So it been a good week for action games. Between this Shadow Warrior sequel and the Duke Nukem 3D 20th Anniversary release, I’ve been having a blast with two of my favorite FPS series from the last twenty years. I’ll have a Duke review up soon, but let’s tackle Shadow Warrior 2 first.
While purely cosmetic, I have to mention right at the top how cool both the Shadow Warrior 2 (SW2) logo is and the opening cinematic before the title menu. The dragon snaking its way over the a blade while a down-tempo yet inspiring version of the theme song plays, it’s a really awesome way to start the experience of SW2. And while you can press a button to skip it, for at least the first half dozen times I started the game, I watched the intro every time.
Ok, so moving on — the game sees you reprising your role as ninja warrior Lo Wang, five years after the events of the previous game. You’re a merc for hire in a world that’s spun out of control with the ever-present Zilla and his futuristic cities and corporate corruption on one hand, and demon-infested wilderness areas in another, with Yakuza sprinkled in as well. Lo is all about making money and bad dick jokes and he I actually found him more annoying as a character in this game than the previous one, so the decline in likability continues to wang, er, wan since the early games. In fact most if not all characters in SW2 are grating, but you’re not playing for story or characters anyway, right?
At your disposal are your sword and plenty of guns. In fact, SW2 has gone full Borderlands on us as far as having a ridiculous number of weapons, across all types melee, ranged, explosive, sci-fi, you name it. There’s more ways to fight Yakuza and demons than ever before, for better or worse, I’ll get back to that conundrum shortly. Gameplay is similar to most FPS games, but Lo Wang is a ninja afterall, and I was quite impressed with his agility. You can dash by double-tapping a direction, run without concern for stamina, double jump like you typically would in a platformer or third person game, scamper up ledges like in DOOM, and even air dash too like, well, ReCore comes to mind having played that recently. Heck, there’s not even any fall damage, at all. If you fall from too great a height, you’re instantly brought back to a safe spot near the fall, penalty free, although active enemies in the area have their health restored.
Indeed, Lo Wang’s ability to move and negotiate the environment as quickly and smoothly as he does is a big plus for the type of combat you’re going to encounter, as well as the level design which offers procedurally generated, large outdoor environments with varying terrain heights. One of the strengths of not only the 2013 Shadow Warrior release but also in the original ’97 was the mixture of weapons, enemies, and high intensity combat encounters. All of that is here with SW2, but it’s changed, or evolved, you could argue, from what you might expect. To be honest, I was actually expecting and looking forward to a linear FPS game — a story with a point A and B and many stops in between full of action, maybe a few simple puzzles, and heck even some character development. Instead, SW2 takes a more open world-ish, multiplayer-infused approach where, after the first few story missions, you arrive at a nexus, the name of which I forget, but Lo’s house is here, a couple of vendors are here, as well as some NPCs to get missions from. There are side missions and then story missions, all of which you teleport to and from. Side missions are generally of the fetch quest variety, and even Lo crack’s a joke about that at one point. Each mission has rewards that are shown to you before you decide to take it on and there is a lot of loot to find during missions as well.
Upon excepting a mission and starting it, the right side of the HUD reminds you of your objectives and then it’s off to battle. While I haven’t played a great deal of Borderlands, the game definitely has a Borderlands feel to it in that you’re typically in wide open, outdoor areas — important for being able to use all of those agility skills — and you’ve got loot drops from enemies and loot boxes to find and a general feel that this was meant to be played in co-op multiplayer. Side note, I was playing this on Hard, and found the challenge quite balanced and good, especially given that when you die, you’re thrown right back into the fight with a few seconds of invisibility, which is actually one of a few Chi powers you unlock early on. I really liked that there was not a big delay in getting back into battle, but this does also give the game a kind of deathmatch/multiplayer feel, for better or worse. Between the two I would lean on it being ‘better,’ because it streamlines the experience meaning I’m making the most of the time I have to play, and also encourages me to take on harder challenges or try new things without having to worry about reloading from a distant checkpoint. Anyway, each enemy is presented with a life bar and Superior enemies have other notes such as being Powers resistant and that they’re Armored and so forth and you can expect Achievements and extra good loot for dropping these baddies.
While I found myself conflicted as to whether or not I liked this semi-open world structure of SW2, I did decide fairly quickly and still several hours on it that I was having to spend too much time managing my ever-growing inventory. Within two or three hours I had amassed dozens of different collectible trinkets that could be place on weapons as well as lots of money for buying things and I had Skill Points to spend and, frankly it just felt more constricting than I’m sure the developers ever intended. For this kind of game, I simply did not want to have to go through my loot and decide, ok, do I want to boost this gun with this item that gives it +10% acid damage yet reduces reload time, ad nauseam. Personally, this inventory management and buying and selling and upgrading and crafting gameplay was too overbearing for what I was looking for and what I have come to expect from the series. Moreover, the UI for this is not terribly intuitive and I didn’t understand everything I was doing, making it more time-consuming and frustrating. I’m all about evolution, but if you’re going to throw all of these new mechanics and options at me, at least give me an easy button to Auto Upgrade or reduce the overall amount of junk I was having to manage. Having to spend so much time managing that stuff bogged the experience down noticeably, and I loathe trying to sort through it all. Perhaps with some updates this will become less of a burden.
Gameflow and some key gameplay mechanic issues aside — and that’s not to say my concerns with these are trivial, but they are at subjective than actual technical gameplay issues — SW2 is a really fun an addictive game. I have only tried a little bit of co-op play due to scheduling issues, but what I have done was fun and I could see doing that again. The majority of my time has been in single player, playing on Hard, and it’s been a good, rewarding challenge. Thanks to nVidia’s ShadowPlay I have captured some really great battles that had me fully engaged. The combination of weaponry, agility, Chi Powers, environmental hazards, level design, and in the quantity, size, attack patterns and variety of enemies add up to a fantastic FPS experience when it’s firing on all cylinders. Graphically the game looks as good as it plays; running on an i7 4790K with 16GB and a 970, I’m having no issues at all in 2560x1080p. A Photo Mode is included in the pause menu for good reason.
With that, let’s head to the summary…
