Shadow Watch’s premise has the gamer as the head chief of security of a company who is working on an international space station. The space station was to be developed as a group effort between countries, but the problems of politics eventually were involved and it held the project back enough that it brought it to a total screeching halt. Your job is to lead a group of elite special forces around the world, following leads and completing missions. There are numerous groups looking to stop the creation of the space station, and unless they are stopped before the plans are put into action, all the effort and time that has been spent developing the project will be forever lost.

In spite of the fact that most games nowadays are moving toward the 3D-or-it-isn’t-cool trend, Red Storm has put together a slick looking game with Shadow Watch. While it happens to be a bit disappointing that nothing in the background is animated, the hand-painted approach that has been taken with Shadow Watch’s graphics style makes up for the small shortcoming. The game has a distinctly unique style that has not been seen in a game before, and that simple fact makes it a nice derivative from what has otherwise been released. The actual characters in the game look quite cool, as well, and their animation is well done. The characters are not especially detailed, but neither is the rest of the game’s visuals, so it actually fits into the overall scheme nicely.

As with X-Com, Shadow Watch is played via an overhead perspective that allows you to see both the insides of the building that is being infiltrated and the paths that the characters are taking. The interface designed in which to control the characters is relatively easy to use, and is intuitive enough that it can be figured out within a few moments. There are four icons labeled up, down, left and right, and then two others that have the character pivot into another direction. AP points determine the amount of movement that a certain character has, and it changes depending on the person. A nice option is that if there is enough room open, Shadow Watch gives the option of being able to run two steps in one turn, instead of having to use two AP points to make it that distance. It still would have been nice, however, if either Red Storm gave more AP points to everyone, or made the available maps a bit smaller. Trekking across from one side to another can take up to a half an hour, and it’s particularly annoying when a person goes to investigate a far off area, only to find that there is nothing worthy there. The character then has to navigate through all the rooms again, and it can take up to five turns just to return to the desired location.

The missions in the game have a decent amount of variance in them. Some of the missions can range from only breaking into a place, taking a specific item and then walking out, while other can get a bit more complicated. Sometimes after breaking in you will have to find a person who’s in the place (why they would be in the building that late at night, though, is beyond me), kidnap them and then bring them to the originating location of the mission. Instead of throwing a new mission at the player after they complete the previous one, Shadow Watch puts the decision making more so in the role of the person playing. Conversations with the local police and other people involved will result in a number of different missions that will differentiate depending on what types of responses and statements are given during a conversation. Completing missions gives a certain amount of experience points, and once a certain number is reached a skill can then be applied to a character. These skills could be higher amount of accuracy when firing a weapon, stronger martial arts or an increase in the moral of the characters during a mission.

Entering into the strategy genre up against classics like X-Com is tough for just about any company. Red Storm has done a decent job in entering in with Shadow Watch, even though it isn’t a particularly innovative or spectacular effort. If the game does well enough, perhaps we’ll see a sequel that will push forward in the genre even more than this one has.