So I just finished Shadow Warrior (2013) and I wasn’t blown away by it but I had a decent time. I always like hearing about experiences that people had with the game when it first came out and whether or not a modern perspective paints it differently.
To summarize what I thought: The writing is humorous, but not outright funny to me. The graphics hold up very well and the gore is great. Combat is mostly pretty good. Some enemies are annoying or overly difficult on the hard difficulty but overall it’s pretty good.
I did think it was modeled to be kind of akin to a Serious Sam type game and it lives up to that but similar to that game, many of the weapons/enemies/levels overstay their welcome a bit. Other than that I had a pretty good time with it, thought it was an 8/10 fun time.
What’s everyone’s story with this game series? When did you first play it and what did you think about it?
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I’ve not played the first one, but Shadow Warrior 2 was really fun :3
I played it like a year ago on insane difficulty. Never played the original nor the new doom.
I really liked the first level where combat is mostly melee and lots of story is happening. Left a very strong first impression. Expected the same pace from the rest so it was disappointing that most of the levels were “We need to reach x location for plot to happen but we telepoted / car broke down too far away so we’ll walk for a couple levels”. Level structure also got stale, there doesn’t need to be an encounter in every room. It would be a much better game if the levels had 1/3rd the encounter count or some levels were merged. I also wish there was a ‘victory lap’ level between the two final bosses so you could use the magical katana you finally obtained.
I really liked the characters and world building. Business ninja is always a good aesthetic. The banter was nice. Liked Wang being an unapologetic video game protagonist. Magical stuff was fine
The combat was mixed. Weapon variety was pretty good but the weapons didn’t feel ‘tight’ to use like in half life 2. I switched to controller halfway through and it fit the gunplay better. Kinda wish there was more emphasis on movement and melee but I was satisfied with what was there.
I didn’t like encounter / enemy design though. The difficulty curve was way too smooth. There are very few enemy types so most encounters are just the same group of enemies you fought 15 minutes ago but with 1 extra foot demon added. And after a while normal encounters start including minibosses too so you need to spend minutes slowly dealing damage to them. There were some encounters that were genuinely challenging and memorable but the vast majority was just walking the marathon and trying not to die in a stupid way. I think it’s fair to describe this as a ‘low skill ceiling’, once you figure out how not to die against each enemy type your progress (at least on insane) is mostly bottlenecked by the dps of your weapons.
Bosses are a different story. They were insanely difficult on insane (first two took me hours each). Beating them was pretty rewarding.
When I bought the game on steam it came with viscera cleanup simulator shadow warrior edition, which I played immediately after beating the game. It was a nice change of pace and made me wish the game itself also had more gameplay variety. I would’ve loved more human characters too.
Don’t really have thoughts on graphics, they were fine maybe a bit too much bloom.
Numerically I think it’s a 6/10
I think I share a lot of your thoughts and they apply pretty cleanly to my experience on hard difficulty as well. I can’t imagine insane difficulty just because as you said it’s like walking a marathon except the marathon is longer.
That and there are many many instances of damage in this game that are just basically impossible to avoid and deal way too much for group scenarios. Like yes I’m busy fighting 15 of the low level grunts but I took a third of my health in damage from some mob pounding on the ground out of my view.
Also maybe this is just a controller thing but the combos were infuriating to activate. Most of the time they would be ignored as inputs unless I was very deliberate and they never really flowed properly.
A bizarre decision was to use combos like moving the left stick right twice and left trigger to heal. Instead of just… hold right on movement and press left trigger. That was only done because they needed two attack buttons for some reason even though holding the right trigger for a heavy attack would have worked just fine.
What’s even more funny is that the victory lap you asked for is in there. It’s just not a level, it’s the ramp up to the final boss area. And I recognized it for what it was and got pretty disappointed that I could only use the sword that this entire game has been working up to for like a total of 3 minutes on mobs. That’s insane and just plain bad design for an FPS like this. Now reflecting on it I’m not sure if I’d land at the 8 I initially said. I think it’s a 7 or maybe even a bit lower for me
I think the combos were easier on mouse and keyboard but the controller controls were fine too. I don’t remember it super well but wasn’t the secondary attack completely different for some weapons? I don’t think holding primary for secondary attack would work.
the victory lap you asked for is in there.
Oh right, that was a thing
It was an interesting game. Came out at a time we were going through a bit of a fast paced FPS drought and was one of the - relatively - big name reboots, but curiously one that didn’t have a lasting impact. I had fun at the time, even with the comically awful fall damage (dashing and dying from going down the stairs was equal parts frustrating and hilarious), and hold no nostalgia for the old games. There were fun guns and cool enemies to kill, as well as a story that landed with one of my favorite bittersweet endings.
At the end of the day, I think “enjoyable” would be my final mark; save for the big, busy arenas during the final levels, the game didn’t feel as high octane or thrilling as future releases like DOOM and Titanfall 2, and from the little that I played of the first sequel they really lost their way.
I hear your point about the last part. It’s great that this sort of old school FPS got made in 2013 but ultimately I feel it’s been outpaced by newer games like the modern DOOM games. The two newer Doom games are just FPS perfected honestly even if they aren’t for everyone. They’re fast paced, varied, and compared to something like this they make this look slow and unsatisfying. But reject that comparison and this game is still enjoyable, if buggy at times.
It’s certainly a trailblazer of sorts, but didn’t exactly make it into my hall of fame, either (despite it being mostly well-done). Overstayed welcomes really drop any such games to a 7-7.5 at best for me. The writing was great, but the gameplay became too same-y to the point of me not finishing it…
What I noticed is that my favorite FPS in this genre really do a nice crescendo towards the end that the 2013 reboot game lacks.
I mean they do great on enemy variety. They need some tweaking on damage but otherwise fine. Gun play is mostly good to excellent. But what’s lacking is that thing where the arenas get more and more intense. Enemies are combined in various types to make each encounter play much differently.
Like how in the newer doom games you typically have units that snipe at your from range, ones that are highly mobile, others that can tank damage. So in higher level combat you’re just swapping weapons constantly to counter each different mob while also coming up with unique strategies for each arena.
The arenas here are mostly plain. You have almost no verticality in any arena. Your movement is beyond basic and stilted. And then when you finally get some bigger battles you realize that none of the mobs really mesh together well at all.
To put it bluntly it’s like the difference between Batman Arkham series games where each enemy makes you dance to kill them versus Skyrim fighting 50 NPCs. They don’t play off of each other, they’re all just constantly fighting for your attention versus a complex and rewarding dance. A good FPS game is mostly measured by how differently you need to approach each encounter and here it’s almost all one note unfortunately.
I played it very recently, without any history with the IP. Probably got it in some Humble Bundle or something, cause I don’t actually remember buying it.
Overall I enjoyed the game, agree with your summary about writing, graphics and combat, but it didn’t feel anything great. Good, but not great is my opinion. Personally, felt more like 7 or 7.5/10.
I played Shadow Warrior back in the late 90s on DOS. Granted, it was only the demo because I had no money and no internet to pirate things.
It was a pretty decent Duke clone from what I remember. Gory kills, interesting weapons, corny toilet humor, some sexuality, and interesting little tidbits that made the levels feel more alive than your standard shooter at the time. You could watch the rabbits bang and multiply, stuff like that. Pretty entertaining for me at the time. I’ve had it and the reboot in my Steam library for years now, maybe this is a sign to finally check them off the “to play” list.
I think the idea of playing through the OG game is a good one, the one I played (2013) you might just play for about an hour or so and if it’s not really clicking with you at any point, you may just drop it is my advice. The game is alright enjoyable but it never evolves much until the very end so if it’s not your thing, don’t force yourself to play it
I thought it was alright. It definitely seems more enjoyable if you had some kinda connection with the 90s game. It felt more enjoyable because you know where the game was coming from.
