Let's Play Shadow Watch! (Or, Death-Agents of a Latter-Day NASA)

Games
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Shadow Watch is one of a couple of small 2D turn-based games (alongside ruthless.com) released by Tom Clancy’s Red Storm studio around 1999. In a way, it’s a turn-based equivalent of Red Storm’s flagship Rainbow Six shooter franchise: a squad-based tactical game with roots in X-COM and Jagged Alliance.

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Compared to those predecessor games, Shadow Watch has a limited gameplay palette: There are only six characters available to play. There is no inventory management, no metagame outside of leveling up, and relatively few character stats and skills. Since these back-of-the-box bullet points didn’t stack up so well with the rest of the genre (however stagnant it was in 1999), Shadow Watch received a few weak reviews. But one reason I wanted to do this AAR is that I think it stands a lot taller today, when 3D graphics are no longer the new hotness and a substantial market (especially on PC) has embraced an indie-spirited less-is-more sensibility.

And anyway, Shadow Watch was not merely cookie-cuttered out of the thick wad of dough that is X-COM’s sweeping strategic gameplay; it offers its own (perhaps modest) selling points and unique elements:

  • Slick graphic-novel inspired artwork (commonplace now, but rather striking then)
  • Randomized campaign, adding a touch of rogue-like flavor
  • Eight mission types, with varied objectives
  • Character-specific skill trees
  • Stealth mechanics

The thing Shadow Watch is really missing to make it unreservedly a classic, in my opinion, is simply more content. There are three regions in the game, each with a handful of static maps. These are procedurally populated by enemies, but the layouts are like the voiceovers in a Fallout intro cinematic: they never change. More levels, level variations, enemy types, and new mission types would all be welcome. And although I appreciate the focus provided by having only six characters, it would sure be awesome to have that roster expanded just a little.

It’s also necessary to say that the UI is only serviceable at best, and conspicuously avoids all methods of moving and shooting by selecting map squares (which had long been standard in isometric games like X-COM). We’ll talk more about the UI as we get into the game.

I don’t want to belabor the start of gameplay with too much more introduction, so let’s get started and we’ll address other talking points as we play.

Shadow Watch allows you to play single missions in any of the maps, with any enemy group, and train your characters up however you like beforehand. You get scored on your performance and can—you know what? Let’s be honest: The way to play this game is through the campaign. So let’s start a new campaign.

The frame of the story is really kinda goofy. You’re highly trained commandos who work, not for a government, but for a corporation–the corporation leading a global effort to build an international space station. Why do they need commandos? How can they justify killing, stealing, and exploding things around the world for the sake of a space station? I guess the goal of taking humanity to space was supposed to be an admirable goal of existential import for humanity, an end that justifies some questionable means. Or it just happened to be the plot of the next Tom Clancy novel. Anyway, you feel a little scuzzy doing a corporation’s bidding, even if you’re always taking out armed criminals, fanatics, and revolutionaries. All that said, the backstory is fairly easy to wave away. As you’ll see, the narrative design is more about tying together missions than providing emotion, motivation, or theme.

My campaign is going to start in Rio de Janiero. The three regions of the game–Rio, Hong Kong, and Kazakhstan–are shuffled at the beginning of each campaign and you’ll complete one before moving on to the next. The overarching story of each region is always the same. In this case, the corporation’s facilities in Rio were the site of a protest that turned deadly when police arrived to break it up. I’m there to investigate the meaning of the protests and reprisal. This will always be the story in Rio, but from there, the story can go in all kinds of directions.

The first crucial determinant of the story is who my starting contact in the city is. There are half a dozen different characters in each city. Sometimes they might be allies, or informants, victims, or villains, and it’s a pretty neat trick that the dialogue manages to accommodate all these scenarios.

This time, I’m meeting with the chief of police, Tonaverron.

I get a dossier on Tonaverron which describes him with some finely-drawn details. And I get his opening description of what’s going on, as well as a few dialogue options. Tonaverron says the protests are irrelevant to the corporation’s mission; they’re just some fanatics looking for attention. I ask the obvious question: Why did this one turn violent?

There are no right or wrong responses. What the responses do is steer me toward different mission types. The dialogue isn’t gameplay, it’s a kind of colorful randomizer with the happy illusion of player agency. Once you realize this, you may be perfectly happy to click through it until you get your random mission. But if you do, you will miss some nicely crafted text. The writers have a facility for capturing their characters’ voices.

Tonaverron says that the violence was staged. The protestors, part of a religious organization called the Order of Light, started throwing rocks at police and provoked the deadly response. And he drops the detail that someone associated with my corporation has been paying off the Order, maybe to stir up trouble. My response: “Excuse me?” A-baking powder?

Oh, yeah, Tonaverron says, the Brazilian Minister of Space has been sending money–the corporation’s money–over to the Order of Light for awhile. He launders it through his restaurant. Tonaverron suggests stealing back the cash in the restaurant’s cash box to “get his attention.”

And that’s how my first mission ends up being a Raid on a Rio restaurant, guarded by the Brazilian Space Agency.

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What the…? How did you get a working copy of Shadow Watch? I don’t even have a working copy of Shadow Watch and I loved that game more than any of you put together!

-Tom

P.S. Looking forward to this thread, Nightgaunt!

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Excellent. I’ve never heard of this game. Looking forward to it!

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I have endured many trials and tribulations for Shadow Watch. The first copy I bought never ran. I had to scour other GameStops (or EBs?) for a copy to exchange it for. And that copy still had a flaky disc that skipped occasionally. Eventually it wouldn’t run at all, but I managed to copy it to a CD-R. That didn’t make it actually runnable on my Vista machine, though. I went through all kinds of instructions online for making it go and none seemed to help. Until one time I just decided to Run it As An Administrator. And… heavens opened, angels singing hallelujah, the whole bit.

I would never be so base as to question the love of a man for his Shadow Watch. But I will point out that you are comparing yourself to a group that contains the guy who designed the game in the first place and someone who has been moved by Shadow Watch to the point of poetry.

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In a raid, I get to bring three of my six team members (as indicated by the empty slots on the right). Our goal is to find the target object somewhere in the level and return it to an exit point. If this were a Theft mission type, I’d have to worry about not getting spotted, using loud weapons, and setting off the alarm. But raids have no such restrictions: anything goes, just get the cash box.

I’m going to pick my operatives based off of which ones I want to level up the quickest, which means Archer, Maya, and Gennady. Let’s take a look at these three characters.

Archer is the leader of the team. He always gives off an impression of cool confidence, with his deep English accent. His weapon is a silenced submachine gun–in some sense, the ultimate weapon, both powerful and quiet. His skills fall into a few categories: maintaining morale for the team, initiative and readiness improvements, and learning to burst-fire to hit multiple targets at once (sweet!). We’ll look closer at the skill choices as he levels up. His starting skill is a little weak: Coordinate lets me split the team between starting points in a level. If Archer isn’t on a mission, all my dudes have to enter at the same point. It can come in handy occasionally, but I doubt I’ll use it for this raid.

Maya, is my favorite character–or, she will be once she is properly skilled up. Her sniper rifle is the game’s deadliest weapon, in both power and accuracy. But she is limited in how much she can move on a turn and still be able to fire (this disadvantage is actually her starting “skill,” called Sniper). So, appropriately for a sniper, she has to settle into a position to be an effective shooter at first, and usually gets her kills from opportunity shots. Her most important skill track is the one that allows her to move more freely and still shoot. That’s when she becomes a killing machine. She also can gain medic capabilities and morale boosting/breaking skills. We’re taking Maya along because getting her full movement skills is an early priority.

Gennady doesn’t even have a weapon. He has a scanner, which will detect enemies through walls and show me, at the moment he scans, where they are. Leveling that scanner up so it can scan further and wider on each scan is critical. His other skills involve being able to go on special surveillance missions where he has to plant bugs around the level and hacking enemy systems to reduce the number of guards and their starting degree of alertness.

Okay! Having gone through the equivalent of the spy-movie team-gathering sequence, we are ready for our first mission, folks! Let’s grab our Space Minister’s suspicious cash stocks and see what more we learn about the Rio conspiracies.

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Thanks, Nightgaunt. This is an unexpected pleasure.

I’m not seeing your screenshots, though. Is that just a problem on my end?

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Thanks for letting me know, Kevin. I’m sure I’m not linking them from Google Drive properly. I made a couple tweaks. Can you see them now?

Obviously, feel free to chime in with your thoughts on the game, its development process, or my questionable tactics as I play!

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God damn I love Shadow Watch.

If you can’t get it running, it’s likely because Shadow Watch installs its own outdated java libraries. Download a copy of the most recent javai.dll from any of a number of sites on the internet (I used http://www.dlldll.com/javai.dll_download.html) and copy it into your C:\Program Files\Red Storm Entertainment\Shadow Watch folder. Go into the ShadowWatch.exe properties, and tick the “Run this Program as Administrator” box. Worked for me.

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I can see the screens NG.

I’m pulling for Maya. A redheaded sniper. Wow.

Moar puhleez.

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Hmm, just me, I guess. That’s okay. I know what it looks like. :)

I’m happy to answer any questions anyone has about it, as always.

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Such a great game! Always happy to see it brought back into the light.

By the way, if you haven’t tried it, Invisible, Inc. owes a lot to Shadow Watch and is excellent in its own right.

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Is Invisible, Inc ready for prime time? I thought it was one of those early release things?

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I have been playing a little bit of Invisible, Inc. and it’s definitely on its way to being a great game, I think. I bought in early hoping precisely that it would be a kind of updated Shadow Watch, and there’s something to be said for that view. I think it’s trying to take the rogue-like elements a little further and I’m not sure how I feel about that. If it were me, I would take out the “looty” elements and keep most abilities tied to the characters–not a surprise given that’s one thing I love about Shadow Watch. And I don’t feel like the hacking systems quite work yet; no idea if they expect to revamp them or not. And, of course, it needs more content.

There are very few games that I feel justify buying in to early access, and as promising as this is, I don’t think it’s one of them. Hang tight and I think there’s a good chance this will be worth picking up when it’s done.

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Don’t want to derail further, but I will say it is already one of my favorite games of all time. In its current Early Access state, it’s the best roguelike I’ve ever played, and it’s only getting better.

Also, I think that while it takes some strong cues from Shadow Watch it’s ultimately doing something pretty different. It’s not trying to be the next Shadow Watch, it’s breaking some new ground in a different direction.

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As mentioned earlier, there are two entry points to every map. In the restaurant, one is at the front entrance (complete with coat closet and host’s station). The other is off the back parking lot, next to some storage rooms. I’m going to go in at the back entrance. I think there’s a chance that the loot I’m looking for could be at one of the back tables where I can grab it and run. Let’s just hope it’s not in the coat closet.

Alright, here we are, ready to go. Let’s talk about the core mechanics for a minute.

Every character has Action Points, or APs. Most of them have 3. Unlike other turn-based games, Shadow Watch keeps things nice and simple: pretty much everything you want to do takes one AP. You can take a step forward (diagonal movement is allowed), run forward two squares, shoot at somebody, or use another ability–all those cost one AP. Just about the only exception is rotating your character. You can freely do two rotations (45 degrees each) in a row without cost. But when you rotate three times in a row, that costs you an AP. It’s a small thing, but I think this is a really nice design choice. When you’re in control and you’re moving confidently, you rarely need to turn more than 90 degrees. But when you take a risk or expose yourself to someone behind you, it KILLS you to know you have to spend that AP to turn. That might lose you your chance at a first shot.

Alright, the restaurant is going to be lightly guarded, so I can move pretty quickly here. It’ll cost me an AP to open the door with Archer and assuming that room is empty, I’ll run in there and line up on the next door and bring everybody else in after Archer.

Like so. I’ve left Gennady with one action point because he’s going to use his scanner to look and see if any enemies are nearby. The scanner hits a ninety-degree angle and the reach is pretty short: 5 tiles straight in front of Gennady. From this position, I’m not looking too deep into the adjacent rooms and, not surprisingly, I don’t see anybody.

After some of my characters finish their turns, I see brief flickers of enemy silhouettes come up in the active character portrait window. That means the bad guys are taking their actions, but they go very fast because they’re probably just standing around. These unsuspecting chumps aren’t prepared for the space station corporation’s professional commandos to burst into their restaurant guns-a-blazing??

…

Yeah, I guess I can’t blame them there.

Maya gets her second turn. Last time Archer went first, but now it’s Maya. That teaches us something about initiative: The character with the most starting APs goes first. When there’s a tie, it’s the character with the highest morale limit (we’ll talk more about morale later, when we lose it all) who goes next. And in case of a morale tie, as with Archer and Maya, the order is randomized.

I’ll have Maya perform a Wait action. That will save her action and let my next character, Archer, go. We’re going to continue being bold and open the door without posting up carefully the way we will in future, more dangerous levels.

The next area is a set of backroom tables and desks. I think there’s a random chance that the cash box could have been sitting right here, making for a quick, bloodless mission. But no such luck. I move Archer carefully so he can check out the booth area in the back (not visible below). Maya’s close enough to the door here that I move her in front of it and kneel her down. Good sniper position, if it happens that anyone’s behind there. Speaking of which, Gennady moves up next to the southeast wall and scans. Well, well, well! I see one of the BSA goons over there!

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Man, I love the look of this game. So cool, so sexy.

-Tom
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Ah. Figured it out. Pictures don’t work in IE, but do in FF.

I’m glad you enjoy the writing and characterizations, Nightgaunt. While certainly not the point of the game at all, I’m pretty proud of it, especially given how much of it there was-- over 250k words.

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I nose around a bit with Archer and move Gennady further to scan the area in front of Maya. Aaaand there’s another guy. In a pretty inconvenient spot actually. I was going to line Archer up to Maya’s right to see if he could cover where that first enemy is at. Now I need someone covering that other side too–Gennady and his pistol-grip X-ray machine can’t do it!

There’s also a door–a bit hard to see–on the far side of that backroom booth. I’m going to keep Maya here, waiting, and bring Archer and Gennady around that that other door. I’m not in a hurry.

I scanned the room in front of Archer first, and it’s empty. Opening the door lets me see down a long line of separated table spaces. I also see that I should be able to sneak up behind that guy to Maya’s right. There are a couple of risks here: The direction he appears to be facing based off the scan may not be right (I’m not sure if the guys often rotate or if Gennady’s scanner is unreliable regarding orientation, but I’ve learned not to trust what it shows). Also, that first guy I saw, on the opposite side of the restaurant just might have a line that lets him see Archer. I’m going to take the risk and move slowly up behind the closer guy. Slowly means moving two single spaces and then going into Cover mode, and repeating that until I can peek around the corner at the dude.

As a note: I could run into place, but the reason I don’t is that when a character runs it reduces his accuracy for all following shots that turn by half. That’s no good at all.

Also, Cover mode: This is what other games might call Overwatch or Opportunity Fire (points to Shadow Watch for superior terminology). All my remaining Action Points are saved until my next turn starts. If any enemy appears in my field of view, or an enemy I already see takes an action, my character will attempt an immediate attack on him. Cover fire is critical to pulling off a mission cleanly.

Okay, good news: The enemy is facing away from me. And there’s a little wall that I think should keep the other guy from seeing me cap this one’s ass. You can see that Archer has a 60% chance to hit his target from here. No going back after this! Some fools are going to die for my space station!

Aaaand, Archer misses his first shot. Thanks to his silenced weapon, this isn’t a big deal. Not even the guy a few steps away has a clue that bullets were flying! And now, my chance to hit with my second shot is increased, up to the max of 99. Each consecutive shot gets this accuracy bonus. This is another nice, subtle design decision. If I save enough Action Points for my attacks, I’m bound to hit my target eventually.

Okay, this is where the shit and the fan come into near proximity. See, a near-100% chance of hitting the target doesn’t mean he’s dead. If a shot hits, then there’s a test of the attacker’s weapon’s Power stat. That’s also a 1-100 number that gives the percent chance that the enemy will die. If it fails, then you get the above: the target drops to the ground, but he’s still alive. (Archer sez: “Possible wounded hostile.” Gee, thanks, Arch.) This means he’s well enough to scream like a cheerleader and set everyone else coming after me. He’ll do this as soon as his turn comes around, and I’ll have lost the element of surprise.

This puts Archer in an awkward position. There’s a good chance that corridor that’s now behind him connects to table spaces with other guards. But he’s also got two enemies directly in front of him.

At this point, I might wish I wasn’t playing on Hard Mode. On easier levels, I can save anytime. On Hard, I can only save between missions. So I’m either going to pull this out, or I’m going to be starting the mission all over again. (Note to prospective space station-building corporate entities: invest in a time travel device before starting your space station and unleashing your deadly commando team.)

Before the alarm gets set off, I take another risk and have Gennady dash into the room with Archer. At least if he’s there, he can scan and see who might be coming up behind Archer. As expected, when his turn is done, the alarm is set off. The music, appropriately, goes into high-octane action mode. (Topic for later: Shadow Watch’s perfect musical score.)

Archer gets the next turn because he now has 5 Action Points. Wait, what? He had three, right? I think this is Shadow Watch’s most innovative system: Characters get extra action points when stressful things happen. Archer got an extra point for the first time he saw an enemy and when the alarm went off. So that’s awesome! It’s also troubling. Why? Because if Archer’s Action Points go above his Morale score… well, let’s cover that topic when it happens.

The enemy that Archer took his shot at is now prone on the ground next to a table. This makes him a tough-to-hit target. I have a 15% chance to hit him. Now, that’ll go up with each successive shot. If I had Archer’s normal 3 APs, I would probably just put him on Cover mode and let him shoot the guy when he tries to stand up. But with 5 APs, I think I can eventually get a shot through on him. Let’s see…

Shot 1 (15%): Miss. Not surprising. I see a little exclamation point above the enemy. That means his morale is toast.

Shot 2 (30%): Miss.

Shot 3 (60%): “Hostile down.” Got him. He convulses and rolls into a fetal position. That’s how you know they’re dead.

I can’t rest easy, though. Archer and Gennady are fairly exposed, and who knows what’s on the other side of Maya’s door. She’s going to have to open that door, using an AP, and because of her Sniper “ability” she can’t shoot at whatever’s there until her next turn. I back Archer up to the northwest wall and put him in cover mode. Immediately I regret that I pointed him more toward the room that was in front of him than that back corridor. Oh well. Maya gets to open her door now.

Oh, dang. There’s a security guard right there. It’s possible it’s the guy Gennady detected earlier, who has moved into the hallway. But it’s very possible this is another friend of his. I have two lousy options here: I can just close the door again and protect Maya, but then for her to have a shot at anybody, she’ll have to use an action to open the door again and we’ll be right back in the same situation. The other option is to end her turn and hope she doesn’t get whacked before she gets to shoot. I think there’s a good chance the guy in front of her doesn’t even see her. He might walk on by to get at Archer. If I’m lucky, he’ll settle into Cover mode without seeing me.

I want Maya to get a chance to pop a head or two, so I’m going with the second option. Holding my breath, I click “End”.

Things work out well. First Gennady gets a couple of scans off and finds another guard, but he’s at a good distance. The guard in front of Maya must have already had his turn, because Maya gets to go again before he does.

Maya has 150 Accuracy, which gives her the max 99% chance to hit. And she has a 90% chance to kill on that hit. Guess who now bears a deep resemblance to a doornail?

Maya has a lovely terse way of expressing herself: “Finished.”

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Gennady and enemy facing. I think there was a bug in that with the final code, but I’m not entirely sure anymore. The intent was that when you scan, you see the silhouette of the enemy indicating his facing. But the images persist on the map, even after the enemies move, until you get eyes on the area. So sometimes you can be surprised about which way a guy is facing when you actually see it, and think it’s a bug. My memory is that it isn’t a bug particularly, but it looks like one if the guards rotate towards sounds or randomly. They will start moving once the alarm sounds. There’s a very complex strategic enemy AI behind the scenes [written by the excellent AI expert John O’Brien], and it’s possible that enemies rotate before the alarm, depending on the alert level. I no longer recall if we ended up shipping a minor bug or not.

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Interesting, Kevin. Do the enemies choose what directions they move based on what directions sounds come from? Is that just gunfire, or also running/walking?

On facing, I can’t say for sure that it’s a bug and not just my sour grapes when I think I’m going to sneak up on a guy and end up with a gun in my face.