Adaptation Displacement: Like it says above, few people are aware that the games were originally based on a comic book. As far as the adaptations themselves go, the first game is often mistaken for an N64 exclusive. Even at that, the games seem to be a separate continuity from the comics they're based upon and are likely separate from the rest of the Valiant/Acclaim universe. The first game was adapted for the comics but condensed to one issue and the second game released after the comic division was shut down.
Anti-Climax Boss: Although the PC version jacked up the difficulty quite a bit, Dr. Batrachian is still this in all versions for deciding to take on an immortal voodoo warrior with naught but a PR-24 baton.
Awesome Music: The musical scores for both games are fantastic. The first is more memorable for being extremely frightening at times, but the sequel has several hauntingly beautiful tracks, particularly the themes for the French Quarter and Moytura Abbey stages.
Breather Boss: Avery Marx is, despite his long and creepy build up, perhaps the easiest of all of The Five to defeat. He does little damage, makes no effort to dodge even a full frontal attack, and has a pretty low damage threshold.
Legion is an ancient entity who rules over Deadside with an iron fist. The mastermind behind a prophecy surrounding the end of the world, Legion manipulates the protectors of Liveside to get his hands on the Dark Souls, seeking them to empower himself and his faction. Wanting to announce his return to the other side of the veil, Legion unites a team of serial killers under his banner, The Five, granting them demonic status as his generals and ordering them to kill more victims in his name. In Deadside, Legion is the overlord of the Asylum, where he experiments on Deadsiders, butchering them and using their remains to create a massive army of grotesque monsters to invade Liveside. Legion toys with Michael LeRoi by posing as his deceased little brother, Luke, mocking Michael for not letting him rest in peace. A sadistic being wearing a mask of aristocracy, Legion proved himself to be one of the worst demons faced by the Shadow Man.
Victor Karl Batrachian, also known as the Lizard King, is Legion's right-hand man and leader of The Five. Once a brilliant but sociopathic student before he was expelled from medical school, Batrachian murdered his own partner and patients, escaping justice by killing two deputies. Tasked with commanding Legion's acolytes and given the unique ability to explode heads through internal pressure, Batrachian used his newfound powers in a series of sacrifices that took the lives of 13 people before he was caught by the FBI and sentenced to die in the electric chair. A bloodthirsty maniac even on Death Row, Batrachian released hundreds of prisoners from their cells and turned the prison into his own slaughterhouse, systematically exploding the heads of countless inmates and guards alike.
John G. Pierce, the legendary Jack the Ripper himself, was the first murderer to join Legion's ranks when he was still an occultist searching for a way to gain immortality. A pivotal member of The Five and fanatic supporter of the apocalypse, Pierce gladly offered his skills as a Mad Artist to Legion, assisting him in constructing both the Asylum itself and the tools needed for his invasion. Participating in the preparations for Legion's arrival, Pierce satisfies his misogynistic tendencies by killing women and mutilating their corpses.
The Sisters in the fire temples, due to the fact that they can fly and routinely do this over areas that will kill you until you get to the end of the level. This is especially bad with the red versions, who never come to ground level, move around constantly, and have the strongest attack.
The piglike bondage freaks that show up everywhere in the Asylum. The rifle-toting versions aren't too bad, but the ones carrying meathooks and chainsaws will mess you up quick if you aren't careful, and the chainsaw wielder also carries a bloody human torso as a shield, which you have to destroy before you can damage him.
Duppies are a Glass Cannon version. They don't take much to kill, but if you let them get close or get surprised from behind, they can take your health down to nothing in mere seconds.
Jaunty is fairly popular due to his unusual design and funny dialogue, with many considering him a highlight of the game.
Marco Cruz, one of the Five, is well-liked due to his cheery demeanor and entertaining Trash Talk, which makes him a nice change of pace from the other, more frightening members of the group.
Squeaky-Toy of Doom for a particularly unnerving sound effect in the Asylum.
Mama Hottie - Mama Nettie.
Gingivitis - Legion. Remember to floss regularly!
Sweet Zombie Jesus - Michael.
Skeletonne - The fat zombies in Deadside.
Meat Beater - Asylum Butcher.
Tim The Toolman Taylor - Avery Marx.
Disco Stu - Marco Cruz.
Captain Flashback - Milton Pike.
Dr. Lecter - Dr. Batrachian.
Game-Breaker: The SMGs make bosses a cakewalk, thanks to the high rate of fire putting them in hitstun indefinitely. It only sees use against the Five, but it still takes a lot of the challenge out of it. One of them can be obtained without even killing any of the Five, while the second requires beating one of them.
Genius Bonus: Jaunty mentions chatting with the medieval painter Pieter Brueghel, who said that the Asylum reminds him of some of his paintings. Brueghel made three paintings of the Tower of Babel, and his depiction of the tower as a wide, multi-tiered structure indeed resembles the outward appearance of the Asylum.
The Wailers and Shiverers attack Shadowman by draining his life force from a distance. The good news it that destroying them with the Shadowgun gives back whatever they stole. The bad news is the game likes to place them in small cages in the Asylum you can't get into to reclaim your health. Duppies and Deadwings are also a huge pain in the ass for their ability to spit giant loogies from a distance and -for Duppies- rapidly shred you to pieces up close.
And in the sequel, we have small flying demons that will either zip around in the distance shooting energy beams or fly in circles around Shadow Man and claw at him. "Pain in the ass" is too kind a phrase for these hateful little shitstains.
Asylum Butchers in Deadside, wild dogs in Liveside.
One of the quests in the game is to collect three parts to an ancient voodoo blade to bring nightfall to the world of the living, so Shadow Man can stop the Five. The game starts early in the morning can only takes a few hours to beat, meaning everything likely happens in real time and the change to night is actually necessary to beat Legion before he can carry out his plans.
Gathering Dark Souls is central to the plot of the first game.
Improved By The Recut: Shadow Man Remastered, the 2021 Updated Re-release by Nightdive Studios, has been generally received positively for not only a few gameplay improvements (tweaking the movement controls and adding a weapon wheel to streamline combat), but also integrating content that had to be scrapped for time from the original game (such as Milton Pike and Marco Cruz's levels, which means they no longer share Gardelle County Jail with Batrachian), as well as the second Violator from the N64 version. Due to these factors, it's seen by some as the definitive version of the game.
Most Wonderful Sound: The brief but reassuring chant that plays whenever you find and obtain a new weapon or item.
The voice acting. The sequel manages to make this even more ridiculous. It's not so much that it's bad, but Shadowman is a pretty ridiculous Large Ham and all of The Five except Jack the Ripper are really narmy.
In Avery's tenement several rooms contain Avery's victims and clips are shown of them holding cassette players with recordings of themselves being forced to repeat Mark 5:9 while pleading for mercy. That isn't this trope. Some console adaptions missed out on this content, but didn't bother to remove the clips which are now just 10-15 seconds of staring at an empty chair. Real scary.
Marco Cruz. His disco slang laden Trash Talk and his delightful ear worm theme, which is quite a bit of Soundtrack Dissonance compared to the rest of the game, really makes him stand out.
Jack the Ripper. During his boss fight, he prances and jumps around like a weird cross between Mick Jagger and Spider-Man, talks in a thick cockney accent, and one of his regular taunts is to "make a Mary Kelly out of you!", but somehow he manages to be the scariest of The Five.* Though, if one is aware of what he did to Mary Kelly...
Possibly intentional with Mike's meeting with Batrachian. The level itself is very eerie, having Mike fight headless corpses, with Mike even showing some genuine shock and fear. Once Mike meets Batrachian himself, however, he completely tears into him for being a coward who's full of himself and seems to actually get under Batrachian's skin.
Realism-Induced Horror: Deacon's file, containing information about the background, modus operandi, and victims of The Five is one of the scariest things in the game for this reason. With the sole exception of Dr. Batrachian's M.O., the rest of the information entails the kind of sadistic and evil things that serial killers have done in real life.
Polished Port: The Dreamcast and N64 ports. The original PC game was too big to fit on any of the consoles, but the Dreamcast retained most of the content and even the high resolution graphics (although with the PC game natively supporting modern higher screen resolutions, it can pale in comparison to running the game on modern PC hardware). The N64 lost a few things (a few minor rooms, Mike's more detailed separate shirt, some minor audio), graphics had to be compressed and even sound samples are a bit compressed, but the game is not only rather well done, it's amazing it even fit on the cartridge. Although you WILL need a memory card, the cartridge has no internal saving, and it took up most of the card (around 80 blocks). There was also a higher resolution mode via the expansion pak. While the PC original is far superior, the N64 version was probably the most well known version for many years, largely for being a standout "mature" game on what was still seen as a very "kiddy" console.
Porting Disaster: The PS1 version is pretty god-awful for a number of reasons. The graphics are absolutely horrible and even more content is missing than in the N64 version, but the worst thing may be the constant disc reading it has to do, as the game is constantly loading while you play it. The PlayStation's laser motor practically groans under the strain. The system was nowhere near up to specs needed for a game this big, and it really shows, with the game often running at single-digit framerates. Interestingly, however, this version is the only one with surviving source code, and is, as such, providing the primary code base for the Remastered version (with the missing content and features being backfilled from a disassembly of the PC version).
Sequelitis: While not outright unplayable, 2econd Coming is considered a huge let down compared to the first game, with murky graphics, poorly defined controls, inefficient weapons and dull, repetitive combat-focused gameplay. It was rushed out as a quick cash grab during the peak of Acclaim's financial downfall, and it shows.
Really more of an Adaptational Sequel Drop. The Remastered version gives the player a lot more control over the camera and thereby also Mike's ability to aim his weapons. In effect, it makes a lot of jumps and drops that were difficult in the original version due to camera angles more manageable because it is easier to see what you're doing, and it especially makes the previously fairly difficult boss-battle against Jack the Ripper a complete cakewalk because it is now also possible to attack him when he is crawling around on the celling, whereas in the original version you could really only hit him when he jumped down and tried to attack Mike.
2econd Coming is also far easier than the first game, first by maps being much less expansive and labyrinthine, and second by how dying brings up the Teddy Bear warp screen instead of depositing you in front of the Marrow Gates. Since every boss battle has a warp point leading to it, you can simply respawn in front of them when killed and pick up right where you left off, with the boss' health meter still reflecting the damage you've dealt so far.
That One Boss: Jack may cause some problems. He ceiling crawls, so it's easy to lose track of him, and he will rip you apart at close range. Also, your shield won't work here because it won't deflect his blade. (it only stops projectiles)
That One Level: The Temple of Prophecy, where the Marcher tattoo is guarded. The previous temple has few enemies and mostly simple/risk-free platforming, and the next temple is one of the final levels in the game, but this level sits around the halfway point and alternates between rooms with difficult platforming over One-Hit Kill lava floors, and rooms containing most of the dark souls of the level, guarded by large numbers of Sisters of Fate. Compounding this, is that unlike other levels in which the checkpoint is right around the middle of a level, this one is practically at the Temple's entrance.
The Undercity isn't pleasant either. There are only three dark souls to find in this level, which means they're spread out very well. The level is big in terms of vertical climb, so a fall is really painful, and the third and final key needed to fight the Five is in here too. Plus, it's perpetually dark as all hell so the Flambeau gets a lot of work.
, who said that the Asylum reminds him of some of his paintings. Brueghel made three paintings of the Tower of Babel