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Shadow of Destiny Review for PlayStation Portable (PSP)

Shadow of Destiny Review for PlayStation Portable (PSP)

It’s Time to Die

When it comes to death, most people don’t get a second chance, or a third, or a fourth. However, they also don’t have a creepy disembodied entity watching over them and offering “friendly” advice on how to best stay alive. Armed with this insightful info and a device that lets you go back in time, you have nothing to lose in Shadow of Destiny – aside from your life. Warping between the past and the present to change your fate in Konami’s time traveling adventure doesn’t change the fact it’s a dusty port of a decade-old mediocre PS2 game.

Shadow of Destiny screenshot

Everything kicks off with a murder: your own murder. As the androgynous protagonist Eike, you walk out of a coffee shop, stroll down the street, and wind up brutally stabbed in the back by an unseen stalker. Lying on the ground and slowly bleeding to death, you’re suddenly transported away to an alternate plane of existence, given a teleportation device by a weird entity, and sent on your merry way to try to stop your own murder. Unfortunately for you, saving yourself once just isn’t enough, since the dark forces at work are particularly persistent. Every successful brush with death you survive only knocks the next attempt at your life back a bit. You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you if you feel like staying alive for good, but there will be some moments in your journey where you’ll inevitably question whether it’s really worth all the effort.

Shadow of Destiny’s moody, plot-driven adventure starts off with a bang but moves along at a slow and steady pace. You’re not given much to work with in terms of setup and background info on what’s happening. This comes later as you encounter more people and dangerous situations. You’ll spend a lot of time walking around a fictional German town and talking with the mostly irritating people you bump into as they’re going about their regular routines. The walled-in town is a vacuous landscape filled with dark alleys and towering gray buildings. Some structures can be entered at different times in the game, though most of them are just there for atmosphere.

Shadow of Destiny screenshot

Each stretch of the journey plays out in short, self-contained vignettes. These time-sensitive affairs require you to figure out what has to be done to stop your murder and use your newfound time traveling skills to work it out; failing to solve the problem in a given chapter before time runs out seals your fate and forces you to replay that section. The good news is critical failure usually only returns you to the realm of the homunculus being. He’ll often give you a hint on how to tackle your current obstacle. The game is rather generous in this way, allowing you the leeway to figure out most of the trickier puzzles through trial and error.

The time traveling mechanic in Shadow of Destiny is an interesting gimmick that sets it apart from the typical adventure game drudgery you’ll encounter. Your gizmo flashes at important moments when you’re required to time-travel, though you can also choose to use it at other times as well. There’s a limited amount of energy available, and you have to keep your supply well stocked by picking up glowing orbs you’ll find around town. Paying attention to the clock is also important, since engaging in certain activities advances time more quickly than simply walking around.

Shadow of Destiny screenshot

Many of the game’s warp-focused puzzle challenges involve changing aspects of the past – both the recent past and the extreme distant past – in order to influence the present. For example, at one point your would-be assassin jumps out of a tree and slays you. Had the tree not been there, someone would have seen the assault coming and warned you. So you wind up warping back in the past to figure out a way to prevent the tree from even existing in the first place. Comprehending and playing around with these intriguing time-space relationships makes that aspect of the gameplay fairly entertaining.

Shadow of Destiny screenshot

Other times you’ll stumble into chapters with obtuse objectives that force you to simply roam around aimlessly in hopes of triggering a cutscene or talking to someone who points you in the right direction. There are also plenty of uninteresting item-specific puzzles where you’ll use an object from your inventory on a particular person or hotspot to progress. These moments may have been pretty standard for the adventure game genre in 2001, but they don’t feel nearly as exciting or immersive now as they probably once did.

The graphical presentation in this port is spotty at best. A few characters are well-designed and have some distinct details, but Eike looks like he was whacked with an ugly stick. The same goes for much of the scenery you’ll encounter. Some areas have a moderate amount of detail. Others are devoid of anything particularly interesting to look at. Konami’s fidelity to the original game is understandable; it’s just drab at times. On the audio front there’s a lot of voice work that gives each character a very bold personality. Unfortunately, much of the voice acting is embarrassingly ham-fisted and over the top. A few characters are particularly painful to chat with, due to their obnoxious tones and insipid dialogue.

It’s jarring how Shadow of Destiny thrusts you right into the story without any tutorial or sense of direction. Once you’ve recovered from this initially awkward stumbling block, the plot and gameplay grow more manageable and enjoyable. The game’s time-travel element is cleverly implemented and makes the other less entertaining adventure game mechanics less boring. With the quirky story and dimensional warping, we can see in some ways why Konami would want to resurrect this unique title, but it’s hard to imagine anyone other than serious adventure game fans being able to sit through this one for very long.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 2.9 Graphics
The characters and scenery are pretty dated. 3.5 Control
Running around with the thumbpad and interacting with folks using buttons is standard stuff. The camera angles are a little frustrating. 2.0 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Almost all of the voice work is pretty atrocious. 3.6 Play Value
The story and adventure itself is actually solid enough to merit checking out if you’re an adventure game fan, but everyone else will want to steer clear. 3.2 Overall Rating – Fair
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • A Truly Unique PSP Experience – Shadow of Destiny is a game unlike any other PSP game available, where players can embark on a unique murder mystery, they’re own! The setting within the game will span over 500 years deep into the past to secure the details of why and how they were murdered. What you do in the past will affect the present.
  • Time Warp Puzzles – Solve various different puzzles while finding clues to reach the killer.
  • A Blast From the Past on the Go – Shadow of Destiny is the same game from highly rated release in 2001. It has the same mysteries, characters and look and feel as before, but now for the PSP.

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