I bought Shadow Man during the Insomnia sale due to the facts I really like Soul Reaver and other action-adventure games from the mid to late 90s and people were telling me how similar the two titles were, and to move sales along.

Obviously, I wasn't expecting it to be as good as Soul Reaver, mostly out of all the bad things I had already read about it, but, still, I decided to ignore them. I mean, how bad could Shadow Man be? I've been playing video games for more than 25 years, now, and I played my fair share of bad ones and actually persevered through them and finished them. I am no graphics junkie, I can stand mediocre gameplay, so I was expecting a game I could actually enjoy. As it turns out, I was wrong.

First of all, that gunshot sound effect. I thought people were overreacting, exaggerating. Well, they weren't. That sound effect is indeed the worst I have *ever* heard in any video game. And, unfortunately, you have to listen to it time and time and time again, especially given the amount of hits enemies take to get killed. Speaking of which, what's up with that?! Enemies respawn every time you die and you have to clear the whole area again, taking huge amounts of time because even the most basic of zombies takes 4 to 5 hits to kill. For a game that relies (or should rely) this heavily on exploration and puzzles -- albeit simple ones -- this issue is no small problem, it's not like you can overlook it and enjoy the game, particularly when the second zombies can kill you pretty much instantly if they come near you. I have a charge shot, but that doesn't seem to do much. Also, the lock-on mechanic seems broken, and I end up not using it at all, basically shooting my gun and relying only in the basic auto-aim the game has. To be honest, I don't even understand how you kill enemies, from what I understand, you have to bring them to their knees and shoot a finishing bullet. It would be better if they took a few hits to kill and that'd be that.

The game does seem to have a pretty decent story to it and I quite enjoy the setting and the premise, but I'm utterly unable to enjoy those things with a gameplay as clumsy and broken as the one it has. It's just not fun or intuitive to play, just frustrating and boring. Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot and shoot yet again while the enemies kill you, just to die and come to the area you died in again hoping at least you killed one of them so you'll only have to deal with one instead of two. And don't even bother saving or quitting, or you'll have to start from the beginning of the whole area, rinsing and repeating the whole enemy dispatching routine.

Buy it for nostalgia, if this was indeed a game you played when you were younger and you're familiarized with all its rules, perks and subpar gameplay, but avoid it altogether if you're coming into it for the first time, would be my advice.

Well, I can see where your're coming from:
The shadow gun sound is indeed quickly becoming annoying, and the fighting can get tedious.
But I think the game gets very rewarding and atmospheric after the beginning.

The strafe aiming is very important, if not manfatory, without it you will miss enemies that are farther away. When you ready the gun and start moving sideways, a target recticule will appear on the nearest enemy you're facing to. This will stay as long you keep moving and firing.

Also, use only loaded shots from the shadow gun, they're way more effective.

Yeah as Guter points out use charged shots from the gun as Shadow Man

also the enemies don't respawn after you die, The ones you have killed prior to death stay dead.

About respawning... Enemies only respawn if you leave the area and come back. If you do the following:

- die and restart from a checkpoint;
- use the teddy to teleport to the checkpoint within that level;
- save the game and load it later; and
- spend any amount of time in that level,

enemies do not respawn. Therefore you're better off exploring that level fully before moving on if you don't want to deal with all the enemies again. Of course, you won't be able to access some areas without certain items. If you're a completionist like me, you'll want to return to that level once you have the proper gear, which will respawn all the enemies. But the developers were smart and did everything to reduce annoyance – the areas accessed with special items are almost always near the checkpoint. In most cases you won't encounter a single enemy on your way to them, or a few at most.

As for the annoying sound, there's a file somewhere on the Internet. If you put it in the appropriate folder, it will replace the original gun sound with something easier on the ears. I downloaded the file to use when I grow frustrated with the sound, but I never felt bothered by it, so I kept the original sound file.