Shadow Complex Remastered is free this month on PC from Unreal.

[Contrabardus]

Shadow Complex Remastered is a free Download for PC until Dec. 31st on the Unreal website.

If you've not played it's well worth checking out. It's a Metroid style game, but one of the better ones. You need to download the launcher and then pick it up from there. Find it by clicking on the Unreal logo on the top left corner. Fair warning that you'll have to install the Unreal Launcher client, register, then get the game from there, or you could just wait and buy it early next year from Steam, on the PS4, or Xbox 1. It's a free game, and an awesome one at that, so it's kind of worth dealing with installing the Unreal client even if it's just temporarily.

There are some neat betas and stuff available through it as well if certain types of games are your fancy. It's not like downloading the Steam client as it's really a dev console for the Unreal Engine. The marketplace mostly sells assets for building games using the engine and it's how Unreal handles beta and alpha testing.

This is the full release of the Remastered version of the game by the way, not a demo or the old version being given out as a promo. They're literally giving it away to PC players to download and play early this month.

EDIT: Just to be clear, based on how they've been talking about this, I'm 99% sure this is a timed trial. You don't get to keep the game forever and it deactivates at the end of the month. It's sort of like a free month long rental and not a copy you get to keep forever.

That said, this is plenty of time to beat this game more than once even if you're not constantly playing it during the month. It can be done in a day or two at most.

 

[Altered Nova]

Hmm. The Epic Games Launcher keeps locking up on my every time I try to open it. Not sure if I will be able to download the game.

Seconding the recommendation though. I played the Xbox 360 Arcade version, it's a very competent metroidvania style game, although the 2.5D sections where you have to shoot bad guys in the background can be annoying. It's interesting how you start the game very weak but become incredibly overpowered by the end, all through stealing the enemy's own technology. Assembling the Omega Armor is a lot of fun. The Fusion Helmet is one of the coolest power ups I've ever seen in a video game.

The plot is batshit insane with several glaring plotholes, but it's overall still very entertaining. Probably because the script was written by comic book writer Peter David.

 

[Contrabardus]

Sucks starting from level one again. I keep forgetting that the shortcuts I'm used to taking don't work until I've leveled a bit and have some of the perks from that.

Still lots of fun, but I keep going to places and then remembering 'oh yeah, I can't do that until I beat the game at least once because I need infinite foam and I can't get early access to certain things without it'.

Shooting background enemies seems easier. Your guy is less prone to firing wildly about and seems to aim smarter at enemies not on the 2d plane, which is nice. I'm also doing a good job remembering where the secrets and upgrades are and have collected quite a few.

Definitely prettier than the original. Lots of post processing, more particles, extra debris, depth of field, better textures, etc. Doesn't look great compared to modern stuff when the cutscenes happen because the models and facial animations are still a dated, but when you're actually playing the game it looks great. It looks good during gameplay, but the cutscenes show the game's age and the older engine becomes more apparent.

Gonna play through this at least twice. Once to get all the gold bars and unlike the golden guns that multiply xp. Should be right around the point of getting the infinite ammo perks from leveling around then. That's when the game is the most fun. When you bump up the difficulty and go around trying to figure out how to get into places sooner than you're supposed too and grab the good gear earlier by exploiting the foam gun and the gear it lets you get ahold of sooner.

Might go for a Master Infiltrator playthrough as well. That's the one where you go through the game without collecting any of the armor with only the most basic gear needed to finish the game, missiles, the foam gun, grenades, and a rifle or some sort. It requires lots of precision timing and is a huge pain, I did it once on the Xbox version, and only once. The final segment isn't that hard, but getting there is the trick.

If you're having troubles logging into the server, keep trying. The servers are kind of a mess because of this. It amazes me that Unreal seems so surprised that people jumped all over this the way they did. I couldn't download it or get the Unreal Launcher to log into the servers, and I already had an account to begin with due to some of the Oculus Rift stuff they've put out. I tried for a while the night they announced it and gave up after about twenty minutes, and then came back to it last night and it all worked fine.

Don't wait too long, as I edited my previous post to say, I'm pretty sure this is just a timed release and not something you get to keep indefinitely.