I feel likeBandai Namcotricked me, but I’m not mad about it. WhenI first got my hands on Shadow Labyrinth- the upcoming Metroidvania re-imagining ofPac-Man- last month, I had a blast swinging around on a grapple hook, solving puzzles, and slicing-and-dicing my way through hordes of alien freaks. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what kind of game Shadow Labyrinth was frommy short time with it at PAX East, but after playing a longer section of the game last week, it turns out I was very, very wrong.
Shadow Labyrinth is an action-packed and highly mobile Metroidvania - that part was true. But what I didn’t realize about it before is that this game is designed to make you cry. Other writers who attended the preview with me were calling it Pac-Souls. I know it’s cliche to compare everything to Dark Souls, but believe me, Shadow Labyrinth is one sadistic son of a puck.
A Search Action Game For Sickos
WhatI played this time around started about a third of the way into the game, in a hub town called the Bosconian Village. The Bosconians - a reference to the 1981 Namco shooter, Bosconian - are an alien race who have come to the alien planet where Shadow Labyrinth takes place because the evil that infects this planet threatens their homeworld too. I knew Shadow Labyrinth had a connection to Bandai Namco’s interconnected USGF Timeline, but I didn’t know how deep the lore would go. Evidently, Shadow Labyrinth hosts a pretty meaty sci-fi epic.
This section is before the level I played previously, so I didn’t have access to the grapple hook or some of the other abilities you acquire later on, which did make me feel pretty vulnerable. The goal for this section was simple: Follow three paths to collect three gold tiles, then connect them together to create a key that opens the door to the next area. As it turns out, this was much easier said than done.
Each of the three paths represented a different kind of challenge: combat, platforming, and puzzle solving. The puzzle involved rolling a series of boulders down different paths to break through walls, and it was no sweat. The other two… I’m going to have nightmares about the other two.
Fighting For Your Life
The combat path is a series of five rooms you have to fight through, one after the next, with progressively more dangerous enemies, and without any checkpoints. The first room throws a mob of little goobers at you who die in two hits, but charge at you with spears.
There are three ways to avoid taking damage. you’re able to dodge rolls, which gives you some i-frames to pass through attacking enemies, you can parry, which throws the enemy off balance, or you can block, which covers you with a Smash Bros.-esque bubble that breaks once it’s taken enough damage.
The parry window is razor thin, and while it’s easy enough to block a dink walking towards you with a spear, anything moving faster than a shopping cart rolling down the candy aisle is pretty hard to time. You can’t spam the parry, nor can you activate it right out of an attack combo (there’s a half-second delay), so if you’re facing multiple attacks from different directions, the parry won’t save you.
The block has its own shortcomings. A big hit from a large enemy will shatter it instantly, while multiple hits from small enemies do the same. It also won’t stop the aliens from attacking, so if you get caught in a combo, you’re probably going to end up with a broken shield and a bunch of missing health. Shadow Labyrinth uses a flask-style system to heal, so every potion you pop is one you won’t have later as you move down from floor to floor.
Note: Ideally, you’re using Puck to consume every monster you kill to acquire new crafting resources. You only have two seconds to do this before the body decays, and in the heat of battle, it’s not easy.
This gauntlet was hard. Partly because I had to jump into a section several hours into the game with no experience, but even if I was warmed up, it still would have taken me double-digit tries. There’s a huge variety of enemies in just this one challenge, each with their own attack patterns and parry timings. It’s a lot, and I didn’t even get the impression that this is meant to be a particularly serious battle.
Sawblades And Laser Beams
Any anguish I felt about the battle tower was nothing compared to the suffering that the platforming path put me through. I didn’t know there were demons working at Bandai Namco. This lengthy obstacle course combines moving platforms, disappearing platforms, rotating saw blades, lasers that turn on and off, and the extremely unintuitive mini-puck mode, AKA Pac-Man Spider-Ball, that has Puck zooming along walls and ceiling using an oddly angled jump to avoid obstacles.
On top of all the precision platforming, you also have to contend with time limits. Exit doors slam shut if you aren’t able to reach them quickly enough, putting even more pressure on your platforming skills.
On top ofthat, you only get one checkpoint about halfway through, which means you’ll likely end up dying and redoing sections you’ve already conquered over and over and over again. The final challenge is a long mini-puck race against time that requires you to avoid touching lasers and razors that constantly fly at you. If you die, you’ll end up four challenges back that will need to be repeated.
God Have Mercy On My Pac-Man
And after all that, once you’ve collected the three tiles and opened the door to the next section, there are even more platforming and combat encounters - though not quite as punishing as the first set. Bandai Namco gave me three hours to play through both of these sections, fight a boss based on Pinky the ghost, then fightanotherboss based on the killer from Splatterhouse, and in three hours, I only managed to barely make it to the Pinky fight.
So I signed up for another session. I don’t like to give up, but more importantly, despite my frustration and frequent outbursts of “OH COME ON!” I still had a lot of fun. Shadow Labyrinth is a much more intense experience than I expected - even after playing it once before - but now that I know what I’m getting into, I’m up for the challenge. I should have known better. Namco’s catalog is filled with brutally difficult games, and Shadow Labyrinth is an ode to that legacy. I just thought the studio had softened in its old age. Boy, was I wrong.
