Donald Mustard — the affable, passionate creative director at Chair Entertainment (Advent Rising, Undertow) — makes no attempt to conceal the primary influence on his studio’s next project, Shadow Complex. “I LOVE Super Metroid,” he gushes. “I wanted to make a grownup version of G.I. Joe. I love the idea of a hightech bad guy versus a low-tech good guy.”

Boiling it down, Mustard wants to make “a totally next-gen side-scroller.”

Based on the extensive demo we saw of Complex — a game set in the same universe as renowned sci-fi author Orson Scott Card’s Empire novel — he’s well on his way to doing just that, and to upping the high-water mark for Xbox Live Arcade titles in the process.

The story begins earnestly enough. While Jason and his girlfriend, Claire, are hiking in the forests of northeastern Washington state, Claire mysteriously vanishes. Jason quickly begins searching for her, waving his flashlight around and shouting her name. Suddenly, he stumbles across her backpack, stuffed with climbing gear.

Following the warming trail, Jason comes across a mysterious base of operations hidden within the remote forest. He slips inside and continues his hunt for Claire, but instead discovers an organization bent on sparking civil war in the U.S. Their goal: take over the politically fractured country and, in their mind, save the world from itself.

In the ultimate “wrong place, wrong time” scenario, Jason and Claire breaches the faction’s turf on the exact day the group plans to launch its attack. Consequently, the innocent couple are marked as intrusive spies attempting to foil the organization’s plans.

The entire story is told through high-quality cutscenes, with fully voiced dialogue — something you just don’t find in XBLA games. In fact, the high level of presentation and polish probably would’ve fooled us into thinking we were seeing a full-fledged, $60 retail product if we hadn’t already known it was a downloadable Arcade game. None of this is lost on Mustard — he claims that Microsoft has supported Chair and the game’s development since the project’s earliest days, aiding them wherever possible. Microsoft’s goal? To ensure that Shadow Complex grows into a title that can be touted as a “nextgen Live Arcade game.”

So does the gameplay back it up? Yes. Mustard and his team have paid close attention to what makes Metroid tick, employing that series’ “layered onion” design philosophy to produce a massive series of interconnected rooms that feature areas you’ll have to return to later in the game once you’ve gained a new ability. Certain doors, grates, and ventilation shafts are colorcoded, indicating the item you’ll need to access them. So while Jason begins with nothing but a flashlight, he’ll eventually get a gun, and then grenades. Later, he’ll gain access to incredible tech like the “riot foam” gun that shoots a stream of foam that instantly expands, then hardens, killing its target or carving a vent shaft.

Jason also gets his hands on more mysterious technology, like a suit that amplifies his speed, jumping, and combat skills. So, a room or area that seems unreachable when you first find it becomes one you’ll want to return to once you have the right equipment to collect its spoils — be it a weapon or one of the 120 well-hidden item pickups.

Smartly, you’ll always be improving, and you’ll thus always have an incentive to keep playing. And even when you’re done, Complex boasts Challenge Rooms straight out of Bionic Commando Rearmed, where you’ll aim to complete themed tests as quickly as possible. (Weirdly, a grappling hook is also lifted straight from Capcom’s 2008 remake.)

Variety also plays a part in keeping the exploration fresh. “This isn’t Contra,” Mustard warns when we ask about SC’s gameplay. In other words, straight running-and-gunning works sometimes, but usually you’ll need to take cover, use the environment against your foes (e.g., we saw Jason shoot an electrical wire so it fell and electrocuted two bad guys), or even just run: in one beautiful sequence, Jason was on foot outside the base, being pursued by a helicopter gunship. With only a lake ahead of him, he dove into the water, swimming deep to avoid the bullets. (He later came back to that area with the stolen power suit and simply ran across the water at hyperspeed!) We even got to see an over-the-shoulder-view turret-manning sequence and a boss battle with a giant four-legged mech whose primary weakness was its underbelly.

In short, Mustard describes the Card-powered Shadow Complex as being “all about exploration, punctuated by intense combat” — a bite-sized summary we agree with after our first look, and a description that would also be well-suited to a certain Super NES–era side-scroller…