Okay, so I decided to completely re-review this game after reading my old review of this game and playing it for a bit again. Quite simply, it was a game that I didn't like at all at first, and while my dislike for it isn't really there anymore, I still am not that fond of this game.

It's set in the Sonic universe - not something you'd expect considering it's a game where you use guns and weapons. You play as Shadow the Hedgehog, who's trying to recall his past. He's approached by an alien named Black Doom, who tells him to find the Chaos Emeralds for him "as promised" while other aliens invade the planet. This eventually unfolds into a tale where Shadow tries to find out his past. Honestly, the story wasn't as interesting though as what I expected it to be, but at least it clears up a lot of loose ends left in Sonic Heroes.

The gameplay's nothing special. Yes, you can pick up guns to shoot aliens or GUN soldiers, but you don't need to use them, they are not compulsary. In all honesty, it was altogether preferrable to avoid the weapons altogether because shooting wasn't as easy as simply using a homing attack to get rid of your foes. There are instances where using weaponry makes things easier, but they are rare. You can use vehicles too, and sometimes it's compulsary to use them.

You can choose whether or not you want to fight for good, evil or yourself. There are three missions per level - a good mission, an evil mission and a neutral mission. Non-playable characters will arrive to help you - usually in the case of the good guys, Sonic or one of his friends will tag along, and usually in the case of the bad guys, Doom's Eye will appear. Pressing start enables you to switch between them to choose the non-playable character that will tag along and 'help' you. You will probably end up playing the game for a long while if you find it any good, but otherwise you might get bored quick.

Despite these details, the controls aren't really that good. Shadow skates along extremely fast and at times can be tough to control, almost as if he's on ice. When it comes to shooting, it may sometimes prove tricky to hit your target due to no targetting system whatsoever.

The multiplayer is dull, consisting of you trying to defeat the other player. You are put into an area, are able to pick up weapons, and you must try and hunt for the other player. The areas are large enough for the other player to evade you for a lengthy period of time and it eventually can become so dull that you'll find yourself willing to risk being defeated for a little bit of excitement. The choice of characters all limit themselves to Shadow and clones/robots of Shadow, thus there is a very poor variety of characters you can choose from.

Graphics aren't really terrible, but nothing amazing. It is quite disappointing when you consider some of the cutscenes look really detailed and amazing, yet the rest of the game looks bland, dull and doesn't have the same fantastic look that the few good cutscenes have.

The music I find mostly quite dull, and only the vocal tracks appealed to me. The voice-acting in English for the most part is bad. The bad part about owning the Gamecube version of the game in terms of voice-acting is that there is no way of changing to the Japanese voice-actors. The voice-acting is quite poor in a lot of areas, though thankfully better than some later Sonic games such as Sonic the Hedgehog (360/PS3). Shadow sounds somewhat decent once you get used to the voice, Sonic is bland and fake, Tails is girly, Knuckles and Amy aren't too bad, Rouge doesn't sound like an 18-year old female at all, Eggman and Black Doom are good and apart from Vector (who sounds awful) the Chaotix are tolerable.

Overall, I think some of the hardcore fans of Shadow will enjoy it and forgiving Sonic fans might want to take a look but other than that it's nothing special. It's not a terrible game by any means, but I don't really find it to be a good game either.