It's usually a bit exciting to reach the end of not just a game, but an entire series and say "yeah, I finished it" but I knew that wasn't gonna happen here. The Christmas episode for Jazz Jackrabbit 1 set about what I expected from this game: with a very short session that does little new but draped in snow... yeah, that's exactly what I got.
After the first game (and it's Christmas shareware episode) I can not say this is a franchise that started on the right foot with me. Between being way too zoomed in to run at the speeds the game wants you to and "clever" level design that served more either bounce the player around to take damage or send them a ways backwards, it just did not feel like a good game. However, it seems Epic Megagames learned from their mistakes the first time and released something that, while not spectacular, is certainly MUCH better this time around. Come on in.
When I started this game, I honestly had little idea what to expect. I've enjoyed everything I've played from this developer in the past. But on the other hand, the movies have a terrible reputation as a bad set of films. So when Epic Games was giving it away for free, I picked it up because "why not"? In the same spirit when the dice picked this, I was far from against it. Now as I finish it up, I walk away pleasantly suprised. Come on in and see why.
I knew this day would come. When you have an Xbox LIVE Gold account, you get "free games" once a month. (This is not the place to argue if the game is free or not since you have to pay for the account, so for the sake of argument, roll with it.) Unlike the games for Xbox One X and up, when your account expires, the 360 titles remain available to you, both to play and download at a later date, so I made a point to collect some here and there. This was one of those games. I knew it had a reputation as being one of the lesser games in the franchise, but at the time, I did not have any other in the series, nor was I willing to buy any of them. (Again a discussion for another time.) YEARS later the dice picked this one, as I knew they would one day. I had hoped, however, it would at least be an interesting, if not particularly good experience.... I was so wrong.
I have a confession to make. While I have made a point to get pretty much every system in the previous generation, there was one machine I never tried to get. I started with a PC and due to how different it played to anything I could get for it, my next machine was a Wii. Finally, the PS3 managed to build up enough of a library I was interested in that I couldn’t get on what I had already to make it worth picking up. But, despite having one of the controllers for it on my PC, I never found myself picking up a 360. It’s library was too close to the PC for me to give it much of a look, but it did have one game that I wanted to play. So when my brother moved out to his own place and left his 360 here, I decided I was going to get Shadow Complex for it. Now, as I finish it, I’m glad it didn’t spend the cash on the system, for I could not imagine this game being a system seller. But at the same time, I am glad I finally got the chance to play through what is ultimately a very good game on it’s own.