Shadow Man: 2econd Coming

Beyond the grave begins the battle for deliverance.

NA release: 28th February 2002 (PS2)
EU release: 8th March 2002 (PS2)
JP release: N/A
Developer: Acclaim Studios Teesside
Publisher: Acclaim
NGC Magazine Score: N/A
Mods Used: None

When I was playing though All N64 Games, I came across a few interesting games which I’d heard a lot about that all happened to have next-gen sequels that I had never heard about, due to not being released on the GameCube (and not being well remembered on other platforms). As I’m intrigued about these few games, I decided to include them as a bonus – did the GameCube miss out on not having them?

The first up Shadow Man: 2econd Coming, the horrendously titled (what’s wrong with 2nd Coming?) PlayStation 2 sequel to the beloved N64 Shadow Man. I absolutely adored the first game, so how does the sequel stack up, and why is it not fondly remembered?

Quite simply, it’s probably because it’s not a very good game. One big change is that it no longer feels like a big interconnected world – the metroidvania aspects are gone. Instead, it feels like a few individual levels with backtracking, just following a single path with no exploration. When I reached the hub world, which seemed to be a decent size, I was hoping for those elements to come back, but it was just a small dungeon and the hub is just a round room.

The levels themselves also lack the rich storytelling and horror of the first game. Everywhere in the original felt like it had an horrific purpose, and it was something you had to figure out based on what you saw. It made each location eerie yet wonderful to explore. The game is nowhere near as dark in terms of tone, although it is dark in that it is often difficult to see anything.

There’s also a day and night mechanic that is just annoying. At night you get to be Shadow Man, but in the day you turn into Mike LeRoi’s human form. Which means that at night, you can use your special voodoo weapons, don’t take damage from falls, can’t drown and produce some much-needed light. In human form, Mike can push blocks, which feels like they created this day/night mechanic and needed at least one reason for people to play as Mike, so took a basic thing Shadow Man could do and gave it to his human form.

In the first dungeon you do get a pocket watch that leys you switch, but this still means that you have to go through the very slow menu to change the time every 5 minutes to keep playing as Shadow Man.

The character designs have also been drastically altered. In his human form, Mike being ultra buff makes it look like he and Shadow Man aren’t the same entity, and Shadow Man now being a skeleton instead of a zombie just looks naff. The side characters also look pretty bad, with Nettie now just wearing underwear and Jaunty going from an Irish man to an actual leprechaun. Even his snake form is utterly ridiculous looking.

With all that said, Shadow Man 2nd Coming isn’t a bad game (awful character design aside), it just lacks everything that made the first game so special. It’s a shame to see as you can see little peaks of something that could have been special, but they seem to have been buried under troubled development.

Fine

Did the GameCube Miss Out?

In the long run, I don’t really think so, however, it had come out at the same time as the PS2 version, it would have provided a decent action adventure game to pad out the console’s library.

Remake or remaster?

With the same effort as the first Shadow Man remaster, some of the annoyance could be sorted, the original character designs brought back and some much needed atmosphere to the game. There are some design documents with some cut content and other potential things to use. But without drastic changes to the level layout, it wouldn’t reach the heights of the first.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to get the game. You also have to do some hex edits to the game file if you want to emulate it properly.