Awesome
This game is action packed and cool. You get to use guns with the classic old school gang sonic, knuckles, tails, amy (etc...) only as allies though.

shockingly bad
this game belongs on dreamcast - if it were on dc I might give it 4 stars, but this performance by sega is just shockingly bad. This game is from the same era when sega staff were high on play-doh - and made Sonic Heroes - compared to Sonic Riders (which was released later and is 100% a return to form) this game will make you want to puke, I'm not kidding - I got so many bad headaches, the layout is illogical, the cg movies ruined with dumb subtitles, terrible controls - stupid abilities - bad level design - horrid colouring - you name it, this game's got it, and I don't mean good stuff - 'PUH' I spit at the wretched feet of yuji nake and bum a cigarette, what a total letdown.

Don´t trust game magazine reviews!!!
For no reason Shadow The Hedgehog gets bad reviews in all magazines and tests!
"Its one of the worst sonic games ever..."
"Its good that shadow’s the main character, so sonic hadn’t lost his face ..."

The reality looks different!
Shadow The hedgehog continues the story of Sonic Adventure 2 perfect!
The story is just great and reveals all the things Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes left in the dark.
The level design is awesome!
It combines the cool looking scene type of SA2 with the speed of SH. And its not like in SH, where action and speed were heavily separated! Now these two aspects melting together.
Also there are many different ways to clear each level, ensured through this Good-Neutral-bad mission aspect.
In many reviews the new gun-gameplay is claimed as something negative. But believe me! Even if you have to get used to it at the beginning it fits pretty well and gives the game an even better speed-feeling.

Also to mention: The CG´s (prerendered sequences) are really impressive and sort of the best I’ve ever seen!
Some really good bands like Magna-Fi, A2, and Crush40 of course had given shadow really cool new themes!
Off course the game has no really High-End graphics, but to be honest: No sonic-game is really awesome in a graphical way! And its not like the graphic of shadow is totally outdated!
Its even a bit better than the graphic of SH!

Enough of the pro´s! There have to be some con´s (like in every sonic game!):

1. In most situations the engine is reliable and you really will notice that Sonicteam did a good work and debugged it.
BUT: In some moments you have the SAME ODD collision-errors because it’s still the SAME ODD engine!

2. Even if I am an absolute Shadow-fan its just not satisfying to play JUST as Shadow in all stages! Even if you can use the second controller to play as the mission characters (like in Genesis-days) this is not more than a little gag! Sonicteam really had done a better job if they had putted the other characters in, too!

3. As good as the character themes are, as bad are the BGM´s for the stages! Just can’t keep up with the BGM´s of previous Sonic-games!

4. The English voice-cast is getting worse and worse! If you wanna buy the gamecube-version, better import it! ;) It will also have english language (and other languages, too) selectable for subtitles! That counts also for X-Box and PS2! Even if the Jap. voicefiles are on the disk you have to swap the AFS files ... better importing! XD

5. The greatest contra! The multiplayer-mode is just **** !!!
It just has 3 stages selectable, all players (max. 2 at a time) have to choose shadow just in different "outfits", and its not like always a cool race … just both players start at a different part of the stage and have to shoot each other until one dies!
JUST BORING!!!


So in short:
It has cool music, cut scenes, gameplay, story’s and level design!
The graphics are acceptable but nothing special.
Just playing as shadow is boring after e while has passed!
And the 2P-mode is the greatest **** Sonicteam has ever done!

Trust me ... You don’t want the english voices after you heard the japanese ones! So import it! It will be more than worth the money!