Lo Wang returns in Shadow Warrior 3, a new FPS game with a heavy focus on arena-based combat with grappling, a kitana, and lots of demons to destroy. Flying Wild Hog and Devolver Digital, who teamed up to reboot the franchise back in 2014 and released Shadow Warrior 2 in 2016, are back for the third entry. Shadow Warrior began in ’97, and saw great success along with two official expansions. Any FPS fan should be sure to check out the Shadow Warrior series as they’re all at least pretty good if not outright awesome. This latest effort, though, is the weakest of the lot, but I still found it enjoyable enough to finish. That said, I also wasn’t upset when it ended, as it’s one of those games that just about wears out its welcome when it ends. Let’s have a closer look.
The game begins with a cinematic of Lo Wang, down on his luck, lamenting the fact that he lost his best friend, Hoji, a mischievous and often annoying god. Not only is Hoji (first introduced in 2014) dead, but due to Lo’s failure he has simultaneously failed to save the world from an enormous, world-eating dragon that he may or may not have accidentally released from an interdimensional prison. As Lo puts it himself, he has lost his mojo, and regrets his failures and inability to kill the dragon. During the same opening cutscene we seen the return of aged former billionaire Orochi Zilla, whose name is familiar for anyone that has played a Shadow Warrior game before. Zilla is the owner of a mega-corporation, and Lo Wang used to be a hired assassin for Zilla, before Lo got a conscience and turned his ninja-abilities for good. This time, however, the problem for the world is too big for Wang and Zilla to be fighting one another, so the two form a seemingly tenuous alliance that brings Zilla’s idea together with Lo’s physical abilities. The two set out to meet with a witch to see if her powers and Hoji’s old mask can be used to destroy the dragon.
What follows is about eight hours of FPS action that sees this team of misfits attempt to stop the world-eating dragon and prevent the total apocalypse. “Standing” in their way, or Lo’s way really since the other characters never actually fight and just lend their voices and appearances in cutscenes, is a massive demon army. There about a dozen variations of demon’s that Lo will have to face in arena-style battle. And by that I mean, almost every single encounter with enemies in Shadow Warrior 3 (SW3) is of the type that has Lo enter into an area, the exits seal off by some kind of magic, and then waves of demons spawn in and you must destroy some unknown number of them before the onslaught stops, the exit re-opens, and the game continues. This design reminded me of Devil May Cry actually, or Painkiller. In fact, playing SW3 is kind of like playing a blend of DMC, Painkiller, and Serious Sam (right down to the charging, shouting, explosive-bomb-holding kamikazes). These set pieces are often flagrantly telegraphed moments ahead of time because you can see the health and ammo spawners, the barrels (explosive, lightning, and ice), and grapple points all laid out before you before you step or jump into the “arena.” The game never refers to these areas as arenas, but that’s the most succinct way I can think to describe them.
In between these arenas are moments of monologue and dialogue between Lo and the other NPCs as you use a grappling tool to navigate the environment and run-along vine-covered walls (yes, even the walls made of solid ice, there are convenient green vines growing along them that Lo can use to wall-run or climb up). These interludes of action give players a chance to recoup their health and ammo thanks to the little spawners that drop those pickups, and you also have some time to upgrade your weapons or characters by spending any orbs that you might have earned or found. You can also peruse the Lore of the game (bestiary, level description, weapon description, that kind of thing) from the pause menu. Additionally, there are twenty-or so Challenges that you can track in the pause menu, all of which are actually very doable during the course of a single playthrough if you try. I think I unlocked all but three of them during my playthrough, and all but four (35/39) of the game’s Trophies, too. A Platinum for SW3 would be readily obtainable for anyone that has about a dozen hours to spend, if pursuing those is for you. Take note, though, that there is no NG+ option nor can you load up a save game to go back and get those Trophies — the game saves when it wants to and that’s it, with the last Checkpoint reload taking you to the final boss only and not anywhere earlier. The idea of replaying the game, even for a few hours, to get those last few Trophies does not appeal to me, but fortunately, I don’t care about Trophies anyway.
All that said, the upgrades you can buy are pretty cool. Each category — be it a weapon or one of the three upgrades for Lo’s character — have three levels to unlock. The Crimson Bull (aka the Riot Gun) can be maxed out to where it carries not only more ammo, but does not even have to reload (talk about maximum close-range damage). The kitana can be upgraded to deal elemental damage upon hitting foes, and Wang’s Chi-Blast (used to push back enemies) can be upgraded such that it pushes back the big boy demon’s as well (great for near cliffs). Other weapons include a railgun, saw-blade thrower, and dual submachine guns. Anyway, I liked the skill/upgrade tree and found the variety of things to spend the points on interesting and fun.
The weapons and demon variety are pretty good as well, but due to the wave-based arena battles, the experience gets thin in the back half of the game. There are only a couple of bosses along the way, other than that you’re fighting wave after wave of respawning demons in arenas that feel similar to one another. By that I mean the area is typically round, has a higher level to climb up to, and has a grapple point or two that you can use to swing around to quickly get to another spot. Several arenas do have death traps like massive spinning blades or trapdoors on the floor that you can use by shooting a button. Demon-variety includes your common close-range melee types, the tank-likes, the flying guys, the sniper-type, and combinations there of. When you first encounter a new demon they get a brief in-game cameo that’s cool. Each demon can be executed with a Finisher attack if your meter in the lower left corner is built up enough. The Finishers are done by pressing L1+R1 when prompted, which is to say when you’re right on top of the demon. A problem I ran into a lot with this, though, is that often times the action and movement are so fast, that by the time I press L1+R1, the demon, me, or both have moved, and I end up instead popping up the weapon wheel (L1) instead of doing a Finisher. Performing a Finisher nets you a Gore Weapon (except on the weakest demon, which gives full health instead), for a short period of time, like a huge sword, club, a multi-laser emitting grenade, an ice grenade, and a little “bot” that attacks enemies for you for a while. I enjoyed the Gore Weapons as they did offer some extra variety, but still, the slog of the arenas as you get into the latter half of the game gets mighty repetitive.
And it’s not that the arena battles are tough, they’re easy, they just get patently repetitive (and the mining demons are just plain frustrating). Similarly, level design is repetitive; it always seemed like Lo was either climbing up a mountainside or structure, or delving into what felt like a cave or dungeon. I admit I also found it hard to tell sometimes where was safe for Lo to go and what was “out of bounds.” As I always do, when playing a FPS game I like to try to take the less-worn path to find secrets and such, and sometimes that pays off in SW3, other times I got stuck and had to jump into oblivion for a checkpoint reload or I just fell or suddenly died and had to reload. It’s like the game has strict geo-fencing such that if Lo crosses an area, even if it looks like maybe it’s an option to explore, it’s a game over.
There are one or two sequences — the infamous ice slide comes to mind — where the devs had a specific idea for a traversal sequence with the grappling hook, and “out of bounds” insta-deaths really make it a chore rather than a cool set piece moment. Some patching to fine tune these things could help. Fortunately, for the majority of the game, checkpoints are taken often and load just-about instantly. Ultimately, the level design is quite linear and many levels (there are about ten or twelve total) look and feel very much like other levels.
The level design and the gameplay loop left me feeling like I was playing a game that was just kind of lazy. I also encountered a few bugs, especially in the second phase of the first boss fight that forced a restart, and hopefully/likely those bugs will be squashed in the coming days or weeks. When I say ‘lazy,’ I don’t mean that maliciously, but, if you compare the level design of SW3 with any previous SW, especially the ones from the 90s, I believe the ones in SW3 are much lazier and formulaic. Traverse with grapple and wall-runs, listen to Lo and the crew chat (often with immature foul language and weak humor), spot the arena, purge the arena, exit stage left, and repeat. That’s really about all there is, and it’s fun for a while, but gets very thin by the end. Fortunately, I think the devs were cognizant of this (or just ran out of time), and the game ends pretty quickly around that eighth or tenth hour.
Overall, Shadow Warrior 3 was fun to play through, but I’m glad it ended relatively quickly because the gameplay loop is very repetitive. Flying Wild Hog has some great ideas here, but the lazy arena battle design and some (not all) lackluster level design needed to be more robust and creative. As it plays now, the gameplay is just paper thin like an arcade game — and I love arcades games, but those are short by design because they don’t have enough substance and breadth to hold the player’s interest for very long. All that said, I still enjoyed playing through Shadow Warrior 3 mostly, though I won’t be coming back for seconds. With due caution, I recommend it to anyone that enjoys the franchise or likes a raw run and gun FPS experience, and especially if you can play it on PSNow or GamePass.
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