Friday, 19 October 2018

Shadow Warrior (2013) Review - "Ancient Chinese secret"



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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