You can deviate from the line to find the various power-ups and hidden items scattered throughout the game, but you'll mostly be following a linear story line. The player has a bright blue line that guides him through the complex, taking him from location to location until he's completed the story. The first is more clearly based on Metroid Fusion instead of Super Metroid. There are two basic ways to play Shadow Complex. Fortunately, the strength of Shadow Complex isn't in its story line but its gameplay. The title attempts to toss in a few twists and turns, but most of them are so predictable that I wasn't even aware they were supposed to be twists until the game told me so. Almost nothing interesting happens throughout the game as Jason takes on cardboard villains with poorly explained goals. Its cut scenes are few and far between, and are mostly ignorable. Shadow Complex follows the Metroid idea of storytelling.
Before long, he'll have to use the suit's powers to save America from the organization's deadly plans. Along the way, he encounters the Omega Suit, a special prototype power armor that grants him the ability to take on the mysterious organization's strongest troops.
Jason's girlfriend is promptly caught and since Jason is an upstanding fellow, he tries to rescue her. While spelunking, they come across a mysterious paramilitary organization's hidden base, where a hidden army is launching a plot to take over the United States. Shadow Complex stars Jason Fleming, a rather normal young man who is out on a spelunking expedition with a new girlfriend. Shadow Complex is set in the universe of Orson Scott Card's "Empire" novel series, but except for a few mentions of events that occur within the novel, the game stands on its own. Considering we haven't seen a new 2-D Metroid since the GBA's Metroid Fusion, the concept of more Metroid-style gameplay, even without Samus Aran, is deeply welcome. The end result is a game that is Metroid through and through, although we're missing the vampiric space jellyfish. In some ways, the game feels like a lost spin-off instead of its own franchise.
One of the in-game achievements is even called "Jason Bailey," a reference to the infamous "Justin Bailey" code for the original Metroid. Every aspect of the game is inspired in some way by Samus Aran. Shadow Complex, on the other hand, embraces the " Metroid clone" wholeheartedly. After all, the Metroid franchise is one of the most highly regarded in gaming history, and it's tough to live up to such high expectations. For many games, the term " Metroid clone" would be something that developers want to avoid.