Shadow Complex Notes

Let's play on hardcore to be masochistic

Washington DC
We see two swat team type soldiers sneaking along an alley. A man in a white power Armour suit drops in and takes one of them out. He looks along  the alley and the soldiers are engaging men in black types.
The armored man talks on the radio and says that a blindside is in operation and he has stolen an enemy powersuit. He asks permission to engage and is told to let the secret service handle it. He does not get permission but goes ahead anyway.

We get control
Left stick moves you character. Right stick moves his gun arm and aim.
Y is reload.
A is jump.
B is action.
X is run.
Right trigger is shoot.
Left bumper turns a flashlight on and off.
Right bumper triggers special weapons.

I move to the right and shoot a few soldiers. Then a helicopter attacks, pushing the right stick in it's general directions hits it and it doesn't take much to bring it down.
The powersuited man is called Dallas he tells someone that the vice president is safe, then the vice president is blown up. Someone called Lucien comes over the radio and tells Dallas that he has overridden his power Armour. Dallas drops to the ground.

The scene changes and a woman is standing in a field near a cave. She speaks to a man called Jason who comes up behind her. Seems they are new lovers and Jason and the woman are going to explore the caves. The girl goes down the rope first and then we get control.

The first thing we are told of is the flashlight. This is used to show which key opens doors. Seems we blow things open with weapons and only certain weapons open certain things.
The flashlight shows us which we need.

We drop down the hole into the cave.
We are shown that we can jump higher by pressing and holding A.
We move into the caves and Jason can't find the woman who it seems is called Clare.
He finds her pack and we are told we now have climbing gear.
With this ability Jason can now grab higher ledges and climb up.

We now come to an artifical man made door, it is locked. I drop down a hole and the door of the hole closes up. Above Jason we see two soldiers kidnapping Clare and dragging her through the door. Once they are in the door opens up again and we can now go through.
There is a security camera which sees us, it's beam goes red, I run to the door under it and it seems to lose track of me.
In the next room is a grate in the ceiling which we are told might be interesting later on.
Jason sees a computer and finds the place where they have taken Clare.
We have to sprint past a camera.
We then go through a maze of air vents and come up in a control room. We can see a monitor where Clare is being beaten up by a soldier. A voice comes over the radio and tells the soldier that Mr. Sweet will interrogate her and to bring her to the helipad.
Jason has a flashback, seems his dad trained him from a young age to be a soldiers. The problem was that Jason decided he didn't want to be a soldier when he got older.
His dad tells him that one day he would find something worth fighting for, seems that day has come.
Jason picks up a gun and we are into the game proper. We are very easily killed. The complex is huge and I am geting lost already.
I find a big elevator which takes us up and down a 45 degree angle shaft.
It seems that the rooms marked with a star on the map allow us to save or are checkpoints.
I find a room with grenades, by getting into the room through a vent we are trapped inside. It does not take me long to put two and two together and find that placing a grenade by the door blows it open.
I get my first boss battle with a mechanical spider type beasty. We have to hurl grenades underneath it.
Good rag doll effect when you shoot the soldiers.
You can swim in the water and there is a section where you have to go under through tunnels coming up for air in little enclaves.
I catch up with Clare just as she is bundled into a helicopter and taken away. we have to fight a few soldiers and a walker, using only a crate as cover.
We get chased across a lake with a little island in the middle by a gunship.
Then we get into another section of the complex.
I find a wsmp50 machine gun, Jason uses controls to unlock an impassable door.
Guns have unlimited ammo.
We progress through a large area with lots of soldiers and a walker.
Then into a cell area where there is a vertical lift.
We get to Clare and she is being tortured by Mr Sweet, whom Jason makes short work of.
Clare is paralysed and can't move. She tells Jason to leave her in the torture chamber until he can secure transport.
Leaving Clare behind I come across an emplaced gun, we get a full 3d shooter type section when we use it. Which is quite fun.
I find a robot which uses a kind of foam weapons which immobilises you, you have to press B rapidly to break free of the foam.
I find a wheel to turn which fills an area with water so allowing us to swim to a place we could not reach before.
I find a green object which is attached to pipes, throwing a grenade into the pipe sends fire spewing out of the other end of the pipe which usually ends at the cover place of some bad guys.
I find the MP40 machine gun.
I find a mine cart that you have to ride and jump off to get across a wide chasm.
There is a little stealth section, two guards patrol through laser fences, you have to hide in vents and as the men patrol the fences switch off for them, this means if you follow them in the vents you can get past.
A cut scene shows Jason trying to steal the power suit we saw Dallas wearing at the start of the game, however he only succeeds in getting it's jetpack.
We now have a bit of backtrackking to go and find the suit which has been moved. The boss of the facility is now annoyed and thinking we are more than just an intruder with a gun who has been lucky so far.
We encounter pipe joints that we can shoot, shooting them in the order they come in lets us flood an area and raise the water level enough to get to the next area.
Another boss battle, a huge mechanical spider again, this time it we have to flood it to kill it. Shooting the pipe joints while avoiding the rocket fire.
I find the scuba mask.
Now we have more backtracking to get to the next part of the omega armour.
However this is more fun as the entire area is now flooded. We see bodies and debris floating around gracefully, there is even tinkly music to accompany.
Getting through to an area we were in before I find I can now go down a long flooded chasm as we have infinite O2 due to the mask.
We get to a factory and Jason speaks to Clare on the radio, he tells her that these people are building enough ordnance to invade a country. Clare suggest it's their country. She implores Jason to try and sabotage the factory. He reluctantly agrees.
In the factory superhot pieces of something kill you fairly quickly.
This is a real maze with lots of soldiers to kill. Lots of secret vents.
There is a large fun shooting gallery section on an emplaced rocket launcher.
I find the foam gun???
There is a room with six presses in it, shooting foam into intakes jams them and breaks them. This seems to be enough to make the automated factory break and we have completed our objective.
Clare now wants us to go to the dam and get the omega suit.
Earlier we have met doors with security scanners, these can now be passed by shooting them with foam.
I now find a robot that can be immobilized with foam and used to reach a hard to get ledge.
Now a real irritant, water that is electrified and nearly instant death.
This really does gip, first really bad design choice so far.
Turning off in disgust.
So far 4:26 on the in game clock and that was over two play sessions.
Back again, manage it by extending the platform a little using foam.
Now we are doing a little backtracking before getting to the new areas.
A spider boss comes at us again.
We cross the lake outdoors again. There is a turbine blocking our way and we have to foam up the innards to progress.
The helicopter attacks again, this time we have a foam emplaced gun to gum it up with.
We are now into the storage area of the omega armour.
We have to turn off the laser force fields using a computer in the basement and then back up to the armour.
The armour has an a.i. and it says that five components of the suit are missing.
I get to a room where four machine gunners are standing in the distance, they cut me to pieces, there are cover plates that move seemingly of their own accord.
Hiding behind the plates and shooting is the way to go though it seems a bit glitchy with the aiming downrange sometimes.
The next area is a boss battle with a man in a similar suit to your own. He is fairly easy as I did it first time with little trouble.
I get the first component of the suit, it as a friction dampening device which allows you to run at high speeds and kill soldiers and break crates as you do so.
Interesting little puzzles with jumping and getting a good enough run up to smash through barricades of crates.
Another easy boss fight against an armoured opponent.
We now get a new gun called an ar60.
Our next objective is to get back to Clare.
This is a long but fairly quick trek through the earlier parts of the game, the objective seems to be to pick up the secrets that you could not get earlier, like doors that could only be opened using the foam to gum up machines.
When we get back to clare, guess what, she has been found and is being taken somewhere else in the clutches of guards.
I get another weapon upgrade in the form of missiles.
I can now open all the red doors we have been seeing with the missiles.
We have a showdown with two of the armoured soldiers and then a cut scene shows us getting Clare back to the jeep and away with instructions to call the cavalry. Jason decides to stay and wreak as much havoc with the terrorist plans as possible before the cavalry arrive.
We now are told to go and collect the remaining four pieces of the armour.
Backtracking through the complex as guided by the blue line we find a gear system that can be shot with the missiles to blow a hole into a new area.
Here we have a boss battle with a giant buzz saw type spinnign disc robot.
We now get the hook shot.
The hook shot is a short range grappling hook. It feels very bionic commando now.
There is a boss battle against a giant walker.
After the boss battle we find thrust amplifier after a little puzzle with electric force fields is solved.
I find the inertial element which is a gun.
We enter what looks like a control room and the masked leader of the terrorists gives Jason a speech telling him that he has done nothing to disrupt their plans really and it's time to die. The control room explodes and you have to get a good distance away from the location backtracking around ten rooms worth in a big hurry to escape the blasts.
Once done I go all the way to the last component, here I find that you must collect 11 pass keys to get it, I have around 5. Oh well that component isn't needed anyway it seems as the blue line wants me to go somewhere else. All the way back I go.
At the blue marker a cut scene shows the lake drain of water and a huge flying paltform lift off and start heading for San Francisco. The restoration leader chats about the roman empire and the new USA order mirroring it and building the greatest empire the world has ever seen.
This is the final battle. We have three missile platforms. Activating a computer brings up a nuke and then we get onto a targetting gun and have to fire it at the platform.
The platform shoots missiles back at you after you hit it. There are three platforms to activate and shoot the nuke then you blow up the platform. The restoration leader comes at Jason and rants at him. Clare shoots him in the head.
Clare and Jason have a spat about her really being an agent and bringing him into this. A helicopter arrives and they both get in, the credits then roll.

Proving grounds are like training or little challenges. around about 15 of them and some are very hard.

8:26 on hardcore
130 achievement points.