By Sam Coles:
After the release of Duke Nukem 3D a couple of games came
out using the build engine, we had Monolith’s Blood and of course 3D Realms’
Shadow Warrior. Where Duke had controversy with misogyny with women, Shadow
Warrior was being accused of being racist. While I mostly don’t agree as I see
it more as a harmless stereotype, I can see why as you play as a Chinese man
with a comedy broken English accent running around with a sword cutting demons in
two, but racist? No. Nearly two decades later Flying Wild Hog Studios decided
to do a reboot to the series in 2013 for the PC, which it then released on the
PS4 and Xbox One in 2014.
In Shadow Warrior you play as Lo Wang, and yes he makes that
joke many times throughout the game. He has been tasked to acquire an ancient
sword for his shady boss from the Yakuza, however things go wrong and Wang has
to get things done the bloody way as he clears things up with his sword. The
story is interesting as you get further in, with tales about the shadow realm
but it is over shadowed when Lo makes a penis joke again. Look I’m all for
crude humour as I’m a huge fan of Duke Nukem, but when he shouts “come and
taste some wang” for the 50th time, it makes me want to take his
sword and commit hara-kiri but no such luck.
Shadow Warrior is one of the revivals of the old school shooters,
with a level by level structure where you have to find colour coded keys with a
modern flare. It plays more like Serious Sam unlike the original Shadow
Warrior, as it puts you in a closed off arena and tells you go nuts and fill
you boots with blood until the game gives you an arbitrary 5 star rating which
I still can’t figure out. Yes this is one of my first issues with Shadow
Warrior is the rating system in combat, it is inconsistent, where you use
varied attacks 2 stars to leaning on the fire button in a turret sequence 5
stars which is baffling.
You have a decent selection of weapons with the usual
pistols, shotguns and machine guns. However this game has a great focus on
sword combat, it’s not exactly the most sophisticated system, but it is great
to slice your enemies in half like a surgeon who has finally snapped. You have
light attacks where you can chip enemy’s health down which helps with big
crowds, or you use heavy attacks to cut enemy’s body parts off like Necromorphs
from Dead Space.
You also have access to magical powers where you can cause a
shock, a force push and the most useful the healing spell. These can be
upgraded, but my problem with this is that there are far too many upgrades
where it can be overwhelming and somewhat confusing what to unlock. I’m all for
progression systems, but when you have three to four pages worth of upgrades
something is wrong here.
Visually the game looks fine; it’s not the best looking game
considering the time it came where we had games such as the Last of Us and GTA
V. Those games came out on aging pieces of hardware I may add, but to be fair
this game was made by a small team and it aims for a target frame rate of 60
frames per second, keyword being target. I played this on Xbox One and my god
does it really stutter when there are lots of explosions and body parts on
screen, most of the time in quiet moments the game runs fine but when combat
starts it stutters like Porky Pig. Environments do get a tad repetitive, seen
one pagoda and arcade machine you’ve seen them all, it does start to weigh on
you especially after a long session.
Shadow Warrior (2013) is a largely enjoyable game, but it
does get a tad repetitive with its level design and combat encounters, plus
there is only so many times I can listen to Lo Wang reference his penis. We get
it Lo your name is innuendo for large penis, now stop before I reach into the
television and duct tape your mouth shut. If you’re looking for a cheap and decent old
school shooter then I can recommend it overall, it’s available on PS4, Xbox One
and PC as well as in a bundle with the excellent sequel.
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