In Jade Shadow you play the role of Kimiko, a half-cyborg (what were her parents thinking and which one was the cyborg anyway?) super spy in the year 2437. Kimiko is powered by her long-dead ancestors, which from the presentation and storyline, one assumes were Japanese. Kimiko is fighting her nemesis, the evil mechanical mad man: Dr. Morfune. Not sure how he became a Doctor… maybe those University Degree adverts I get in my email are for real after all. Anyway, Dr. Morfune has a whole island (named Morfune island actually… coincidence?) full of bad guys for you to slaughter before you can reach him and force a final confrontation. Kimiko the Jade Shadow isn't just after Morfune because of his shoddy medical credentials, he's plotting to destroy the futuristic city of NeoTokyo. Okay, so the storyline is a little hackneyed, and the dialogue isn't much better, but the action was more than enough to keep me playing.

On that note, why don't I tell you a little about the actual gameplay. I'm sure you know the formula by now for vertical scrolling shooters: Move your avatar around, while mashing the fire button and doing your best to dodge incoming projectiles. This is pretty much how Jade Shadow plays, at least, in the beginning. As you progress through the game you gain some interesting abilities that make the gameplay much more interesting. Among them is Telekinesis, which allows Kimiko to pick up large metal blocks and hurl them at her enemies, or destroyable objects that are in her path. While Telekinesis is fun, the ability which made the game really enjoyable for me was "Time Slow", which allows you to both slow time, and deflect any incoming projectiles back at those who fired them. You can unlock these new abilities by finding and entering special areas of the game levels. If you happen to miss an ability, you can go back in time using special "Time Junctures" to warp back and re-do the level. Zango made the rather strange decision to make all levels you re-play show up in black and white, which I found rather silly. Nevertheless, it's nice that you can go back and re-do levels.

Jade Shadow features serviceable graphics which I guess they can technically call 3D, but are more like 2D because of the fixed top-down camera position. Nevertheless, the graphics get the job done. The large amount of destructible game environment (and the graphics to support it) was a nice touch, and something I haven't seen a great deal of in the genre. I also give kudos to Zango for featuring a female heroine, and making her the main character, that was not blessed with outrageous bodily proportions. The interface is also quite acceptable and easy to navigate. The particle effects are fairly nice and I never got a single slow-down of frame rate regardless of what was on the screen (which I recall was a constant problem with vertical-scrolling shooters in the past).

Sound in Jade Shadow is a bit of an afterthought. The musical score seems to be a weird mix of James Bond, and traditional Japanese musical influences, which I can't say I overly enjoyed. The sound effects for Kimiko and her enemies blasting each other to pieces are just plain average. They get the job done, but do nothing to improve or make the gameplay experience more intense.

I recommend Jade Shadow to anyone looking for a fun game that also happens to be free. The game's 20+ levels ought to be enough keep even shoot em' up masters busy for a while. It's clear to me that Zango did a lot of testing with Jade Shadow, as I found the difficulty to be challenging enough, and not at all frustrating. Unless your allergic to anime or just plain hate shoot em' ups, I encourage you to give Jade Shadow a try. It's only a couple of clicks away at: http://www.zango.com/