I promise you Shadow Watch is a classic, but you have to keep in mind: It’s a small classic. It’s one of the few retail-released games that I’d label as “microstrategy.” Don’t come looking for a grand spectacle to sweep you away–although the game looks great, I think. Don’t come for depth you can get lost in–one of its virtues is that it knows just how deep it wants to take you and goes no further. Don’t come looking for brilliant modern UI. It… just hasn’t got that, I’m sorry.
Shadow Watch is basically Tom Clancy’s X-COM, one of a couple small projects that Red Storm punted out around 1999-2000. Turn-based tactical battles have been done elsewhere, and probably with more bells and whistles, but Shadow Watch stands out for being slick and clean and cool. Instead of recruiting your little army and shepherding them past near-certain death to some form of competence, Shadow Watch starts you with a perfectly balanced team of named commandos, each one highly specialized and super-competent from the get-go (although you will make them better… oh yes). There aren’t gobs of nuanced commands to give your team; everything they can do is mapped to some directional buttons and about five other buttons. It’s really all very tightly and cleverly designed, with an economy that you didn’t ever see from a major publisher in 1999 or anytime after, until indie games changed the industry.
I haven’t mentioned the music. You guys, the MUSIC.
Hop into the slick little world of Shadow Watch! Ice some bad dudes! Save the international space station (apparently a cause worth killing for)!
You can get Shadow Watch from GOG.com for $5.99. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t do widescreen well. If you want to see its beautiful art undistorted, the best way I’ve found is to use the super-handy DxWnd to run it in a window. There is a profile for Shadow Watch in the application’s default library (although I recall having to tweak it to get it to work; if you’re having trouble, say so and I’ll pass along my settings).
Also, you can read my Let’s Play of the game from a couple years ago.
I’ve purchased, though I’m not sure how much time I’ll get to play. I’ve just moved house and have yet to unpack any computer stuff. Let’s hope I find the time, as I’ve been hankering to play this for a long time now!
I had a feeling this would come up before too long when GOG added it to their catalog. Can you post your DXWnd config, or list the changes you made from the exported Shadow Watch config? I’ve got the cursor changing but everything else isn’t getting drawn.
Boy, Baikonur is being my Waterloo. I got assigned a Theft mission in the army base, which as far as I can tell is a mission that is probably impossible–something I’ve never encountered in the game anywhere else. The object I need to grab never seems to appear within the main building with the entry point. And I can’t get across the huge yard without getting spotted or having to kill a soldier whose body will then get spotted.
So I restarted and ended up in Baikonur as my first location. Been nice and easy, but now I’ve got the lest mission as a rescue in the dacha. That map is always such a clusterfuck, and so far either Raphael or Lily has broken and gone on a rampage… every time they kick some ass, but every time they get killed before they come to. Good times!
Speaking of which, I love the morale mechanic. If you haven’t had a lot of time to play and see the systems at work, this is how it operates: A character has so many action points a turn, usually 3. When something stressful happens–you get shot at, the alarm goes off, I think also when you just see an enemy for the first time–they actually gain an AP. That’s great for them, until their number of APs goes past their Morale score (usually 6-8). At that point, they go nuts. Either they go on a killing spree or they go and hide somewhere. And when they go on a killing spree, they have no compunction about running into a room with multiple enemies. Usually doesn’t work out so well.
Archer’s ability that adds to everyone’s Morale makes things a lot easier later in the game. But early on you have to plan for a character to break, and be extra cautious.
UPDATE: Okay, it’s not the Dacha level, it’s the recreation center. That front room is a meat grinder. And holy crap, I just tried again, this time coming in the front door and on the second turn, every single character on my team broke. I don’t know how they racked up that many APs so quickly.
Hm. I have version DxWnd DLL 2.03.48. Sounds like it might be good that I haven’t upgraded.
Can we share non-image files easily through the forum, or do I need to find a place to host a file? I’m happy to put my configuration up somewhere to see if that makes it easier.
Hey, success. I had to play around a bit more but the last 2 knobs I monkeyed with were something about hiding multi-monitor and fixing the res to 640x480.
Edit to add: I went back to your config with just the hide multi mon set. That gets me the game in a window. The mouse still needs some work, it’s way off.
I’ve played this game a million times, but for some reason this last set of run-throughs I started seeing things that it seems I’ve never noticed before. One was a whole CHARACTER that I’m positive I’ve never encountered before. His name is Jacinto and he’s the nightclub owner in Rio. He must only come up in a small subset of storylines? Or have I just always picked the other character to talk to?
I’m one mission short of clearing the 2nd location, which will leave me with only Rio to go. My team is leveling wildly unevenly, with Gennady having earned 6 skills and Rafael only 2. I think I would have addressed that earlier had I remembered how great gas grenades are.
Gennady gets a little XP for every dude he scans, so when you bring him into a packed Assault mission or something, he can just rack up the points. He’s usually ahead of a lot of my characters, too.
Gas grenades are great. Usually they’re the only kind I use. Although last run-through, I had a defend mission in the Rio church and used Rafael and frag grenades to single-handedly clear one entrance.
I’ve played a LOT of Shadow Watch in my day, so with my next campaign, I’m trying something a bit crazy. Something I’ve never tried before. I’m calling it a “Lone Wolf Lily” campaign. No team member but Lily. In training, I’ve gone straight for Infiltration as well, to maximize the cool factor of her character.
And although I’ve gotten Lily shot full of holes a number of times now, she’s had a few missions that were downright Die-Hardian.
