Shadow Warrior Review

Who wants some Wang? The classic taunt from the 1997 version of Shadow Warrior. Well thankfully Lo Wang has returned to our screens in a flurry of bloody sword strikes and cheesy one liners involving wang and other penis related jokes. 

The re-imagining of Shadow Warrior has been brought to us by Devolver Digital, the publishers behind Hotline Miami and Serious Sam 3: BFE, while developer duties go to Flying Wild Hog, the same team that brought us the underrated and fantastic Hard Reset, so their pedigree of first person shooters is definitely not in any doubt. The game instantly kicks off with some cheesy lines from Mr. Wang during a phone conversation with his employer regarding a weapons deal that Lo is currently driving to. Once that call is over Lo Wang turns up the car stereo to a pumping power ballad from Stan Bush with The Touch. 

Armed initially with a Katana, you’ll find once the deal goes bad that your sword will become your best, and rather brutal friend. Dismemberment is the name of the game here as you can literally slice, dice and julienne your opponents into bloody chunks with well timed strikes, though don’t worry gun fans, you’ll soon get your chance for some bang bang fun time with Wang. Though early in the game, you really are better off sticking with the sword until you can afford some upgrades to your guns. 

Throughout the levels you’ll find cash which in turn can be used to purchase upgrades and ammunition for your guns which is a nice little touch, and if you’re lucky enough you may find Ki crystals that will allow you to empower Lo Wang with new passive or active abilities. Akin to FarCry 3, these new abilities will appear on Wang in the form of a tattoo - the first of these abilities that you learn allows you to channel your chi so you may heal yourself a certain amount. You will also earn karma from killing your enemies along with finding pools of karma in secret locations. This can also be spent in order to augment Lo Wang further with more tricks in order to open several cases of whoop ass on anyone who may oppose the Wang, such as new sword techniques and chi abilities to reduce damage or to perform crowd control when things get overwhelming. 

Early on you become partnered with Hoji, a sidekick from the demon world who isn’t afraid to throw a few digs at Lo Wang. The repertoire between the two characters can be quite amusing at times giving the game an extra angle of comic relief to break up the fantastic bloody combat of Shadow Warrior. Due to being a re-imagining of 90s shooters, you can expect the levels to be quite linear with very little deviation, resulting in some backtracking as the classic method of go here, find key, run back is very much in effect. For this reason you will find the game length to be slightly more drawn out than your usual shooters, with the average player looking at around 10-15 hours of gameplay and knob gags which is only a good thing. 

The enemies that you do encounter seem quite uninspired as the variation of these dastardly bastards don’t appear to be that big, it would have been nice to have a few different types of demon early on as constantly wailing on the same kind of spawn over and over loses its appeal, though that being said, it is still great fun to chop them in half with the sword and watch their torso crumple to the ground in a bloody mess. Mini bosses do help to break things up, but we still encounter the trap of throw all the previously encountered minions in your face drama shortly afterwards, which leads me onto the main bosses, well say hello to obvious weak spot exploitation time. While they may seem intimidating, you still have obvious patterns to watch for and go in for the kill when they open up for you. 

Graphically, while the game isn’t as shiny or jaw dropping as one of these new fangled cutting edge “next gen” shooters, the game still looks good even on older hardware. The lush bamboo forests, idyllic Japanese temple gardens, run down and broken city streets, they all combine to give you the impression of a fantastic setting which is still pleasing to the eye. I had no obvious glitches or out of place textures that I can report which is always good.

The soundtrack will also keep you happy, especially when you come across the arcade early on in the game, this is a mecca of all things Devolver Digital and Flying Wild Hog, The arcade is filled with machines displaying looped clips of their titles such as Serious Sam, the original Shadow Warrior and Hard Reset, now if you spend some time as well as some of your cash at these machines you will be treated to some remixed tracks of the games’ original score which is a great touch from the developers.

Overall Shadow Warrior is a fantastic game for the price, you’ll be hard pushed to get this amount of enjoyment out of something else that doesn’t involve cheap booze, women and illegal substances unless you’re called Charlie Sheen. It’s not often you have a title that has so much fun with their chopper so grab a hold of Wang while you can.