Do you recall the Amazon Prime miniseries of short films called Secret Level, which were based on well-known video games? Do you remember the episode when Pac-Man was recast as a stranded warrior that kidnaps strangers to aid in its escape from a prison planet? Bandai Namco developed that concept into a long Metroidvania called Shadow Labyrinth, which has a unique beat reminiscent of Street Fighter: Movie.
This strange reinvention of the oldest eater in the business is a really difficult experience. Not necessarily because it’s hard; it’s not always easy, but I have faced more challenging games in the past. No, sticking with Shadow Labyrinth’s slow, cryptic, and, to be honest, uninteresting plot while enduring some brutal checkpointing and gnarly difficulty spikes was my biggest challenge. Though the execution here did not make a strong argument for it in practice, I’m not entirely opposed to the notion of a gritty Pac-Man revival in theory.
The narrative, which envelops you in the rags of Pac-Man’s (or Puck’s) goon who swings a sword, kind of surrounds you. That makes some sense considering that you have no memory or comprehension of the war debris you are being guided through by your cunning yellow companion when you wake up, but it is tedious that Shadow Labyrinth insists on making you stand around and watch fragmented, ambiguous, and clichéd dialogue between the few active characters.
By drawing a comparison between the cyclical nature of Pac-Man’s eat-die-repeat gameplay and the “cycle of survival” plot, the 10-minute Secret Level episode performed a far better job of crafting an engaging fable. Shadow Labyrinth is a direct sequel to that short, although it fills the expanded space with rote sci-fi lore, with few interesting narrative points interspersed with the story’s exponential growth.
Even when Puck and the Swordsman’s trip made significant detours, they happened quickly and without any thought given to their significance or possible outcomes. Just like I would have been a few minutes later, I was constantly dungeon diving. However, Shadow Labyrinth has a nice appearance. This is also largely a good example of the kind of moving paper doll animation that works so well in games like Salt and Sanctuary. Many of the monsters, particularly the mechanical ones with all of their gizmos, are surprisingly detailed.
Animations may seem a bit floaty and stilted, like a puppet on strings, but this has no discernible impact on the gameplay. Although I wouldn’t describe the levels’ depictions of the many stories of a high-tech tower or the depths of a cavern filled with lava as particularly unique, they do make good use of color in their foregrounds and backgrounds.
The locales that aren’t deep caverns or high-tech bases with similar backgrounds and altered colors are sadly limited. My favorite zone is the most intriguing in terms of both appearance and navigation; it’s a valley with occasionally lethal flowers that is entirely optional and inaccessible till late.
It adds extensive sci-fi lore to its Prime Video prequel episode.
Unfortunately, it takes far too long to move through these large areas. The larger tasks are occasionally consigned to side routes that lead to more hazardous mini-puzzles and hazards that will test your timing and reflexes, but platforming never gets out of control. Rails that turn you into the recognizable round yellow chomp machine were frequently shown to me. With the help of these tracks, you can waka waka waka up specific walls, around corners, and across ceilings while consuming pellets, which can be used as currency for upgrades and benefits.
At first, it’s amusing to hop from line to line or to fling Puck at enemies with a spinning sword attack, but I can count on one hand the instances in which I came across parts of this that felt genuinely brilliant, aside from the fact that the gimmick was there in the first place. I wouldn’t miss a single one of these isolated experiences if Shadow Labyrinth were to be divided into all of these sections. I frequently walked onto side pathways by accident while walking because of the lack of clear signage and the numerous junctions, which occasionally led to obstacles I lacked the upgrade to overcome, and occasionally to rewards like bonus health.
It was unbearably risky to wander around these corners because death would send me back to a checkpoint that seemed to be miles away from where I had fallen. The two-tiered checkpointing—the smaller pylons, which are checkpoints in the most traditional sense of the word, and the larger Miku Sol points, which you may enhance your warrior with and teleport between—made it more stressful. Combat has all the typical elements of a game like this. From the beginning, you can swing a sword and dodge about in a simple combo. You gain access to a power strike that, when used alone, deals a lot of ranged damage.
It can also be employed as a satisfying finisher at the end of your basic combination. It costs a small portion of your ESP gauge to use the air dash, grappling hook, parry, and other moves that are just waiting to be discovered and added to your skill set. You enter a burnout state similar to that of Street Fighter 6 when you run that meter empty, which prevents you from doing anything but attacking until it recharges.
This is a severe and significant penalty that requires you to be extremely mindful of the amount of offense you’re trying to unleash all at once.
Benefits, on the other hand, can change you in more subtle ways, such as lowering the ESP cost of your dodge or displaying the health of the last enemy you struck. The ones that strengthen your special abilities or let Puck passively collect bits for you worked best for me. Although those are helpful, none of these benefits significantly altered combat or lessened the monotony of simply mashing attacks until everything died.
Sometimes Puck joins in, joining forces with your swordsman to transform into a mechanical dragon beast that tears and rips until its timed energy bar is empty. Being huge enough to temporarily disregard enemy damage and unfavorable terrain was enjoyable, but you are still primarily just pressing the basic attack button till you are exhausted. You must consume fallen enemies to replenish this mode. Doing so gives you a variety of commodities that you may use to purchase benefits from particular vendors. My accessible perks list was understandably limited as a result of spending little time attempting to locate particular foes to farm parts.
However, nothing on a vendor’s shelf gave me the impression that I would have a better chance of solving a challenging jumping puzzle or overcoming a persistent boss if I did.
You can employ all of this offensive power against a wide range of foes, but because you spend so much time in expansive areas, enemies quickly transform from fresh challenges to annoyances. Even while there are the occasional archers stationed on a platform that you must jump up to hit, enemies that you can’t just bash to death at first sight are rare and rarely positioned to pose a serious threat to your progress.
Generally speaking, bosses don’t need much strategy beyond recognizing simple patterns. I was able to make the most of my air dash right after obtaining it, thanks to a large rooster mini-boss early on, but no major foes required me to remove an additional technical layer from my fighting strategy until much later in the roughly 30-hour campaign. Additionally, the task was grossly over-tuned when it did eventually ramp up. The time between attacks decreased, and the damage output exploded, making certain late-game battles into exasperating walks of shame from the nearest checkpoint to the monster.
Verdict
Shadow Labyrinth begins with a huge emphasis on the most bizarre turn an ancient and adored video game character has ever taken, but after about thirty hours, I can’t think of anything in this metroidvania that wasn’t done better years before. The MAZEs are excellent reimaginings of the original Pac-Man formula that, oddly, are the most similar to its fundamental source. They could stand alone as a respectable game.
Playing Shadow Labyrinth is a generally boring experience due to everything else, from the exploration being monotonous due to a lack of direction and unpleasant checkpointing to the one-note fighting that provides very little nuance outside of mashing and pounding. As my mind traveled its seemingly infinite maze of lore, chasing the ghosts of the intense, poignant promise promised by the Secret Level short on which this surprise adaptation is based, I found that sitting through the conversation and sorting through this plot presented the biggest difficulty.
