2/21/2024 0 Comments Broforce tvtropesShadow Warrior may look slightly dated, but at least it’s inventive and ultra-colourful, like a rainbow-pastiche nightmare brought to life. It’s extremely fun to use and makes light work of every enemy in the game. While there are loads of interesting weapons to use and upgrade - quad barrel shotgun anyone? - Wang’s Katana is the star of the show and was the weapon I used most often. Yup, each fight gets rated up to a maximum of five stars (or shurikens) depending on how stylish your skills are. Once you’ve upgraded it a-slight and learned a few special moves, a room of enemies becomes a playground of death as you attempt to get the best score as possible. Your Katana becomes an instrument of pure death as it dissects hordes of demon scum. Shadow Warrior‘s melee controls are perfect. Seriously, he’s cool as balls.Īnd those convoluted controls I mentioned, once learned become the best part of Shadow Warrior because this is a shooter more comfortable with melee attacks than shooting itself. Wang quips throughout and becomes supremely powerful, but even during desperate times, he’s always throwing out a light-hearted pun. Wang is incredibly well-written and along with his sidekick demon pal, represent one of the funniest pair-ups in recent gaming history. But, Lo Wang slowly develops into a genuine hero throughout the course of Shadow Warrior in a way that actually surprised me. Shadow Warrior‘s hero, Lo Wang begins as a silly caricature of every Asian gaming protagonist ever: tattoos, a funny accent, a penchant for violence (with honour), connections to crime cartels, stuff like that. Let’s discuss the story briefly because it surprised me with its richness of plot. Happily, these negatives quickly become exceptional positives as the game progresses, as the linear levels and tight controls funnel you from one fight to the next. Controls are also extremely convoluted and for the initial few hours you’ll be slashing and shooting without much precision. Murder a room of enemies, open a door, defeat a boss, move on. This is also quite the “old skool” game, in terms of structure and control. Shadow Warrior definitely doesn’t push the PS4, but at least it kept it at 1080p and at a buttery-smooth 60fps throughout my playthrough (the Xbox One port is only 900p, so get the PS4 version if you want the best experience). Let’s begin with the negative: Shadow Warrior is a port of an almost year old PC game and at times, it really does look like a game from a year ago. Like I said Shadow Warrior is about fun and everything from the controls to the enemy variety is aimed at keeping you happy from start to finish. He obviously does, and this kicks-off a demon invasion on earth, which is just really an excuse to fill each level with inventive enemies that actually break the standard shooter cannon-fodder tropes. The star is Lo Wang, a corporate shogun sent to retrieve some legendary blade. There’s even a few minigames peppered throughout that pay homage to older titles that aren’t even shooters, such as Super Mario Land and Donkey Kong, used to help refill your health and ammo bars, as well as offering a brief reprieve from all the bullet-hell.Shadow Warrior takes everything we love about gaming and packs it into one ten to twelve-hour journey. Even though they don’t really offer anything beyond a cosmetic change, the character names really got a chuckle out of me, with such action-movie cliches as Willis Kiyay and Bad Ass Barracuda rocking the super-deformed look. While there is a story, the real draw to the game is getting the high score and unlocking the goofy characters. Ammo too is a precious commodity, and once that bar is empty you’ll have no way to battle - though thankfully ammo drops aren’t as rare as continues. Continues can be bought but are hard to come by due to the random nature of levels. While it’s not a one-hit kill situation like Contra, your life bar can get depleted fairly quickly with all the chaos and explosions happening around you.
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