The first Shadowman appeared on the original Playstation, and though it was heavily flawed, it was generally well received. I can only assume it was generally well received because it has received a sequel on the Playstation2. Unfortunately, the game is a horribly designed disaster that is completely devoid of any entertainment value - unless you are into self-torture. Read on to find out why youd be better off donating your $50 to charity rather than purchasing this smelly, smelly turd.

Lets start with the story, which the best thing that can be said about it is that it hasnt been done before. You play the role of Mike Leroi, a man by day and the Shadowman by night. How he becomes this odd mix is explained, or better put, it is shown, but what really happens is anyones guess. So, Mike goes back and forth between the living and dead worlds, protecting the living and traveling with his dead brothers teddy bear. Yes, I said His dead brothers teddy bear. The bear gets stolen or something, Mike has to get it back, and then he goes to Louisiana, Russia, and even Ireland to fight - you get the idea, its a mess.

Continuing the horrible trend that the games story established are the games miserable graphics. Key amongst the offending issues is the games slow, yet incredibly choppy framerate. How it can be so pathetic while there are only two textures and one guy on screen are beyond me, but it is terrible, and it makes the games sloppy controls all the more difficult to deal with.

The game is also dark, not so dark that you cant tell it looks like hell, but dark enough that you cant tell where to go, cant see ledges, and cant see items that you need. This leads to you running around the giant, difficult-to-navigate levels, while the framerate pounds you into submission. The lighting that is present is poorly done, and only illuminates objects as you approach, making it look like each lamp turns on as you get near. Mikes design is well done, but the other characters are completely uninteresting, a problem made worse since you must kill them all so many times. Id suggest wearing a blindfold while playing the game, but then you couldnt play it - hey, thats not a bad idea!

The least painful part about Shadowman: 2econd Coming is its audio presentation. The voice acting is plenty competent, though the script will make you cringe at times. Theres not much music, but what is there does a nice job of adding to the mood during FMV sequences. The rest of the sound effects are standard fare, middle of the road.

The gameplay is a mixture of Soul Reaver and gouging your eyes out with a fork. All of the action takes place from a third-person perspective, and the controls are fairly standard, with a few random exceptions apparently designed to make you hate the developers of the game. Since Mike has himself two hands, he uses the L2 and R2 buttons to punch or use whatever weapons he has. Unfortunately, all of the hand weapons act the same, and theres no real point in having two separate controls for the hands. Its a minor issue, but indicative of the game as a whole - a bunch of inane things that make you want to light it on fire.

You spend your time running around, unlocking doors, collecting weapons, killing the same stupid bad guys (they really are stupid), pushing blocks, jumping crevices, and climbing ropes. Thats really all there is to the game. Warping from different parts of the level is sort of cool, and changing back and forth between characters when night falls makes things a little more interesting, but on a whole the game is lame.

Part of me feels bad to write so horribly about a game, especially since I probably met some people affiliated with it at this years E3. However, when I start to feel bad, I remember how utterly useless this game really is, and how many hours of my life I wasted forcing myself to play it. There are so many better things you can do with your $50, like: 50 Big Macs, another game, a ticket to Disneyworld, a fathers day gift, a donation to a charity, the list goes on and on. Do yourself a favor, dont even rent it to see how bad it is, just trust me.