The damage is $19.99 USD, more or less in your currency, and takes an impressive 6 GB worth of hard drive space. That's the one potential snag in this digital distribution wonderland isn't it? I mean, I like to have an extra 20 GB worth of extra space, in case of emergency. But, hey, Gears of War is a fun bit of violence and it sure does look nice, so if you prefer your games distributed this way, have at it.

Gears of War [Xbox Live Marketplace]

The Warsaw-based developer filed that trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last week, specifically for "Computer software for use with personal computers, for use with home video game consoles for use with televisions, and for use with arcade-based video game consoles for use with televisions." That's long for "video games."

It also filed a Bulletstorm trademark for "Printed materials; user manuals; hint books," so expect a manual to go along with it.

While not yet officially announced, Bulletstorm is likely that new "multi-platform game project" from Epic Games that Electronic Arts has agreed to publish, back when things were a little rosier for EA, amid a flurry of EA Partners branded publishing announcements.

Epic Games announced its majority stake investment in People Can Fly back in 2007, following the Polish developer's work on Gears of War for the PC. Mark Rein, vice president of Epic, said at the time the company was "totally blown away" by People Can Fly's prototypes. And Mark Rein is certainly not known for hyperbole!

Bulletstorm [USPTO - Image Credit]

The Unreal Engine 3 will only run on third-generation iPod Touches and the iPhone 3GS, and the demo being shown is not a fully-operable game, just a stripped-down version of Unreal Tournament.

Some elaboration from AnandTech from their meeting with Epic Games V.P. Mark Rein:

Epic isn't announcing any sort of iPhone engine licenses nor are they entering the iPhone game market. Porting UE3 to the iPhone is simply one of many projects being worked on inside a newer, more svelte and innovative Epic Games (wait till you see what's next...)... Mark said they planned to make this available to licensees at some point in the near future.

And here's a thought experiment: How about a recent Epic hit ported to the iPhone?

...eventually it wouldn't be too far fetched to see a full port of Gears of War to something as small as an iPhone. NAND Flash capacities to support multiple 9GB games will be there in another few years, as will GPU horsepower.

According to the site, Rein said that Unreal Engine 3 support will be announced for "another mobile platform" at next month's CES, the biggest tech show of the year.

Epic Demonstrates Unreal Engine 3 for the iPod Touch/iPhone 3GS [AnandTech]

"The hard part is to make [Gears of War] into something that doesn't feel like a world torn asunder and people just in battle," Godfrey tells Making Of. "I think we really want to focus on the idea of a world that's running well and then it's Emergence Day."

Godfrey says he pictures the film—to be directed by Underworld director and Kate Beckinsale husband Len Wiseman—telling a story of the survival of "those 48 hours" following Emergence Day, likening the experience to 2008's big monster movie Cloverfield.

He also says this. Help me decipher it. "Trying to tell the epic story of an alien planet that's living in a horrific environment just feels like the wrong move right now," Godfrey tells Making Of.

If that means something to you, please, let us know your interpretation in the comments.

Wyck Godfrey reveals Gears of War details [Making Of via Kokugamer - thanks, Jiby!]

"We are very excited to see the uptake of UDK cross over the 50,000 mark in only one week, and we're looking forward to seeing amazing games and applications come out of it," said Mark Rein, the vice president of Epic Games.

Rein added Epic was "thrilled" to offer the kit to schools and students and that Unreal Engine 3 would be part of their education and training in games development.

GamesIndustry.biz reported that the training firm 3D Buzz, which has already made more than 100 Unreal Technology video tutorials, will release a free tutorial series specific to the UDK.

50,000 Grab Free Unreal SDK In One Week [GamesIndustry.biz]

That narrows it down to about 75% of the company's product line, meaning it could be related to Epic Games' Unreal Engine, the Unreal franchise or the Unreal Tournament franchise. Or it could be a new Unreal product altogether. Or Epic Games is screwing with us. What we're relatively certain it's not is a proper Unreal Engine 4, as Epic prez Mike Capps said that next-gen engine is still years away at this year's Tokyo Game Show.

So. Which is it? Best guesses in the comments!

Thanks to Jos for the heads up.

The site is running a post-mortem about the game all week, which would be interesting enough based on Shadow Complex's roots as a dream project of the brothers running Epic-owned Chair Entertainment.

The look back at the game is all the more interesting due to the fact that people who make Super Metroid-style adventures seldom talk publicly about the process of designing the games and the maps that serve as their core feature.

Here's a bit from Chair's chief designer, Donald Mustard:

"We created these little grid blocks and lines. We did a lot of it by hand at first, but then we went and transcribed it all into [Adobe] Illustrator…you could literally see a side view of the map, it was all just gray, with lines and stuff. And we had a stick figure that represented the player, and we'd say, 'Ok, the player can jump this many units high.' And we had a little graph that showed how high you could jump and how long it would take to build up to a speed run and stuff like that. So we'd 'play through' the entire game with this little stick figure guy."

Check out the MTV post for a bigger look at this prototype map and for more on how the game came together.

Exclusive: 'Shadow Complex' Prototype Map Revealed [MTV Multiplayer]

In an interview with OXM UK, Rein says he also considers Unreal the "economic engine of Natal," the platform upon which developers should go to if they "want to get a big headstart and use the same tech as Microsoft." Sounds official enough to us.

Rein also says that, going forward, don't be surprised if you see Natal's motion and voice detection control schemes in future Epic Games titles.

"I have no idea what we're going to do from a game standpoint, but from an engine standpoint, it's definitely cool stuff, and we will support it," he says. "I think any future Xbox games we make will have some Natal support."

Mark Rein Interview [OXM UK via GameSpot]

Capps said that the Tokyo office would focus "mostly [on] technical support and sales support," with Epic Games having an "expectation of much closer relationships with Japanese studios." But, after praising the Japanese development community as one of the strongest in the world, he said "we may have secret plans to hire some Japanese game developers too."

Capps said that publisher/developer Square Enix—which licensed Epic's game engine for The Last Remnant—embedded a handful of its developers at the company's Raleigh headquarters to study Epic's processes. Epic later returned the favor, sending some of its staff to Square Enix to support the dev team. Capps said that the Unreal Engine team's size—about 20 people—prohibits the team from making visits like that frequently, something that the Tokyo based office aims to rectify.

Epic currently has an office in Seoul, Korea to handle similar support efforts.

For the past week or so, some gamers and game reporters online have begun discussing the newly-released Xbox Live Arcade side-scrolling adventure game Shadow Complex in ways not intended by its creators. Stepping away from a discussion about how the game is one of the biggest downloadable titles ever made, a collaboration between a leading studio and some bright young talents, a love letter to the classic, but neglected, designs of Nintendo's early Metroid adventures, some gamers have instead debated whether buying Shadow Complex is an intolerable act of support for someone they view as an opponent of gay rights, novelist Orson Scott Card.

The debate around the game has provoked a rare discussion about whether the political, moral or religious views of people involved with making or promoting a video game — views so rarely discussed publicly by video game creators — should or would affect whether a person buys a particular title. Fun factor's got nothing to do with it. Or does it?

Kim Wong has discovered that moral views of creators do matter to him. He cannot countenance the involvement with Shadow Complex of Card. The acclaimed science fiction author has written that practicing homosexuals should not be treated as equal citizens and has described gay rights as a "collective delusion." He has supported legal movements to block laws that would allow gay people to marry.

In a phone interview this week, Wong told me: "I decided I could not in good conscience support a product of a person whose views I find abhorrent and knowingly give him money. In my everyday life I probably give enough money unknowingly to bigots or at least to people whose personal and political views I find distasteful."

Card was not the main creator of Shadow Complex. He did not conceive it nor code it. His name has been used in the game's promotion by its developers and publisher, Microsoft, to trade both on the renown for his classic novel, Ender's Game, as well his 2006 book, Empire, which was based on the same fiction as Shadow Complex: a Right-Wing-vs.-Left-Wing future American civil war crafted by members of the new game's development studio, Chair Entertainment.

Card, who has expressed his views about homosexuality in more detail than can be summarized in a sound bite, has, for years, bristled at accusations that he is a homophobe, establishing his views about homosexuality in the context of his faith as member of the Church of Jesus Crhist of Latter-day Saints, a faith, like those of Catholics, that deems the practice of homosexuality as a sin. (Card did not return Kotaku's requests to comment for this article.)

While Card's writings and efforts to ban gay marriage have sparked outcry from Wong and other gamers who say they won't buy Shadow Complex, those involved in the creation of the game had not commented publicly about this debate until now.

The Creators Speak

"Card's political beliefs sure didn't come up during the game's development," Mark Rein, vice president of Gears of War development studio Epic Games, which owns Chair Entertainment, told Kotaku. He was speaking on behalf of Epic and Chair. "Even if they had, we don't discriminate when hiring or choosing partners based on people's personal beliefs. Heck, Gears of War was made by Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and even a few Canadians like me. It takes all kinds to make great creative games."

Game developers don't often flash their party affiliation or state their positions on ethical debates. Reporters like me rarely ask. We wind up knowing more about the moral beliefs of Hollywood stars and politicians than we do whether the person who created the year's biggest game thinks abortion should be illegal or that the Israelis or Palestinians are right or wrong. Will Wright's contributions to the Republican Party and Alex Rigopulos' to the Democrats become public in legally required campaign filings but neither the promotion of Spore nor Rock Band involves the discussion of America's Right and Left. If there is a block of Conservatives who are planning on not buying Beatles: Rock Band, I am unaware of them.

Even marginally more public statements about social issues don't seem to stir much gamer reaction. Two weeks ago at QuakeCon, programming legend John Carmack mocked the green movement and described the eco-friendly selling point of the Tesla electric car as a "sham," to little reaction and certainly no major debate about whether the next Doom he creates should be bought by those who consider themselves eco-conscious.

Yet the opinions of Card, expressed so vividly and available so readily online have generated the kind of debate that appears to be costing the developers of Shadow Complex at least a few consumers.

Card has likened homosexuality to other predispositions to sin, like those of a hormonally active teenage boy. He told Salon.com in 2000 that he found charges that he was homophobic to be "ugly." But his critics have had an easy time making that charge, given the frankness of Card's writings.

"The Church has plenty of room for individuals who are struggling to overcome their temptation toward homosexual behavior," he wrote in a 1990 essay called The Hypocrites of Homosexuality that argued that practicing gay people should not have equal rights. "But for the protection of the Saints and the good of the persons themselves, the Church has no room for those who, instead of repenting of homosexuality, wish it to become an acceptable behavior in the society of the Saints. They are wolves in sheep's clothing, preaching meekness while attempting to devour the flock."

No one from the Shadow Complex development team has said whether they agree with Card. A few years ago, the author was referred to me by Chair's co-founder Donald Mustard as a friend. But there is an argument to be made that it is irrelevant whether Chair's team agrees or disagrees with Card or is friends with him or not. That argument was made by Peter David, the comic book writer and novelist hired by Chair to script Shadow Complex, and a man who may not have much more patience for Orson Scott Card than Kim Wong.

"My disagreements with Orson's politics are hardly limited to his views on gay marriage," David told Kotaku in an e-mailed statement. "We are at opposite ends of the political spectrum on pretty much everything. Why, then, did I agree to work on the game? Because among my most cherished beliefs is that, while I disagree with everything you have to say, I will defend to the death your right to say it. [Comic book creator] John Byrne has said no end of vicious things directed at me personally; I still buy his comic books because I like his work. I never, EVER, allow someone's stated opinions to impact on whether I support his work so long as those opinions don't transform the work itself into something that I have no desire to support.

"Shadow Complex wasn't a huge paying gig for me but I took it because I thought the developers were a nice couple of kids, and I found the story of a reluctant warrior being forced to find something worth fighting for to be a compelling narrative. By the same token, all the money in the world could not have gotten me to be involved if the story was something I personally found repellent."

To Boycott Or Not?

There is no sign that the debate about Card is significantly hurting Shadow Complex's sales even if the game and its developers' reputation are taking some abuse on gaming Internet forums. Shadow Complex has scored high marks from reviewers.

"It's up to the individual to make their own purchasing decisions," Wong told me, saying he does not advocate a boycott of the game. He said it's been easy to resist buying Shadow Complex, both because of the many other games available for purchase and because of how provocative he finds Card's views. "With good conscience I can't support that, and I would like other gamers to think about this issue as well."

I asked Wong if he had ever taken a similar stance. He said he has urged friends to avoid supporting advertisers who buy time on the shows of other public figures he disagrees with, like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. But he admits that it would be impossible to avoid supporting every product that was partially made by or connected to people whose views he dislikes. That's no reason to not take a stand here, he said: "With the limited voice that I have in the public discourse, I am choosing to voice my disapproval by not purchasing the game, as are the other friends of mine who have made the same decision."

The debate here echoes so many debates about supporting the work of socially controversial filmmakers and authors. It's doubtful whether there will be agreement about whether such debates are a sign of the gaming industry maturing or taking a sour turn. Will an expression of political views become a prerequisite for game developers in the future? Will gamers desire an explanation as to where the creators stand? Developers, writers and anyone else associated with a game might find themselves losing a possible fan — and maybe gaining another — based on the social views they express. It happens in most other forms of entertainment, whether relevant or not.

Aside from all of those options, there is another way this could be handled. Shadow Complex writer Peter David offered it: "If anyone wants to boycott the game and thus damage me or Chair while doing nothing to change Orson's opinions, that's naturally their right. Or...They can display the sort of tolerance for someone who is different from them that they feel is lacking in Orson and thus prove they're better. Your choice."

[Orscon Scott Card photo via Wired.com]

In Shadow Complex, our hero is Jason Fleming, a hiker who starts ill-equipped on his girlfriend-saving quest with little more than a flashlight and a fancy belt buckle. After stumbling upon a massive underground facility housing a rogue military force, it's clear that Fleming is in way over his head. But like Metroids past, Fleming gains new abilities and new weapons through equipment upgrades, granting him access to areas of the base where he'll find new abilities and even more powerful weapons.

Shadow Complex could quite possibly be the perfect balance of 2D gameplay and 3D presentation in high-definition that Metroid and Castlevania fans have demanded, but not yet received. Actually, you know what? It is.

Loved
The Sincerest Form Of Flattery: Shadow Complex borrows from the best, but stands capably on its own in the "Metroidvania" school. There are direct relationships between some of Shadow Complex's and Metroid's upgrades—Fleming's foam gun and Samus Aran's ice beam, for example—but Chair has brilliantly reinvented some, helping to differentiate the weapons in its Xbox Live Arcade title from the games that influenced it. Shadow Complex actually trumps some of Metroid's power-up staples, offering a triple-jump(!) and eliminating the need for a morph ball to enter confined space. Yes, Fleming can crouch and walk at the same time.

Turn On Your Flashlight: Shadow Complex is charitable enough to make scanning for secrets painless. Fleming's flashlight illuminates in an instant just what you'll need to bypass certain doors and air ducts. If they glow red, they'll require missiles. Purple doors require a foam shot. Green doors can only be destroyed with grenades. The flashlight makes scanning your surroundings effortless, something Shadow Complex completionists will likely applaud Chair for, if they've ever grown weary of switching on Samus' visor or slicing every brick in sight as Alucard.

100% Pure Love: There are over a hundred items—from gold bars to armor upgrades to health expansions—to discover and collect in Shadow Complex. The design behind keeping these items well hidden is brilliant, as some are genuinely tricky to find, even when you have a clear marker on the map showing you where a power up is squirreled away. This kind of exploration and studying one's surroundings is the kind of thing that keeps me up until 3 AM, going for "just one more save point." In my first play through, I only managed to find 99% of the items. Three still elude me, something I'll remedy in my second play through.

2D, Meet 3D: Shadow Complex looks gorgeous, particularly when the player ventures into the less industrialized areas or spends any time underwater. The environmental design manages to be varied enough so that even room after room of barracks and factory floors are recognizable. The addition of a Z-axis, letting players fire into the screen and beyond the 2D plane is a neat trick, but it's the twin-stick evolution of the Metroidvania formula that's far more enjoyable.

Power Levels On The 10s: What Shadow Complex borrows from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and the Koji Igarashi-directed games that followed it is the experience leveling system. You'll earn XP from killing enemies and uncovering new areas of the map, eventually boosting your stats, like stamina and accuracy. Chair makes this system interesting in two ways. First, if you chain together a series of non-standardized attacks—melee attacks, headshots, etc.—you'll receive an experience bonus multiplier for each kill, encouraging the player to be creative, while also making the action more frenetic. Second, at levels on the multiple of ten, Jason will get specialized bonuses, including a health boost and... somethings we won't spoil for you.

Proving Grounds: When you've burned through the main campaign enough times to do everything—finish it with 100% of the items, then with 13% of the items, then in under three hours on the hardest difficulty—you can enjoy the Proving Grounds. This is where Chair seems to have borrowed a bit from Portal, offering up a few dozen time-attack style challenges, putting your equipment skills to the test. Most are fun, some are sadistic.

Boost: By the end of Shadow Complex, you're a total bad-ass, raining infinite missile hellfire down upon whatever mech or armored soldier stands between you and the next door. And it feels good. Triple-jumping and hookshotting your way to almost anywhere is a pleasure. But honestly, it's the fact that we can slide down and up ladders that may be most satisfying. Thanks for that, Chair.

Hated
The Technicalities: For as good as Shadow Complex is from a gameplay standpoint, it suffers slightly—ever so slightly—from the occasional frustrating technical snafu. I've faced clearly demolished doors that wouldn't let me walk or swim through them. I've had the camera lock onto a spot during a scripted moment and get permanently stuck there. Beyond those bugs, the game's frame rate and dynamic lighting can take a little too long to catch up sometimes. And only one save slot? We're supposed to get three!

Shadow Complex has reset the bar for what we can expect from an Xbox Live Arcade title. It also happens to ranks among the best 2D Metroids and Castlevanias, thanks to its strong map and upgrade design. While outstanding graphically, it lacks in some of the visual and character charm offered by its forebears, partly because of its photorealistic near-future setting. There's also not much meat to the story—not like there ever really is in these games, but when yours is based on a series of books, it's worth flagging—or much all that appealing about Fleming himself.

But these negatives are the most minor of concerns. Shadow Complex is easily one of the best games I've played all year, appealing perfectly to my own Metroidvania collection addiction and priced well below the amount of carefully crafted content it offers. I can't emphasize just how much of a pleasure it was to play through this game and how earnestly I'm looking forward to returning to it.

Shadow Complex was developed by Chair Entertainment and Epic Games, published by Microsoft Game Studios for Xbox Live Arcade on August 19. Retails for 1200 Microsoft Points ($15 USD). Played single player campaign to completion on Normal difficulty, completed half of Proving Grounds challenges.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Tim Schafer, founder of Double Fine productions and the man behind Brutal Legend, and Cliff Bleszinski, Epic Games designer and the face of Gears of War, sent in a slew of shots from their offices.

Here's a taste, the rest you'll find in our epic gallery here.

So why did Chair opt to pursue a Metroid-style adventure for its second Live Arcade title? We sat down with Chair Entertainment creative director and co-founder Donald Mustard to find out. And to thank him.

"It seems like there was this huge void," Mustard said, saying that Shadow Complex explores a largely unexplored genre. "No one's making these kinds of games. So we decided, well, we're gonna try it. My biggest secret hope is that some awesome game designer will look at what we did and think 'I could do that even better,' and make a game that I can play."

"I already know where everything is in Shadow Complex, which ruins it for me," Mustard joked.

One thing, though. Someone is making these games, as Koji Igarashi and the Castlevania team regularly pumps out "Metroidvania" games on Nintendo's portable platforms. But Chair didn't look to Igarashi's creations, instead going to the source.

"We really looked at Metroid more than Castlevania," he said. "We made everyone replay Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission. Everyone on the team played that for a week or two, but I played them constantly... to the point where I had felt like I had cleansed my system of anything other than Metroid."

Mustard said he was cognizant of looking too closely at the inspiration behind Shadow Complex's game design, saying that there's "a fine line between doing a genre entry and doing a genre rip-off." After immersing themselves in Metroid, they avoided the title during Shadow Complex's two year development cycle.

"We sat down, talked about what we wanted the game to be and we started designing what we thought it would be — then we never looked at Metroid again," Mustard said. "Because we then wanted to make our own game. And I think it was pretty effective, capturing that vibe of Metroid. We didn't want to be seen as derivative."

What games like Super Metroid—and most Metroid games—didn't offer was much of a narrative, at least not on par with what we're expecting to see in Shadow Complex. That's a potential pitfall, considering how much time is spent backtracking and exploring, things that may interfere with a game-long story line.

"I think you have to tell the right story," Mustard says. "Because so much of that kind of game is exploratory, and if you're doing it correctly, has a strong non-linear element to it."

Of course, there is a Metroid exception.

"Metroid Fusion had a really strong story to it," he notes "That's one of the ones I looked at the closest. I thought, 'What are the pitfalls that they fell into while doing this?'"

"I think we tried very hard to structure the narrative more about a loose plot, but then kept it very character-centric. We were always trying to keep the narrative flowing."

Mustard is obviously concerned about being compared unfairly to the decades old Metroid series, lamenting that "we can't compete with nostalgia"—words borrowed from our own Stephen Totilo.

We'll have more from our interview with Chair at Comic-Con later this week.

While Dark Corners comes packed with seven new maps for multiplayer gaming, the thing that really sets this bundle of download content apart from the rest is the inclusion of a lost level cut from the middle of the game and now playable as a stand-alone mission. The level, introduced with a short video by developer Cliff Bleszinski, even introduces a new mechanic, stealth, to the game.

Is this a worthy addition to Gears of War 2 or was Epic right to cut it before shipping the game last year?

Loved
Road to Ruin: The Road to Ruin single-player campaign is presented as a level cut from the original Gears of War 2 in a sort of director's cut of the game. The level takes place after the emotional reunion between Dom and his wife Maria in the underground lair of the Locust. The level has players traverse an underground highway on their way to find the queen. The Road to Ruin can either be played as a typical stop-and-pop Gears level or a stealth level. That's right, this particular level introduces the ability to put on some Theron Guard armor and become nearly invisible to most Locust. If you decide to sneak through the level, you'll spend most of your time following on Marcus' heels as he creeps past guards for about two-thirds of the level. Both the stealth approach and traditional approach culminates in the same room filled with lever-controlled pop-up barriers and a flood of enemies. The whole thing wraps up neatly with a boss battle before segueing back into the original Gears of War 2 plot. While short—it took me just 45 minutes to play through the game on hardcore difficulty—the lost level does give gamers a chance to drop back into the game and experience something new. The stealth mode is mostly wasted on the level, delivering something more tedious than exciting. Despite the lackluster mechanic, I do wish they had included Road to Ruin in the original title, the impact it would have had emotionally on gamers when played directly after the scenes of the reunion between Dom and Maria would have been significant.

Seven New Places to Play: Dark Corners also comes packed with seven new multiplayer levels, most of which are a welcome addition to the current stable of maps available to gamers. None of the maps are bad additions, but a few really stand out. In particular I enjoyed the interesting, overly-ornate setting for Way Station. My favorite map of the bunch, though, was Nowhere which features an abandoned gas station and garage.

Hated
Cliffy: Don't get me wrong, I like Cliff Bleszinski, I just don't like having to watch him talk about the reasons behind the decision to cut Road to Ruin every time I want to replay the level. Sure it's skipable, but couldn't they have made the relatively short video be a separate item instead of attaching it to the beginning of the new gameplay? It's also unfortunate that the level wasn't delivered in a way that lets you play through the "deleted scene" in-line with the rest of the game. I would have loved to see what the missing piece of the game felt like as a whole, instead of relying on my memory to see how the plot and cut-scenes fit together. Instead gamers select the new level from the main menu and the game creates an entirely separate game save for the Road to Ruin play through.

Calling Road to Ruin a deleted scene makes we wonder why more games don't release director's cuts. I'd love to replay a more bloated version of a game I really like to see what was cut out, what was tweaked. Delivering a new level for an old game is fantastic fan service, but it is also quite frustrating when it comes unleashed from the source material.

Coming in at about $15, Dark Corners is well worth the money to any fans of Gears of War 2. It bolsters multiplayer gaming with seven new maps, but much more importantly, it gives you a tantalizing taste of brand new single-player Gears.

Gears of War 2: Dark Corners was developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 on July 28. Retails for $15.00 USD. Played through the single-player level on hardcore both in stealth and not. Played all multiplayer maps at least three times each.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Epic will also be giving serious Gears fans a chance to dress like their favorite Locust beast, a look that's still human, but with just enough alien to make it convincing.

Start saving up those Microsoft Points, kids. While Bleszinski and Fergusson didn't put a price on these new Avatar get ups, we have to imagine they'll cost you something.

"People talk about, 'The Wii has run away with this generation.' I don't think that's true," Rein told game site Eurogamer. "Nintendo's made a lot of money and the software developers on that platform are scratching for seconds. Microsoft is clearly a big market for third-party games. PS3 has a smaller installed base, but it's still millions of users."

But Nintendo has sold a gajillion Wiis! The install base is so impressive. Rein is more impressed apparently with Microsoft's Natal controller.

"The whole concept of playing a game without a controller is very intriguing," he said. "Take EA Sports Active on the Wii. It's a great game but it's not very compelling to have to have all that extra hardware attached to your body. If you made a game like that for Natal — and I'm sure EA is doing it - Natal could just look at you and tell if you're doing the exercises properly." Anything could be your controller, the exec added.

Epic's Mark Rein Interview [Eurogamer via GoNintendo]

I've spent two hours and twenty minutes this morning with the game, a game made with great love for its predecessors. And no, of course it's not as brilliant as Super Metroid — what has the cleverness, the pacing, the geographic diversity, the unusual mix of power-ups? But it's clearly a game built on the same values. It's a game made to be played like it's a map being traced with a finger, followed closely, fueled by the excitement of where to explore next and where to come back to later.

Here's how it is shaping up so far…

What Is It?
Shadow Complex is an Xbox Live Arcade game set for release when it's steamy outside, an August alternative to the heat. It is a side-scrolling adventure game in the style of 2D Metroids and Castlevanias, but rendered with a 3D engine. As with its inspirations, it is a game about exploring, finding power-ups and using newly enhanced abilities to reach previously inaccessible areas of the map. This one's all about a guy fighting his way through an enormous underground sci-fi military base and, so far, trying to keep his girlfriend alive. It comes from Chair Entertainment and parent company Epic Games, chiefly designed by Donald Mustard with oversight from Gears of War alpha-developer Cliff Bleszinski. It's a 1200-point game, costing $15 and the build I downloaded, which appears to be final, is close to 900 MB.

What We Saw
I was supplied with code of the game that appears complete. I played the first two hours and twenty minutes, discovering 32% of the game's expansive 2D-map and finding 20% of its mostly-hidden power-ups.

How Far Along Is It?
The game appears to be done, but because it's a downloadable, it's probably eligible for more last-minute tweaking than most.

What Needs Improvement?
Too Much Nostalgia: One of the themes of Kotaku's coverage this week has been developers' love of past influences and the extent to which that love can be applied too thickly. Shadow Complex's first hour is almost a sequence of homages to sequences from Super Metroid, Empire Strikes Back and other boys-will-be-boys action-packed inspirations. Evoking the past so much is risky, especially given that this game's chief interactive predecessor is considered one of the greatest games of all time. That the early action in the game is more conventional and its environmental puzzles less interesting than Super Metroid's initially sets Shadow Complex needlessly back. It's only when Shadow Complex starts getting past the early homages and starts showing off its own ideas that it demonstrates its worth. (That first hour isn't helped with its Uncharted homage. Yes, you have the voice-actor, but did you also need to dress your guy in the half-tucked shirt?)

Ledge-Grabbing: The controls are mostly good but compromised in one common way: it's hard to sometimes know whether you're going to drop from a ledge or just hang from it, whether you're able to pull yourself up from a ledge or whether you're going to be stuck. A smoother scheme there would be nice. Otherwise, exploration is a breeze. Finding the hidden nooks and crannies is, as always, great fun.

Blind Enemies: It was good for Metroids to be set on worlds full of dumb monsters and Castlevanias to have dullards as foes. It's less convincing to see Shadow Complex's military-base guards and super-soldiers not recognize our hero when he's standing in the same room, just because he's a little too far away but standing in plain view.

What Should Stay The Same?
An Identity Of Its Own: A couple of moments in the first two hours show what Shadow Complex can do that its predecessors never did. I won't spoil them, but just know that they take advantage of the modern technology being used in the game. And that tech helps this game a lot. This is a Metroid/Castlevania-style game with audio cues, lots of smart use of vocals, and great graphical depth. It's one in which 3D lighting and the hero's flashlight can make hunting for weakened hatches and ducts a more visually interesting endeavor. I did not get far enough into the game to find Shadow Complex's more unconventional gadgets, which will surely distinguish the game even more from others in its genre. Where I'm at, it's a game of machine guns and grenades — a different set of armament than you'd see in a Castlevania, to be sure — but not yet one that allows the action to be consistently clever. The good news is: the game appears to be getting there the further I play.

Pacing: One of Bleszinski's favorite hallmarks of good game design is good pacing. That's evident early as Shadow Complex moves smoothly from one exciting firefight to the discovery of an interesting new environment and then back to an interesting combat scene, punctuated with the discovery of a new gun or the hints of a new hidden power-up to crawl around and find, maybe hidden under an elevator or above the cafeteria full of guards.

Depth-Perception: The game's made in 3D but played in 2D. And that's used to great effect almost every minute of the first two hours. You'll think you've shot the last guard in the room when a door in what should have just been the boring background graphics of the level opens and a phalanx of troops rush in for the kill. It looks great and is fun, particularly because you can shoot into the background. You may only be able to move in 2D, but your gun does 3D. It's Shadow Complex's strongest quality and one that will make it tough to ever return to flatter games in this genre.

Final Thoughts
As I said up top, Shadow Complex could never hope to be as good as the best Metroid and Castlevania games, and I don't think its developers expected it to be. What I've played so far — past an opening a little too in love with the past — shows signs of how this genre can move forward. I haven't even mentioned the XP system which adds a little RPG character growth for every discovered room, every kill — and a multiplier for more if the kills are done creatively.

Shadow Complex is looking like a strong new entry in a style of game that too few developers seem interested in trying to make. Maybe other developers are intimidated. The bravado evident in the well-paced action so far shows that these guys most certainly were not.

That story is based on the works of Orson Scott Card, whose novel Empire the Xbox Live Arcade game is based upon. But David's yarn runs parallel to the events of that novel.

Comic book geeks and lapsed comic book geeks like myself will likely recognize Mr. David's name from his work on titles like The Incredible Hulk. If you do, and that's the sort of contributor who excites you, you're probably going to Comic-Con next week.

And if you are, you may want to find yourself at the Xbox 360 booth at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, July 25 at the the show. Joining Peter David will be Shadow Complex creators Donald Mustard and Cliff "Don't Call Me Dude Huge Anymore" Bleszinski from Epic Games.

If you don't know much about this whole Shadow Complex thing, you should really read our previous coverage of the game and anticipate some future coverage, I don't know, maybe tomorrow?

We're talking about a game developer who always dreamed of making a game like Super Metroid and is putting one out this summer.

He's a developer so relaxed about showing his game that he's doing it barefoot and so pumped that he keeps showing off — this thing, oh and this thing, and this too — more and more cool stuff.

Donald Mustard, visiting the Big Apple from the Chair Entertainment home office in Utah, has something special with Shadow Complex, a cornerstone release scheduled for Microsoft's 2009 Summer of Arcade offering of downloadable games for the Xbox 360. (Kotaku last previewed Shadow Complex at E3.)

It's a game that shows well, whether demoed with socks and shoes or without in Mustard's midtown Manhattan hotel room on a sunny summer day.

Mustard said he always wanted to make a so-called Metroidvania game, the kind of side-scrolling exploration-heavy, empowerment adventure rendered by Nintendo and Konami back during the NES to PlayStation eras.

Now he's got one close to completion, a spiritual successor to Super Metroid that runs on Unreal graphics technology. He describes it as a game of exploration punctuated by combat. It's a mostly side-scrolling game of military bases, robots, forests and caves, rich in earth tones and energized by explosions and energy blasts. , 120 power-ups — many of them hidden — and a bunch of core power upgrades. A flashlight reveals which boulders can be obliterated only once the hero has missiles, which hatches need a different gadget. A distant corner can only be grabbed once the player's earned a grappling hook.

The game has a "Jason Bailey" Achievement for speed-runners who clear the adventure in two hours — 10 hours fewer than Chair's testers are clearing it their first time through. And, get this Metroid sequence-breakers, it's got an Achievement called Insurgent that rewards players who can figure out how to clear the game while only obtaining 4% of Shadow Complex's items.

And the most Metoidvania thing of all... the map. It's drawn over grid squares. Seven-hundred eighty squares, not counting the skyline. Mustard's team of Metroid-lovers counted squares on the Super Metroid map. That total? Two-hundred fifty five.

Mustard was showing Kotaku some exciting stuff. This included stuff his publicist (who is also his wife and was seated nearby) hadn't seen yet. He couldn't resist. He wanted to show the dark caverns of the game to demonstrate what real 3D lighting effects can do for the dark exploration of a Metroid-style game. He wanted to show battles with medium-sized mechs and screen-tall mechs who are far taller than the height of his hero's generous jumping height. He wanted to show the hidden power-ups he knows how to find, the secret crannies where an extra grenade-capacity icon is sitting.

He showed that his game's got an ability for its hero to run, momentum-based at super-speed... dashing across water, up walls, on ceilings. His hero shoots a foam gun that generates cover, gums joints of enemy mechs or provides the materials that will make, on impact, a missile detonate in a bigger explosion.

The gameplay is a throwback. The graphics are a throw forward. This is modern material: Shadow Complex is one of the rare 2D side-scrollers that takes advantage of being rendered in a 3D graphics engine. It's a The 3D-ness is shown off when Mustard has the game's hero Jason Fleming, man a turret and the sideways perspective switches to what could be a behind-the-back turret-shooting view from a Gears of War game. There's no parallax faking depth effects in these graphics. They're real 3D.

When displayed in the manner of a 2D adventure, as they are in most of the game, the graphics have a depth not seen in this kind of game. The catwalks in the background. That guy shooting from back near the waterfall. They're back there and they can be shot, they can ragdoll over a balcony or fall into the front plane of action.

Players will earn experience points for their hero in this game, leveling up some of his core abilities and granting, every 10 levels, a special power-up. More XP is earned for defeating enemies in creative ways. But Mustard said that players won't earn all their levels the first time through. The game's designed for an increasingly empowered playthrough each time players re-visit it.

In addition, a Proving Grounds set of 21 unlocked challenges which present puzzles harder than many found in the main game are available from the start. Imagine having to grapple-hook and grenade-toss one's way around a hanging vertical wall suspended over a pit of fire. Or imagine a microcosm of a Metroidvania game with hidden power-ups that's just a few rooms large.

Chair Entertainment, parent company Epic Games and publisher Microsoft have not announced a price yet for all this content. An announcement about the full Summer of Arcade is expected soon.

And no, Mustard told Kotaku, he didn't show us everything. Like a good Metroidvania, there will hopefully be plenty more to Shadow Complex to make it worth our time to revisit later.