This game is fun.
I picked this up on a whim because i remember playing the demo 3-4 years ago. I read some reviews on it and was surprised to see that it got hammered by critics.
I bought and installed it anyway despite the bad reviews and found that i still found myself enjoying it for what it is.
This game is not for everyone, it can be overly difficult in some combat situations, the combat is not terribly intuitive when you are fighting more than one foe but it is still doable just with different tactics.
The games story is rather bland but it gets the job done. It kind of gives you a reason to go zipping around and exploring all these different dimensions, which by the way are all very nicely built and atmospheric for a game that's 5 years old now. Along with the story the voice acting is good but not great. The main character is pretty bland by main character standards.
What draws me in the most about this game though and makes me like it is its sense of atmosphere and exploration. Your just a dude that gets caught up in this paranormal crazy stuff and in turn you get to explore some beautifully created worlds and fight monsters with a swords and guns. That's right, you get to shoot skeletons, ghouls, and other creatures with a .50 Desert Eagle. I don't know of any other Action Adventure game that lets you do that haha.
I kinda knew what i was expecting when i bought this. Its a game that is developed by a Czech company, Black Element Software, that also did the FPS Alpha Prime a couple years back. Being an American myself, for some reason i tend to enjoy games that are made by obscure development studios in Europe or Russia. They tend to put a lot of passion into their games and i think it shows here in Shade.
Give Shade a shot, i think you too will find that you enjoy it more than the mainstream video game reviewers here in America did. Just remember, you will die, so you'll kind of have to have an old school gaming mindset.
Rating: 4/5
