izigame.me

SCORE 4 / 7
a horde shooter with flawed gameplay. game has its moments, for sure, but boring level design, lack of any gimmicks, questionable arenas' patterns, low weapon impact, and overall shallowness dry off the fun fast. still, I will recommend it for the gung-ho shooter fans, just mind the gap
⠀✅⠀RATING

⌛ time to beat:⠀ 10-15h⠀⠀🔥 difficulty:⠀ 3 / 7
✨ presentation:⠀ 4 / 7⠀⠀⠀📙 narrative:⠀ 3 / 7
🔄 replay value:⠀ 2 / 7⠀⠀⠀🍫 fun-factor:⠀ 4 / 7

⠀🟢⠀GOODS⠀🔴⠀BADS

⠀► from the same guys who made first Painkiller and Hard Redux
⠀► nice mixture of melee and ranged combat
⠀► game engine (proprietary) is splendid

⠀► gets dull and repetitive fast; lack of any progression
⠀► balance and difficulty are off
⠀► like a pop-corn, when it is over you have no aftertaste whatsoever

⠀↗️⠀MY PLAYTHROUGH⠀⚠️⠀TECH ISSUES & IMPORTANT

⠀► finished Hard difficulty (3/5)
⠀► finished Heroic difficulty (5/5): no deaths, no saves
⠀► found all secrets, upgraded everything up
⠀► all achievements

⠀► 🧱 number of crashes: x0
⠀► no stutters or fps spikes on max graphics
⠀► one of the bosses - Zilla - is broken on 60+ fps/Hz; cap them or else Zilla will regenerate faster than greased lighting
⠀► owning a specific game in Steam rewards with extra skins for katana - google for details. I was playing with the pink dildo from Saints Row IV and had a great time (that sounds so wrong)
⠀► game supports custom FOV. check pcgamingwiki
⠀► LMB sometimes stuck after changing the weapons (noticeably with the crossbow)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2787344704
⠀🏆⠀ACHIEVEMENTS

💯 time to 100%:⠀⠀ 35-50h⠀⠀🔥 difficulty: 5 / 7
📈 diff-specific:⠀ ❌⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 💨 missable:⠀⠀-
💫 glitched:⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀-⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ ⛔ broken:⠀ -
🌎 multiplayer:⠀ -⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ 🙏 random:⠀ -
🔐 DLC:⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ -⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ 📅 date:⠀⠀ -
💎 collectathon:⠀⠀ ❌⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⚙️ grindy:⠀ -


⠀► difficulty-related achievements do stack. finishing the game on Heroic grants achievements for lower difficulties
⠀► Heroic difficulty is the same as in Hard Reset: beat each level with no deaths or saves. if you are not FPS-savvy then you will be in trouble
⠀► all "kill enemies in specific way" achievements can be grinded at the start of Chapter 2 (street and arcade). better in New Game +
⠀► "Hell On Earth" achievement can be obtained in Chapter 16 on the bridge before the final battle - just launch x3 charged missiles into a crowd


history lesson
Shadow Warrior is the reboot of the 1997 game of the similar name. if you have never played it before and are looking for a good ol' timey boomer-shooter with casual racist-sexist undertones, and whose lead character has testicles for brains - then look no further. original game is free on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/238070/Shadow_Warrior_Classic_1997/
and polished version is going under 2$ on sales:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/225160/Shadow_Warrior_Classic_Redux/
am I playing Serious Sam 3 again?
I don't like Serious Sam 3 for lots of various reasons. and playing Shadow Warrior evokes that dull hateful feeling, not to the extremum tho. Shadow Warrior seems not only encouraged by that comparison but fully acknowledges it by plastering posters with Serious Sam 3 everywhere and copying its design and flaws
annoying choreful enemies, unsatisfactory weapons with manual reloading, assets reusage, occasionally claustrophobic levels with forced key-hunting, dry humorless banter with a sidekick, the general sense of complacency and self-congratulatory, lack of any gimmicks or cool ideas, no powerups, items are highlighted with the bright outline, - even your katana has the same swirling move as Sam's sledgehammer
boring-n-repetitive
gameplay-wise Shadow Warrior is your typical horde shooter with the same well-known pattern:
1) enter new area
2) doors are closed
3) enemies are spawned: dozens of trash mobs and 1-3 minibosses
4) kill them all: no covers, dash around like crazy, limited stamina
5) doors are open, proceed further
- you know the drill and have done it countless times already. where Shadow Warrior does fall flat, however, is in the scene/combat variety. the game doesn't offer gimmicks, freeroaming, verticality, nifty ideas, cool weapon combos or memorable fights; it is sterile and uninspiring. sure, scenery changes - you kill enemies in asian city, in cemetery, in shipyard, in biolab, in snow castle, in hell - but all those decorations don't improve or amplify boring and repetitive gunplay
also, I am not fond of having so many explosives on levels. yeah, thank you for giving players a little boost against enemies, but 20% of my deaths were due to the explosive chain reaction
uninspiring firearms
Shadow Warrior could have tried to rectify itself with fancy and interesting weapons, but alas, its arsenal is a barebone fps template: handgun, uzi, shotgun, flamethrower, rocketlauncher, crossbow. if you was expecting something cool like Electrodriver from Painkiller (which, let me remind shoot explosive shurikens and lightning), then move along
the weapons are not only stale in variety but also unbalanced (especially on max difficulty). for example, uzi has 80/800 ammo, and requires 50-100 bullets to put down a common grunt, while crossbow has 20/160 arrows and each bolt kills trash enemies in 1-2 hits. in long run you don't need anything but crossbow and rocketlauncher for crowd control
katana and magic to the rescue
aside from firearms, players can use a katana, and why shouldn't they? melee deals good damage, hits multiple foes at once, heals your back, chops enemies' limbs, and also has three special attacks (charged, swirl, projectile). gunplay balance disproportionally skewed towards katana, leaving for firearms even less purpose
another gimmick is variable magic skills: shockwave (stun enemies), flux (bind them in place), protection (raises defense) and healing. hardest difficulty can easily be beat with a combo of shockwave/flux + charged katana, which erodes the balance even further
Street Fighter combos
to use katana moves and magic, player has to input special combinations like UP-UP-RMB for shockwave or LEFT-LEFT-LMB for katana's swirl. aside from being clunky and inefficient, those combinations constantly mess with character's movement and are to blame for accidentally usage of weapons' alt-fire (and rocket-jumping itself to death). countless times I was trying to fire shotgun right at enemy face and instead start healing myself
and yes, player heals on demand which is an odd middleman. why don't have auto-regenerative health then?
tiresome enemies
for the most part enemies are alright, despite being low in their variation (grunt, ranger, flier, shielded and rogue) - but what quickly ruins fun is minibosses (knight, summoner, brute).
knight is alright - his health/damage ratio is rational, and his role and attack patterns are clean and understandable
summoner has an atrocious amount of health and constantly protects himself with shield; typically it takes 10-15 rockets to put one beast down
brutes are the worst! they charge at you (homing, not straight) and can be hit from behind only during a very brief window. dealing with one of them can easily take 4-5 minutes, and game usually spawns two at once