I like big guns and I cannot lie, you underdogs can’t deny… alright, I’m sorry for trying. Big guns have been a staple of 90’s shooters, they have defined a generation of gamers by taking up half the screen in ID’s games like Wolfenstein and Quake. Naturally, legendary games have copy cats and ID had God knows how many. One of those was 3D Realms’ Shadow Warrior. The game did well but wasn’t going to go down in history. It died early and was forgotten.
Well, it was abandoned till a little Polish studio named Flying Wild Hogs picked up the rights with a wish to do the title justice. The first game in the rebooted series was a good bit above average, the second garnered praise for a great coop experience but suffered a little due to its randomly generated worlds.
Time to figure out the third.
Story:
The game kicks off with Lo Wang retelling a tale of how he lost to a big fucking dragon and in turn lost his mojo. With his mojo gone: Lo Wang is unsure of his skills, his abilities and maybe his mind before being approached by Zilla who offers him a way to take out the dragon using the mask of an old friend: Hoji. Hoji was a god linked to the dragon, his mask might have a way to kill the beast.
The story is decent, not great. Delivered by cutscenes and in-game cinematics, it is not bad but I wouldn’t call the writing great. The writing is fun though so that is a plus. The jokes are cheesy but fun enough. The dialogue might as well be a copy-paste job from the older games, they aren’t meant to be great, but they are meant to be fun which they are.
Sound:
Let’s get this out of the way: Yes, I was disappointed with Flying Wild Hogs for replacing the voice cast just to be politically correct. Yes, I don’t approve of proven actors losing their jobs just because the PC (Politically Correct) brigade says so. That being said, the new voice actors are pretty good, they sound good and work hard. The only problem I have with the new cast is that they don’t feel cheesy enough, Shadow Warrior is famed for the cheese.
The background score is ok, it is repetitive tracks that don’t feel great. They are quite varied and sound Asian but don’t really force the adrenalin into you.
The special effects are great, they are loud while packing a punch. Each shot makes the gun feel heavier than it is, each slash from the sword makes Wang more of a badass. The grenades, the explosions and the special kills are all beyond exceptionally good quality.
Graphics:
The graphics didn’t wow me, they are nothing and I mean nothing close to games like Horizon Zero Dawn or Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. They don’t look dated but they are nothing special. They are perfect for the game, they are not overly complex which means that anyone who wants to play the game can play at 120FPS, that is a good thing because Shadow Warrior 3’s combat environments are hectic, you want any advantage you can get.
While not being special, the graphics do enough to separate elements from the rest of the world. There is no overarching brown like modern shooters, there aren’t any hidden enemies nor are the secrets hidden in the colour pallet. Everything is made obvious by their colours which is a breath of fresh air from Call of Battle: Field Duty.
The special effects aren’t overarching either. While each shot does have some feedback it doesn’t blind you. Flying Wildhogs has found the mid-point between graphics and gameplay in the weapon feedback, this is the standard that we should adopt from now on.
Gameplay:
Shadow Warrior 3 does what should have been ancient: left mouse button to shoot and right to melee. Something this simple should have been in games 10 years ago but better late than never I guess… I don’t know any game that uses this weapon system but thank fuck someone has finally figured it out.
There are two main gameplay elements: traversal, and combat. Traversal is sliding, dashing, jumping, double jumping, wall running, climbing and swinging to get through a level. While Sliding is pointless, all the other abilities are great. Dashing and jumping/double-jumping help you get past massive gaps in the world. Climbing is needed, while swinging is needed to either get past a gap, save you from a fall or two merge traversal mechanics together. It is all great gameplay, especially when you need to combine shooting with these other mechanics to get to the endpoint.
Calling the combat good would be an insult, it is platinum! Having the left mouse button for shooting and the right for the swordplay is soo stupidly simple that I’m annoyed. This simple little system is at best 20 years late. The gun variety and sword combos make for an amazing fighting experience that rapidly changes between bullet spam, high accuracy shots, lobbed explosive shots and hacking through enemies.
This is where my disappointment starts to show: Shadow Warrior 2 had probably 20 weapons with God knows how many variants. Shadow Warrior 3 on the other hand has 6 guns. 6 should be easy to deliver but half of them feel like they were added late to the party. There are 3 guns, namely: The Revolver, the Basilisk and the Shuriken Spitter that feel good. The other three feel like they were afterthoughts. The Riot Gun, which is the game’s shotgun should have felt like a badass but is underwhelming. A game with a poor shotgun is a poor game.
The game further annoys with its combat arenas. These are areas that you cannot pass through till all the enemies are dead, that would be fine but Shadow Warrior 3 has two types of enemies: The special and the Bantha fodder. In a combat arena, you must kill the special enemies to get through, the annoyance shows when the normal enemies respawn at random positions blocking what should be an easy combat area. I kind of understand the thinking of respawning the cannon fodder: killing enemies with a gun drops health while killing enemies with a sword spawns ammo but it is not enough to offset the frustration,
There are saving graces in the combat: special kills that take the weapons of enemies. Each special enemy has a different boost which makes you target them depending on your need. You get hyper sword attacks, black holes and miniguns at the least. These special skills are built up by murdering those that need to die, they need to be saved up but are so worth it. The other saving grace is traps that can be activated by hitting buttons but they don’t truly feel like part of the combat.
Finally there is the levelling system, unlike Shadow Warrior 1 and 2 which depended on doing well in combat, Shadow Warrior 3 has this retarded hidden item system. You can level up Lo Wang by finding purple and grey orbs in the world. Purple increases character and grey improves weapons. While some of the abilities you can get are nice, the fact that you need to go searching for these orbs slows down the flow of the game.
Conclusion:
Great traversal and great combat is let down by poor design choices making Shadow Warrior 3 a fun but average game. The levels while well designed for traversal are let down by combat arenas that look like they are tacked on while being boring and repetitive. There are a few saving graces but overall… it is just ok.
This game could have been great, it could have been mind-blowing but it has two weaknesses:
- The combat areas are annoying
- Shadow Warrior 2
If this was the first of the Shadow Warrior reboots, I would have been lavishing it with praise, sadly for it: Shadow Warrior 2 exists. Shadow Warrior 2’s co-op, gunplay and just about everything makes the 6 year wait time on this, seems insulting. If Shadow Warrior 3 had been released a year before 2 it have been fine but considering it took 6 years after 2…
It is worth playing once.
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Pros |
Cons |
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Great Traversal areas |
Poor Combat Areas |
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Great Combat |
Small weapon list |
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Cheesy story |
Voice actors could be better |
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Great sound effects |
Average music |
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Fun gameplay |
Very weak compared to predecessor |
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