Shadow Warrior

[HandsomeDead]

This has been out a while but I've been playing it lately.  Did anyone else?

 

It's what some may call an 'old school' shooter.  I started fairly unimpressed with it at first.  The shooting felt a bit floppy, the swordplay which is also a big part of the game didn't become immediately apparent how to use effectively and it has a really obnoxious head bob for some reason.  I'm not susceptible to motion sickness in games but I guess this game proves otherwise.

 

But I stuck with it as there was something keeping me playing, and in doing so I unlocked more skills, moves and perks which started to show me that it wasn't as dumb as it looks.  The game has you learning magic and moves for your sword that are pulled off by double tapping in a direction with the left stick and the pressing the left or right trigger.  It gives the game a brawler/shooter hybrid feel but on a controller those inputs don't work that well.  I can see it working well a keyboard but this is something that hasn't translated well.  I'm now more used to it, you basically can't put in the input too quickly, but it took a long time to pull these moves off consistently.

 

This was released as a budget game but so far it feels as long as a campaign in a retail game.  But it does have very limited enemy types and it's only really the levels that stop it getting too repetitive since they do get smart with the kill rooms and the drip feeding of new skills also gives you more things to play with in similar scenarios.  It's not just the head bob that is obnoxious, though.  Shadow Warrior is a reboot of a game from the 90s that was a stablemate of Duke Nukem so of course the game tries to be funny.  Credit where it's due; it sometimes - sometimes - is.  But expect typical dreadful video game humour; all smart arse quips that aren't that smart, dad jokes and dank memes (there is a 'all of your bases are belong to us' reference for no reason.  I wanted to eject the game from my PS4 and eject it out of the window when that happened, but it's yet another downside to the digital future).

 

I'm drawing to the end now, I think.  The game is quite fun overall, though.

[HandsomeDead]

That's that done.

 

Feelings are kinda mixed on it.  Just when I was starting to have a really good time it would throw some crap at you that just wasn't fun.  Chief among them a certain late game enemy which was a bullet sponge and can only be damaged from the rear.  Dealing with one kinda sucks but when it chucks them at you with lots of trash mob or when they come in pairs it just becomes the worst.  This scenario turns up quite a few times later on in the game and it is never welcome, its always a slog.

 

The story got better than I was expecting from a game that spends it's first half incredibly dumb, but it isn't that well told so it's kinda wasted.  You have a companion that is a demon and the second half goes into his back story and it could have been something worth paying attention to but it's just told briefly through some 2D cutscenes.

 

I know they're making another one and I'm only half interested in seeing how this unfolds.  I'm not sure if these developers will ever pull off the story stuff.  I think they just know how to make a mostly decent shooter.