"And into Asylum – like a great, black engine roaring to eternity, ravaging the already benighted landscape with its savage, malevolent presence. And within, the legions of the truly damned. Insanity, sheer and stark and once in human form, now gutted and torn by eons of glutted indulgence. This is what the tandem cycle of random violence breeds. A vengeful black hit-sludge with a grudge hath brought the reaper you've sown in the goo of your guilt, as the créme-de-karma is roosting home to harm ya. It always ends up boning the poor. The horror. The horror. I embrace it." - Michael LaRoi, Shadow Man

You can file Shadow Man under "games I've never heard of until they've been remastered." I am not normally in the mood for a late 90s third person search-action game, but I guess I found out about this one at the right time, because in the moment, I was. Maybe it's because everyone I know is enjoying (or attempting to enjoy) Metroid Prime: Remastered, leaving me with an unsatisfied search-action itch. You may be willing to shell out 40$ for that game, but I'd prefer to spend my money on a shirtless Cajun man who shoots fireballs out of a skull in hell. We're built different.

Having zero experience with the original release of the game means I have no appreciation for what was changed. This puts me in a bit of an odd position, because I know Shadow Man Remastered made a fair number of tweaks, including restoring a whole lot of cut content, but with zero frame of reference for how the game played at the time, it's difficult to hold it to the same standards I would have in 1999. Michael doesn't control great, he'll sometimes veer off in the opposite direction you're holding the stick, mapping the lock-on to R1 means clawing the controller awkwardly when using a dual-wielded weapon on R2, and sometimes he just rolls for no reason, and for all I know this is a consequence of trying to retain the feel of the game but map it for dual analog controls. Conversely, the map selection screen will helpfully list what you're missing in each area to prevent you from ever becoming truly directionless (something that would otherwise be incredibly easy given the game's structure), and I have no idea if that was part of the original experience or an invaluable quality of life change for the remaster, but it's good and I appreciate it. Shadow Man Remastered is just a mixed bag like that.

It would be wrong of me to not draw attention to the fact that Night Dive provides plenty of options for tweaking the look and feel of the game to your tastes, so the aforementioned issues I had with the default control scheme can be somewhat alleviated. You have less control, however, with the in-game content. In true search-action fashion, you'll need to collect various key items to progress further into the game, but you'll also need to accumulate power from Dark Souls scattered throughout every level to power up your primary gun and open up sealed "coffin gates." Checking How Long to Beat, Shadow Man Remastered will take you, on average, a little over 20 hours to complete. I came in at about 18, and I think the game has no business being over 12. This isn't due to the amount of content added - in fact I think a lot of that is good and the game would be weaker without it - so much as it is due to Dark Soul hunting becoming progressively more tedious. There was a certain point where I found myself looking at the level select screen, seeing things like "find 2 Dark Souls" and asking myself if I really needed to as like, a requirement to beat the game. Just a bit too much of that if you ask me.

That's not to say Shadow Man's core progression is inherently bad or anything, it's just a tad excessive. For the majority of the game, you'll find yourself getting the same dopamine hit you would in Metroid or Castlevania when you open up a whole new area tucked away in a previously explored location. I also found Shadow Man's story to be engaging and charmingly corny. I remarked to my friend, Larry Davis, that the writing reminded me of the sort of over-the-top dialog you'd find in an early 2000s comic book - edgy and verbose. That's when I was told that Shadow Man was based on a comic book series written by Garth Ennis, and it all made sense. Apparently, Ashley Wood good their start drawing Shadow Man, too. Very interesting, everything I just said.

There's also some really great and totally superfluous stuff you can find in the item menu, like a dossier that provides an incredible amount of information on The Five (the game's core group of antagonists), as well as a very thoughtfully designed document that pours over the engine block and other hellish machines found in Deadside. All of your targets are appropriately creepy and off-kilter, and they all seem to be based on both real and ficticious serial killers, like Avery Marx, who is clearly inspired by Ed Gein, or Victor Batrachian, who has a lot of Hannibal Lector in him. The small cast of supporting characters are also a lot of fun, and I wish the game gave you more reasons to visit them. Mama Nettie, a voodoo priestess who apparently has to straddle Michael as part of her rituals (hot) is great, and I love Jaunty, a top hat wearing skeletal snake that speaks in an Irish accent (hotter) who is Mike's confidant in Deadside, and who works as a perfect foil to his overwrought narrating. Michael himself always feels like he's about to slip into full Xavier: Renegade Angel mode every time he pontificates about the nature of Deadside and his role within its hierarchy, and his line "The Dark Souls are MINE!" will forever be entombed in my mind.

Despite my fairly middling rating, I think a lot about Shadow Man Remastered is going to stick with me for the better. Still, some poor design elements coupled with its length ultimately make this a game I find pretty average overall, the sort of game I can say I had a good enough time with but which I'm also unlikely to return to. Anyway, I'm looking forward to Night Dive's remake of System Shock, which I'm sure is coming any day now... Mhm, definitely happening this month uh, this May, I mean um, this year. fuck, god danmit