, your time travel device, before you can use it, and the cut scenes and events (many of which are essential to solving the puzzles) use up a fixed amount of time, so you have to make sure that you have enough time to get back to your era and enough power to get you there.

The Good

I loved the laid-back style of game play because it allowed me to explore, enjoy the atmosphere of the different eras and buildings, and try new things without worrying about some mutant jumping on me. The game also makes it easy to solve the major puzzles. First of all, Eike writes his thoughts down in a notebook that you can check to get an idea of where to go. In some chapters, parts of the street are blocked one way or another, limiting your movement and making it simpler to figure out what you're supposed to do. Town maps are also readily available, and the doorways of buildings that you can enter at various points in the game are marked by floating symbols. Likewise, items that you can pick up have a glowing aura about them. These features remove a ton of frustration potential from the time constraint.

Now, beating the game once is pretty painless, but finishing off each chapter won't be nearly as simple. Finding new cut scenes, conversations, and possibilities takes some exploration, and the ''side quest'' clues will NOT be saved in your notebook, so you'll need to pay careful attention. Not only that, there's an element of strategy involved, as some scenes take a while and you need to be able to get back in time to save yourself. Getting 100% on each chapter takes many replays, which might sound tedious at first...but the promise of multiple endings (each of which reveal different facets of the story), as well as smaller insights into the personalities of various characters in the game, make this an intriguing and fun process. Also, you can skip over cut scenes that you've already watched on previous playthroughs, so you don't have to waste time seeing the same events over and over again.

Two aspects of the game that I thought might be bothersome - the power crystals and the time limits - were handled very well. Crystals are plentiful, making it easy to stock up, and the design of the game is such that you can never be permanently stuck without power for your Digipad. At first, I was a bit worried about the time factor because timers have always made me a little nervous...but you generally get plenty of time to get things done, and the clock at the top of the screen seems like just that - a clock - and not a doomsday device. You DO have to be careful when trying to complete chapters, as you can forget to leave enough time for the essential cut scenes, pass the fated hour, and die, but I liked this as it added challenge to the game.

The Bad

There is very little that I disliked about this game. First off, there are only a few buildings in the town that you can go into, which seemed limiting to me - it would have been nice to be able to explore a bit more. This is understandable, though, as Shadow of Destiny is driven by cinematics, and adding more locations probably would have resulted in a multi-disc game. Also, if you run out of time in a chapter, you must start it over from the beginning, and none of the cut scenes that you watched will be saved, forcing you to watch them again. This can be tedious, especially if the chapter is long.

It's also worth mentioning that if you like combat, Shadow of Destiny might bore you. This isn't a problem with the game, just a reminder that its unique style won't work for everyone...no big deal. ^_^

Graphics & Sound: 8/10

For the most part, the graphics are terrific. The game's finely drawn scenery shows all kinds of small details you'd expect to see in a town's streets and buildings, bringing the setting to life. Well-done lighting and snow effects add to this realism. Some cut scenes have mild to moderate background flicker and ''dripping'', but I was too busy looking at the beautifully rendered people (and animals!) to be that bothered. The characters in this game are incredibly lifelike, making subtle natural-looking movements during the cut scenes, including convincing facial expressions. These details made the characters seem real to me, drawing me further into the story and making me feel sympathetic towards them. Even the cats are animated well (and adorable, too). ^_^

Shadow of Destiny's soundtrack is mood-setting yet mostly unobtrusive. (My personal favorite track: the pleasant, peaceful song played inside the museum.) Though the voice acting can be bland, I thought it was pretty good overall and helped establish the realism of the characters.

Fun Factor: 10/10

Shadow of Destiny is very enjoyable to play. Though short on traditional game play, it works so well because it delivers the most important elements of a story-based game: well-developed characters and an interesting plot. Unraveling different parts of the story and various facets of the characters' personalities is exciting rather than tedious because the developers took the time to build a player-friendly game engine, design a believable setting, and populate it with realistic, likable people. At some points, I actually felt as if I were manipulating the lives of actual residents of an existing German town. No game has seemed this real to me, and I'm looking forward to more like it.

Overall: 10/10