Shadow Warrior 3

Developed By: Flying Wild Hog

Published By: Devolver Digital

Price: £34.99 / $49.99

FPS, Action

 

Shadow Warrior has gone through its fair share of changes leading up to now. Other than the huge jump in graphical quality from the 1997 version to the 2013 version, it also changed entire systems in Shadow Warrior 2 to allow for a more loot-shooter vibe without getting new guns out of it, just items to mod your weapons with. Safe to say, I had no idea what to expect exactly, coming into Shadow Warrior 3, besides the obvious usage of guns with swords. 

Lo Wang Brought Low

Shadow Warrior 3 takes place not too long after Shadow Warrior 2, where infamous mercenary Lo Wang accidentally released a dragon upon the world. Said dragon destroyed the world, leaving Lo Wang to wallow from his failure, until former enemy Zilla comes to offer him a chance to redeem himself by destroying the dragon. Filled with a new hope, the crude merc sets out to save the world again. 

Everything about the story of Shadow Warrior 3 is what you’d expect from a Shadow Warrior story: it’s not complex, nor is it very funny. Lo Wang does stupid stuff, and stupid stuff leads to more stupid stuff until it somehow works in his favor. Though his constant bad jokes did get me annoyed somewhat, plus the sidekick they shackle with him has a grating voice. 

It’s mostly just getting you from one place to the next, a kind of motivation to get you to keep playing. I was rather stone-faced throughout the entire endeavor, but I didn’t necessarily hate it. It was just okay. Though I think the devs didn’t expect me to laugh at the jokes anyway, since Lo Wang complained about no one laughing at them. 

A Familiar Feeling

But most people don’t come to Shadow Warrior for the story. Maybe Lo Wang, but not the story. However, what most people look forward to is the gameplay, and, honestly, I had a good amount of fun, though it all felt quite familiar.

If I could describe Shadow Warrior’s gameplay in few words, I’d say it’s a cheaper DOOM Eternal with new tweaks. Movement feels just as fast and fluid as DOOM, but with new traversal options like traversing vines by climbing or wall-running, or using a grappling hook to cross gaps, avoid enemies, get out of danger, etc. Feels pretty good. 

Combat is where the true fun, and interesting tweaks, come in. The game has dedicated your left click to shooting, and your right click to slashing, which allows for a smooth transition from range to melee in the simple press of a button that actually feels satisfying to switch between. Plus, using your sword to kill enemies provides ammo, incentivizing getting close. 

Tools of the Trade

Besides your average sword, you have six weapons to switch between. While there are some uses that makes switching between them viable, I mostly just used a gun until it ran out of ammo, then switched to whatever had ammo. So there’s no level of complexity where certain weapons work better against certain enemies and their weak points, but I’m sure there’s more ways to maximize your damage output with clever use of your tools. Not only that, but the addition of the grappling hook can allow you to grapple to enemies, or pull environmental objects to you like explosive barrels. Using this in combination with chi blasts can create some devastating ends to your foes. 

To that end, there are also upgrades you can apply to your weapons and character, separately. Some of these can be very small, like carrying extra ammo, but other times it can be hugely beneficial, like bullets piercing through enemies (despite that one not working quite as well in my playthrough). These upgrades are either earned or found in the game areas, which incentivizes exploration and daring traversal at times. 

Using Your Environments

Speaking of environmentals, this game has a plethora to use, if the arena allows for it. Certain devices will require you to shoot the button on it to activate, which will result in myriad new ways to take down foes. These, along with the multitude of traversal options, create this smooth flow that you can follow and change at a moment’s notice. 

These are not the only ways to kill foes, for Shadow Warrior 3 now features glory kills, usable through building meter. That’s right, another thing taken from DOOM, except with an interesting twist. When you do a glory kill on an enemy in this, most of them will provide you with a weapon, known as a Gore Tool, to use against other foes. 

These can be as simple as an ice grenade to a drill that propels you forward, grinding all enemies to mincemeat in your way. This created an interesting dynamic where I would usually go to glory kill an enemy whose weapon I found preferable to others, providing an advantage in the fight. One thing I wish for, though, is that the glory kill animations be much shorter than they are right now. The glory kills in DOOM Eternal were fairly quick, or at least felt like so, while the ones in Shadow Warrior 3 run a bit too long. It really ruins the pacing of the fast-paced battlefield. 

Army of Oni

And the enemy variety does a great job of changing the battlefield enough that using glory kills would make each Gore Tool use worthy. It starts basic, but gets higher in complexity, adding enemies who even put down obstacles, having you rely on your traversal options more than usual. There was a steady flow of enemies up to the third quarter of the game, and from then on they used them in some creative ways, though sometimes it did just feel like them throwing fodder after fodder at me to pad out the game. 

One thing I do have a gripe with specifically is the health pickups. Throughout battle arenas, there are sprouts that grow health pickups. You pick one up, it takes a bit before it grows back. However, sometimes I like to save health pickups for when I need them, but these pickups like to magnetize to you, filling up your health even if you have a single point down. I’d rather these just require me to be on them to pick up instead, because the enemies will sometimes corral you and force you to accidentally pick one up. This is frustrating for me. However, it’s small in the greater scheme of Shadow Warrior 3. 

Ninja Running On My Computer

Graphically-speaking, I wouldn’t say the game is gorgeous, but it looks good, despite having some performance issues, especially when transitioning to cutscenes.  There are some gorgeous backdrops to look at, and interesting environmental design in some places, but I can’t say I overall found the graphics to be mesmerizing. However, they looked good enough that I could never pick them out for criticism. 

As for the sound, I’d say they did a great job. Never have I been more disgusted with the semi-realistic/semi-cartoonish sounds of pulling the drill out of an oni’s face and using it on other foes. That, and the Basilisk, a one-shot piercing gauss-like rifle, has an immensely satisfying sound that I just can’t get enough of, among the other nice sounds. The music was good, adding the eastern strings with more modern style music to create an interesting score to tear up oni to.

Could Use Some Polish

My last criticism, which will include all my smaller issues, is that Shadow Warrior 3 has this feeling of being unfinished. Sure, everything is there, but the completed level of polish is not. Multiple times I had animation errors, weapons clipping through cameras, enemies stuck on geometry, audio desync, and certain spoken lines not syncing up with what was going on. Once, the game even crashed on me. Smaller issues built up to show me that this game could’ve used a bit more time in the oven. 

However, I can’t say it detracted from my experience. I still had fun through it all, but I can’t say I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed Shadow Warrior 2. But what is there is still a fun time I’d recommend playing, especially if you enjoyed some of the newer DOOM entries. It takes mechanics from those games and doesn’t just copy them, but actually adds something of substance to them to differentiate itself. 

Shadow Warrior 3 feels like a slightly unfinished game, but it’s a fun one that I’d say is worth trying out, if on a sale, as 50 bucks is steep. As I said, they try new things, and that’s worth giving this game praise for, especially when it added a layer to the game to make the combat unique. If they do make a fourth Shadow Warrior, I hope they expand upon it. What they have here is a good foundation.

 

Verdict

Recommended

 

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Reviewed by Freelance7. Game provided by Devolver Digital.