Everyone is put on this planet for a purpose. Some, from the moment they are created, are destined to be homeless, some will be intelligent and become head of a nation and some will sit on the sidelines looking in on everyone else. They may have a purpose, but what good is it to them if they have forgotten what it is? Shadow the Hedgehog fits neatly into this little category. "Who am I, and why can’t I remember anything?" He can find out the answers but you must help him!

The story begins after Sonic Heroes. Shadow has once again lost his memory (This is the kind of thing you’d expect from Big the Cat, not an Angsty Hedgehog). Shadow leans upon a tree, pondering over who he is. All he can remember are the names Shadow and Maria. Suddenly the sky turns scarlet and the skies above Westopolis become gloomy and dark. Aliens, only known as the "Black Arms" pour out of the sky and begin destroying everything in sight. As usual, Shadow acts the onlooker and starts to walk away from the city when the hoarse words "Shadow…" come from the leader of the Alien Army, Black Doom. He seems to know who Shadow is and demands Shadow to bring the seven Chaos Emeralds to him. Shadow doesn’t know this dude, but he needs to find out who he is so he runs off into the city and our story begins.

Now, when the game was revealed, the thought of guns being in the game made ignorant fanboys whimper, but in-game the guns are a nice little extra. They are NOT essential so all you people like, whats’isname, Jack Thompson (I doubt any of you are like him though) can play through the game using the usual homing attack and spin dash. However, even if the guns look different, there are only a few different ways you can shoot. Most act the same. In the game, nearly all levels are split up into three routes, Hero, Neutral and Dark. What Stage you go onto next is determined on which path you take on the current stage.

The Stages are fairly bland with many having the same theme running through them (i.e Iron Jungle and Prison Island or Glyphic Canyon and Sky Troops) but its not to say some of them don’t have nice level designs. Some Memorable ones are Circus Park, Westopolis and Lava Shelter. The Music is once again fantastic. Crush 40 are back and have been working very hard, with "All of Me" and "Never Turn Back" Jun Senoue provides the stage music with some very nice tunes (Lost Impact, GUN Fortress and Circus Park spring to mind) although there are many you just want to never hear again. Especially the ongoing techno-crap in "The Doom".

The Graphics in this game are average but there are some parts that really need touched up. Since when did Motorcycles have hexagonal prisms as tyres? And there are only around two CG scenes in each story, many of them repeated, not that I’m bashing them, the CG is the best thing about this game, which is sad, but nevertheless, Blur Studios deserves a pat on the back. Eggman’s ‘tache looks real and The craters on the ARK’s outer surface look terrific. All in all though, to get to the final story, you must defeat the ten standard endings. There are 5 that you take completely different routes, but the other 5 are just the same again but changing your alliance in the final level and fighting a different boss so the game becomes even more repetitive than Sonic Heroes.

The 2 Player system in the game is extremely dull, featuring re-used music from SA2’s Radical Highway. Although you can choose what colour you want your Shadow to be.

Overall, this game was okay but certainly annoying in many parts and there is very little Re-Play Value. However, if you like grown up words like Ramification, Reckoning and Bloodstream, then this is the game for you :p