Mon, Jul 06, 2009 | 22:13 BST

Shadow Complex takes 10-15 hours to beat, but is beatable in two hours — wait, what?

shadowcomplex1

MTV Multiplayer got a chance to speak with Chair Entertainment about its upcoming Xbox Live Arcade side-scroller Shadow Complex. According to Chair co-founder Donald Mustard, his company’s game will be beatable in under two hours!

This, of course, conflicts with prior reports, which stated that running the game’s gauntlet would take anywhere from 10-15 hours. However, that’s also correct. As it turns out, Chair is including “sequence breaks” in its game. A sort of gaming artifact, sequence breaks allow players of games like Metroid to slip past sections of a game and acquire certain items before they’re supposed to.

Granted, sequence breaks are normally exploits discovered by players, but Chair claims it’s included the possibility of sequence breaks in the development of its game. Thus, the developer hopes Shadow Complex becomes the talk of the speed running town, and has even included an achievement for players who complete the game in under two hours.

Back in our day, we didn’t get any rashin-frashin points for speed runs, and we liked it. Kids these days.

14 comments

wz
06/07/09, 10:20 pm

There was this alternate path in Morrowind. I liked playing the game again using it.

Dr.Ghettoblaster
06/07/09, 10:44 pm

Why do publishers/developers/reviewers release this info (ie. the amount of time it takes to beat a game)? This is a semi-new current generational thing as I don’t recall this happening so much in the past, but now it seems like every game gets it’s own announcement.

I just don’t see the point in ruining part of the mystery/joy of playing a new game by spoiling the time before it’s even released.

Nathan Grayson
06/07/09, 10:50 pm

Money.

People want to know if a game’s worth their money, and time is the easiest pre-release measure of that, unfortunately. Not saying I like the practice; I love short games, if only because I don’t have enough time for longer games these days.

Granted, at least Chair had a good reason for ballparking the amount of time it takes to beat its game. I think designing a game around speed running is a pretty interesting concept, though it remains to be seen if Chair can pull it off without just making its game seem like it’s been poked full of holes.

Psychotext
06/07/09, 10:55 pm

Not really that unusual. You can complete plenty of games in an hour that would take 10 hours plus if you played it normally.

Dr.Ghettoblaster
06/07/09, 11:00 pm

Yeah that’s for sure….just seems like if a game can be beaten in 2 hours, they’d want to keep that info hush hush as it may seem to lessen the dollar value to some people.

No_PUDding
06/07/09, 11:27 pm

@wz…. What the fuck?

What is it?

wz
06/07/09, 11:32 pm

PUD: Kill a god, get the “special item” from his corpse, go to the most powerful Telvanni in the game.

No_PUDding
06/07/09, 11:35 pm

Oh right…. I thought you meant from the beginning, you still have to be like level 25 ish for that.

And it’s not the Telvanni who ends up helping you. Which(or who) is one of the msot awesome things ever in a game.

wz
06/07/09, 11:40 pm

Right. Except for when you get that scroll of opening a lvl 100 lock, 20 bottles of Sujamma, and whatever weapon you like. With the long-lasting flying spell from that shrine nearby getting the other special items is easy enough. The health drain is a problem, but you can use potions.

After a crash killed my far-advanced savegame, I was able to finish the main quest on lvl 2 or 3