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Shadow Warrior
PC (Steam)
Couldn't Quite Handle the Wang
3.5/5 stars
Way back in 1997, the year I graduated from high school, 3D Realms was apparently a Big Deal amongst the proto-Master Racists of the era. While the rest of us were enjoying the glorious Golden Age of RPGs and offering propitiations to the Eternal King, the SNES, even as its foul, bastard child sought to dethrone it, PC gamers were obsessing over the nascent FPS genre in all its depravity, with titles like id’s “DOOM” and 3D Realms’ “Duke Nukem 3D” floating to the surface of the cesspool. I played the ShareWare version of “DOOM” on a friend’s PC (shout-out to Stu, even though he’ll likely never even see this), “Quake 2” thanks to getting it as a freebie with a Voodoo2 GPU, and somehow accumulated “Heretic,” “Hexen,” and “Witchaven” into my small-and-soon-to-be-discarded PC game collection based solely on the fact that they features Fantasy genre tropes in the cover art (and I mistook them for RPGs).
Thus it was that “Shadow Warrior,” now known as “Shadow Warrior Classic,” never even entered my sphere of awareness when it was new. Built in the same Build Engine as so many other samey, early FPSes, only with melee combat and racial humor about Asians, it’s guaranteed that I would have hated it.
But while I was so busy hatefully ignoring it, the FPS genre went and got its act together. It actually grew up, in a sense, and began to change in many ways for the better. Sure, it took nearly a decade for things to begin gelling into a more palatable form, but at least it happened, thanks in large part to developers who were willing to break away from the earliest FPS genre archetypes and do their own thing.
3D Realms was NOT one of those companies willing to break away from obsolete archetypes and ultimately suffered for it, as it was gobbled-up, digested, pooped-out, and gobbled-up again in the Human Centipede of the copyright and IP law, ending up as an insignificant subsidiary, while hanging onto its glory days by squabbling over the ‘Duke Nukem’ IP with Gearbox. 3D Realms also sold off some of their rights, including the rights to that forgettable one-off “Shadow Warrior Classic,” which went to Warsaw-based Polish Indie developer, Flying Wild Hog.
Flying Wild Hog, being a much younger company than 3D Realms, was not beholden to the ancient and archaic ways of the past, and in partnership with publisher Devolver Digital set about rebooting the ‘Shadow Warrior’ IP from the ground up. In 2013, “Shadow Warrior” saw the light of day again for the first time in 16 years, in the form of a modern, narrative-based FPS with quite a bit of depth… yet that managed to trip over its own wang and faceplant in the dirt thanks to a series of incomprehensible design decisions (which were mercifully removed/corrected in the sequel).
Presentation
“Shadow Warrior” looks about as good as one could expect from an Indie FPS built in the Havoc engine in 2013. The visuals have aged well over the course of the 8th Generation. Environments are huge and lushly detailed, with linear, but winding, paths for the player to follow through them. Getting lost is never an issue, despite the lack of a mini-map, since the next door leading to the correct path shimmers with a golden glow. Enemies are reasonably diverse and break into gory pieces in very intricate ways. The player will face a few human enemies, typically Yakuza-style thugs, who have a small number of variants, but ultimately look rather samey (plus they’re all men, no women), whereas the demonic enemies that make up the majority of combat encounters in the game vary greatly in size and are covered with fine visual detail.
Audio is exceptionally well-done in “Shadow Warrior,” with solid voice acting (especially from the main character and his demonic companion), potent sound effects, and a soundtrack that blends the disparate sounds of Heavy Metal and Asian Classical music. It’s also worth noting that the entire soundtrack is available in .MP3 format inside the game’s install directory, which is a nice touch.
Technically, “Shadow Warrior” is a very clean and solid game. I never experienced any crash-to-desktop moments or even any significant weirdness. The game also supports Xinput natively, thanks to its multi-platform release on the PS4 and XBONE. I was extremely disappointed, however, in the fact that the weapon selection wheel (which I used extensively in “Shadow Warrior 2”), while it is present in the game, and a very well-designed way to quickly swap between a huge gob of different weapons, ONLY works with an Xinput controller. There’s no hotkey to bring up the weapon wheel, and thanks to the fact that Sixense MotionCreator, which powers the keymapping for my Razer Hydra, only works with keyboard and mouse inputs, I was forced to spend far too much time fiddling around, trying to come up with a reasonable way to switch between 9 different weapon slots other than scrolling through the list in order.
Story
“Shadow Warrior” completely tears-down the excuse narrative and instruction manual fluff from “Shadow Warrior Classic” and re-sculpts it into a competent narrative that wouldn’t feel out of place as the script for a James Bond film.
Our hero, as always, is one Lo Wang, a Chinese ninja living in Japan who just so happens to work as a personal strongman for Orochi Zilla, one of the richest multi-billionaires in the world. We join Wang on the road to the next assignment from his boss: Buy an antique katana from a rich collector for $2 million… and if the collector isn’t willing to accept that price, supplement it with blood.
Things quickly go sideways with this seemingly-simple job, and Wang finds himself imprisoned while the world around him is suddenly overrun with monsters. Wang soon learns that these monsters are actually demons from a parallel universe, whose supreme ruler, an immortal, godlike being named Enra, is also after the same antique katana as Zilla.
Joining forces with a disembodied amnesiac demon named Hoji, Wang learns that this katana is the legendary Nobitsura Kage, which is the only thing in the universe with the ability to kill immortals like Enra, and that there are actually three swords with this name in Japan, as each of them is made with a piece of the original.
Being the humongous nerd that he is, Wang revels in the fact that he gets to play superhero in a zombie demon apocalypse, so he gladly sets out in pursuit of the remaining pieces of the sword, all while piecing together the backstory of the immortals and the insane machinations of his boss, and spouting witty/cheesy one-liners. Wang’s budding friendship with Hoji, who lives inside a kitsune mask hanging from Wang’s belt, is quite well-done, and the banter between the two is excellent.
“Shadow Warrior” takes place over the course of 17 missions, several of which are simply boss arenas. While boss battles take roughly 15 minutes each, the bulk of the game’s missions are quite long, clocking in at between 1 hour and an hour-and-a-half. Thus the complete game lasts anywhere from 12-15 hours, depending on the player’s pace of exploration.
In general, I was quite pleased with the narrative in “Shadow Warrior,” but was somewhat disappointed that some of the events mentioned in the story of “Shadow Warrior 2” either didn’t happen in this first game or happened in a slightly different way. Regardless, anyone who likes spy-fi action movies or martial arts flicks will find that “Shadow Warrior” is cut largely from the same cloth.
Gameplay
“Shadow Warrior” fits into the pidgeonhole of ‘modern FPS with some depth,’ as it incorporates a few light character customization elements (which would probably qualify it as an RPG in the minds of the simple). As Wang kills enemies, he gains karma. After accumulating a large amount of karma, Wang can unlock a perk. These range from basic things like special sword attacks, to more health, to increased damage output. In addition, Wang can pick-up Chi Crystals that allow him to unlock or upgrade one of four Chi Magic abilities. Over the course of the game, Wang will also accumulate 7 different weapons (plus two enemy parts – Demon Hearts and Demon Heads – which can be used as one-off weapons), which he can customize by unlocking three different upgrades by spending money (which is scattered all over the place on the floor, in furniture, in loot chests, etc.). It’s somewhat odd that Wang just throws money into the air and gets a weapon upgrade, what with there being no hub area or shops, but I guess it works.
All of the character customization systems are fairly nice. I would have liked some more interesting perk options, and the Chi Magic abilities are mostly useless outside of the healing one (there’s a shield that only blocks half damage when fully upgraded, a FUS-RO-DA force push that makes enemies harder to hit due to being prone, and a water trap that seems to be the inspiration for the sequel’s Grip of Darkness chi… but almost never actually works on enemies), but there’s ultimately nothing to complain about regarding the game’s core mechanics…
…EXCEPT for the controls. For whatever insane reason, the folks at Flying Wild Hog thought it would be a good idea to tie all of Wang’s special abilities to the most cumbersome inputs possible. In order to perform a Chi Strike – one of three special sword attacks, including a thrust, whirlwind, and force beam – the player must double-tap in a specific direction, then hold the attack trigger to charge it up. To cast any of the four Chi Magic spells, the player must double-tap in a specific direction, then hold the special attack trigger to charge/maintain the spell. While this sounds reasonable, in practice it is incredibly clunky and difficult to control, especially when near death or swarmed by enemies… you know, when a super special awesome technique might come in handy! This cumbersome double-tapping input system is present in both Xinput and PC Peasant Race (keyboard/mouse) layouts, and there is NO WAY to change it for either. Fortunately, I was able to hack together some simple binds in MotionCreator that allowed me to pull-off Chi Spells without double-tapping (making healing much more reliable), but I feel very sorry for anyone who plays this game on a console, where such liberties don’t exist.
Likewise, Wang's incredible mobility from "Shadow Warrior 2" is rather limited in this precursor title. While Wang still has the ability to dash in any direction, he can no longer dash while in the air, and dashing consumes stamina. The double-jump is not yet present, nor is the ability for Wang to grab onto edges and pull himself up.
In addition to the hard-to-control special abilities, I was also rather put-off by how judgmental “Shadow Warrior” can be. Unlike archaic FPSes that just pooped monsters into each map haphazardly, frequently behind the player, every combat encounter in “Shadow Warrior” is like an action movie set piece, with a closed-off battleground. After completing each battle throughout the game, the player receives a rating on a 10-point scale, of 1-5 Shurikens (cute). Receiving more Shurikens increases the amount of bonus karma awarded after the battle, and thus has a direct impact on how many perk points the player will earn in a given playthrough. A vague tool-tip states that ‘killing enemies violently in a variety of ways’ is the best way to earn Shurikens, but ultimately just served to make me feel bad about myself. The best I ever managed was 4/5 Shurikens, and that was only twice across dozens of battles, while my median rating was a depressing 2.5/5 Shurikens. The worst part about this rating system for performance is that I really have no idea what I was doing wrong. Was I too slow? Did I get hit too much? Is using the katana and two guns in a battle not different enough? As far as I’m concerned, ‘Enemies: Dead + Wang: Not Dead = WIN.’ Of course, maybe with the presence of EX Mode (a.k.a., New Game+), the player isn’t intended to do well on their first run? I still don’t know!
As much as I love “Shadow Warrior 2’s” gameplay, and hoped for more in this earlier game, I only partially got what I wanted. Ultimately, there is only one small gameplay mechanic in “Shadow Warrior” that didn’t return in the sequel that I really loved, and that is Wang’s ability to throw (infinite) shurikens while wielding a katana, and his complimentary ability to perform a quickdraw slash with his katana while wielding a gun.
Overall
“Shadow Warrior” is a fantastic reboot of a crummy old IP that is, unfortunately, laid-low by a handful of very questionable gameplay design decisions. The cumbersome controls for triggering special abilities make it very difficult to handle the Wang, despite the fact that the other core mechanics are sound. Likewise, the judgmental rating system for each combat encounter is both poorly explained and unnecessarily harsh. Still, anyone who likes action movies with flippant heroes, a little bit of cussing, a few dick jokes, and lots of dismemberment, should definitely give the revived ‘Shadow Warrior’ IP a try.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 2.5/5
Overall (not an average): 3.5/5
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