izigame.me

Mixed bag with this one to be honest.
PROS:
* Having the movies be mentioned in the games is awesome, especially one based off of Sonic 3. Spoiler free, but Sonic 3 was so damn good, really good movie.
* Keanu voicing Shadow here is awesome, he already did a great job in the actual movie and he does a great job here too, Sega hiring him here was so damn cool.
* The remix of Westopolis from the original 2005 Shadow game used here is SO welcome, that track was already great and it's even better here, even if the Shadow 2005 game is barely mentioned at all in the main game.
* The cinematic shots are stunning, much like the base game. Tons of badass, explosive Shadow action we all know and love. The stage is incredibly detailed and really well designed visually, up there with the shots in the movie itself.
* The stage design is incredibly well done, even if it utilizes none of the Doom Powers, which I can totally understand as you can play this stage as soon as you boot up the game. Nice way to avoid future spoilers.
* Replacing the Collection Keys with Poster Pieces was some fun variety, having 6 collectibles instead of the usual 3, more akin to the Red Star Rings of Sonic Generations. The Shadow Posters were well hidden, fun to find, and look pretty cool.
CONS:
* Gonna get the absolute BIGGEST issue of this DLC right out of the way. The Movie skin is only available in THIS stage, which means if you want to play as Movie Shadow with Keanu voicing him, you'll have to resort to modding the game. It's incredibly stupid, as Sega are known to have their skins in games be accessible anywhere, with this being the weird exception. A patch or something would be nice, instead of modding a game with Denuvo DRM, which is known to be difficult and even sometimes impossible.
* The previous mention of the Doom Powers not being used. Maybe there could be an alternate stage layout after you beat the game that could utilize the Doom Powers as en Encore mode of such, even it canonically wouldn't make any sense. Which leads into my next point.
* Why is there only 1 Act of this stage? It's advertised as a 'pack' yet there's only one stage and one skin you can only use in said stage. Seriously some wasted potential here, it would benefit from having an Act 2 like the other stages. Yes, I understand there's Challenge Acts, but they're just snippets of Act 1, like all the other Challenge Acts. An Act 2 would be nice, even if it's just set in Tokyo again, there's tons of material to work with.
So my general thoughts?
If you're a fan of Sonic 3, Shadow, and Keanu's performance, it's genuinely so awesome, and has some great level design. There's fun to be had here. I just feel like it's incredibly lacking in content, there's only one stage, and you can't use Movie Shadow anywhere else in the game without modding it, which is hard to do cus of unneeded anti-cheat software, so I feel like the pricetag is way too much, especially if you buy the Upgrade. Gonna have to give it a thumbs down, just wait for a sale.