While Shadow Warrior is a traditional “fun” FPS there most definitely is a story, and it may even interest some people. Lo Wang (yes, that’s his name, and yes, that’s intentional) is an enforcer for Zilla Enterprises, charged by his boss Mr Zilla to recover a sword called the Nobitsura Kage from a man called Mizayaki. The deal quickly turns sour as not only does Mizayaki not want to part with the sword but a host of demons from the mysterious Shadow Realm attack and make off with it. Wang bonds with a wise-cracking demon called Hoji and they both go after the sword, which is clearly more important than Zilla made it out to be.
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| Chop off his head and use it as a weapon |
The story’s not going to win any awards, rival any of the big storytelling games this year, or even really keep your interest, but it does its job quite well – that job being the excuse to run around with a sword stabbing monster. It’s debatable whether it’s really needed, especially when you kill one of the carriers of the sword and are forced to endure a dull cutscene of that person’s memories, but it does result in a lot of fun moments. The dialogues between Wang and Hoji are especially a delight, turning from absolute distain through to respect with friendly mocking. Hoji’s a fun character to have around, but Lo Wang is great fun to play as. He’s far younger than the more-than-slightly-racist original, and amuses by being both a badass and a nerd. We first meet him listening to ‘The Touch’ by Stan Bush from the Transformers: The Movie soundtrack (that’s two games in the last year where I’ve heard that song) and later discover he has a comic book-adorned Batcave under his house. His frequent quips, which he occasionally messes up, further endear him to the player.
The reason why the story is nice but irrelevant is that Shadow Warrior is an old-school amusing FPS, complete with scores, funny moments, over-the-top gore and action, plenty of weapons, dozens of bizarre enemies attacking at any one time, and silly secrets to uncover. My personal favourite of these were the hidden references to the original 1997 Shadow Warrior, with scenes or characters recreated in the original Build Engine graphics. Finding a nude anime girl soaping herself in a hot tub was great, especially as she was a 2D bitmap taken directly from the first game! Rise of the Triad tried this exact trick to nowhere near as much success, because Shadow Warrior (old and new) simply has more personality than ROTT. It’s just more fun to find stuff in. You can go through the game in around 10-12 hours but combing every area for hidden treasures can add several more to that. I absolutely scoured the first level and only found 3 out of 8 secrets!
Fortunately the combat is just as fun as finding the hidden stuff. It’s a mix of swordplay and shooting, although it’s left entirely up to you regarding the proportion of each you use. I personally stuck with the katana for almost the entire game and had an absolute blast. Shadow Warrior really is a tremendously gory game, but it’s so utterly ludicrous you can’t help but find it funny. Heads and limbs regularly get sliced off, blood splashes everywhere, organs slide across the floor, and sometimes you can pick up one of those limbs or organs to use as weapons. Let’s be honest, you probably will stick with the sword for most of the game because it’s the most fun melee weapon I’ve seen in an FPS for a while, and you’ll only begrudgingly swap to the Uzi or Pistol when forced to take on an enemy at long range.
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| Meta |
As this is an old-school shooter (not like that pretend old-school Duke Nukem Forever) you can carry all weapons at once and change between them using numbers 1-0 on the keyboard. 1’s the katana incidentally. Pistols, machine guns, crossbows etc all make an appearance, although it’s to Flying Wild Hog’s credit that the traditional shotgun and rocket launcher don’t actually appear until later in the game. With the exception of the fire-spewing Demon Head (remember that Shadow Warrior 1997 fans?) the weapon loadout seems fairly boring at first glance, and you always have plenty of ammo so there’s really never any danger of running out. Fortunately the game has a trick up its sleeve to stop the gun combat becoming boring, and that’s in the form of upgrades.
There are three types of upgrades in Shadow Warrior, each with their own way of upgrading. Skills (health, katana mastery, etc) take karma points, which is basically XP received for killing monsters as coolly as possible and finding things. Weapons have upgrades that can be bought with money found about the levels, which include turning the shotgun into a four-barrelled death machine and adding remote-activated explosive bolts to the crossbow. Finally Wang’s Magic Powers (yes, he gets those) can be improved with Ki Crystals found in the levels. I really like this three-pronged upgrade system as it not only forces you to explore but also to dispatch enemies as interestingly as possible, making Shadow Warrior spiritually follow on from Bulletstorm’s wonderfully innovative points system. Also having three different ways of upgrading means you don’t have to choose between a magic, skills or weapon upgrade, you get all three and just have to choose where they go in those categories.
Wang picks up his Magic Powers after meeting Hoji, and they’re performed rather innovatively too. Basically (and depending on which of the four powers you’ve acquired and want to use) you have to press a movement key twice followed by the Right Mouse Button. Healing for example would be “D, D, RMB”. Obviously Flying Wild Hog didn’t want to clutter up the straightforward controls with buttons for magic, and it does work quite well most of the time... the trouble is every time it doesn’t work, say in the middle of combat when you’re surrounded by enemies and on 30 health, you’ll be spitting bile. Still, there’s no automatically recharging health, so that’s good. Oh yes, and for the first time in too f***ing long there is actually a quicksave system in this FPS. Hoo-effing-ray.
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| Oh, these guys are pains. They resurrect monsters as skeletons and occasionally shield themselves. Gits |
There are lots of little cool things that keep the relatively simplistic combat interesting, like enemies getting more powerful (or “enraged”) as they survive, enemies with limbs missing either still pathetically fighting or fleeing, or the charged-up katana-only powers. The game also looks wonderful, benefiting from being PC-only by pushing systems to their limit, with hi-res textures, perfect water ripples, and “next gen tree sway” giving Shadow Warrior a lovely atmosphere for guts to fly in. If I’m being brutal though the level design does leave a bit to be desired, as the game is painfully linear but scattered around in the secret search are a lot of empty dead ends and invisible walls that serve no purpose other than to frustrate. Finally it must be said that while the game lasts around 10-12 hours it does kind of run out of steam towards the end much like how Bulletstorm did, as you’ll have all the interesting unlocks and the combat finally starts to get a little repetitive.
Nevertheless, Shadow Warrior is a highly-polished fun FPS that realises that while being old-school is great there’s no reason why you can’t still be innovative. Combat stays fun for most of the play time and the secret hunt will make you search levels high and low then go back for more, which is good because there’s no multiplayer. The story’s a little forgettable but Lo Wang and Hoji are wonderfully-written, so I don’t have any problem enduring cutscenes as long as they’re in them (and they’re in most of them). For an old-school shooter the game’s a little pricey at the moment, but it’s so entertaining you’ll certainly get your money’s worth out of it. Now then, I’m sure I heard a hentai girl singing around here somewhere...
Chopping an enemy’s arm off and watching him feebly try to swipe at you with the other. Or finding a huge Build Engine-rendered secret area.
TOP GAME MOMENT
Chopping an enemy’s arm off and watching him feebly try to swipe at you with the other. Or finding a huge Build Engine-rendered secret area.
