Shadow Of The Beast 2 is a puzzle platformer from 1990, with slick scrolling and colourful backdrops, and lets not forget the music! I never got beyond the first few screens back in the day, how about you?

Production Notes:
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Series: 4
Episode: 42 of 44
Original Footage Published on Feb 5, 2008
Fan Request: Somewhere around April, 2012
Narrated: Sept 21, 2017
Edited: April 2, 2018
Released: April 7, 2018

This game caused a little controversy, both at the time and also with the Lemon guides, as the game proved too challenging for the average player - myself included.

Danscore:
For one thing, the game starts the player off facing the wrong direction to complete the level, so if you go the wrong way you have no idea what you are supposed to be doing. At least SOTB 1 and SOTB 3 were linear and there was an obvious use for the items you find. But random switches of death feel punishing in this game. Backtracking around the map seems boring, and if you miss one coin, good luck completing it. For those who do know how to play it, there are generous health pickups along the way, so its either do or die in this game. It deserves high praise for the peripheral elements of the graphics and music, although the sound effects arent exactly digitised explosions. For core gameplay mechanics, the jumping is predictable, and the character handles very well. The game breaker is the puzzles, and without a tavern to buy clues and weapons, and no longplays back in the day, the player could get stuck pretty much at chapter 1, and never experience story they bought, unlike a book or movie. So I give this a 6. Its a 'good' game in almost all the right areas, but the cheap trick of getting the player stuck in a dead end, just because something fell, an elevator moved, or some animal chewed through a rope, is not fun at all, and robs the gamer of the experience.

Review History
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I wont go into too much more detail here. But the suggestion of this game came up somewhere in the middle of series 1, by a fan who I respected. I said I wouldnt review the game, as I felt my skills would not celebrate the game, and instead I would end up ranting about the cheap tricks. He didnt understand this, and said things which I found very upsetting and abusive. So much so that I was moved to remove the conversation from youtube, as it was very toxic and really harming me. A very short time later, JimPlaysGames posted a video about him, and I found out he had passed away. I wished there was something I could have done, and there wasnt. But the idea for this review happened, and I've been thinking of how to make it for a few years.

Last September I was moved to narrate this, and I hoped my narration from that time was a tribute to the game and also Laffer. Coming back to it this week, I found that it said everything I wanted, without being too unkind to anything or anybody, and a very nice tribute. So Im very glad I narrated this when I did. I wanted to include the game in series 4 at some point, but at the end somewhere, so as not to make people too sorry for anyone, and it spoil the light entertainment format and good times on Lemon.

I say 'Lemon' because this was never meant to be a personal channel, and frankly people arnt so interested in me, and I dont want them to be. My life is bright and sunny in Lemon land, but not in real life, and so those things dont mix together. You could say Im putting a brave face on it by pretending death will never happen to me, and Im just going on with life as normal. And thats what we all tend to do. Faced with a 20 year life expectancy woke me up and has motivated me in life; and if at the end of the day I live beyond those 20 years, I havent lost anything. I could be run over by a lorry tomorrow, or Eton musk could blow up the moon, who knows? Stuff happens. We must be adults and deal with it, and push away feelings of darkness.

For Laffer35 - R.I.P

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