Instead, Devolver Digital's point of distinction for Shadow Warrior is sword-based combat.
#SHADOW WARRIOR 2013 REVIEW PLUS#
While Shadow Warrior a packs first-person shooter-standard complement of guns, acquired at a slow but steady clip over the course of Lo Wang's dozen plus hour adventure, they're not much to get excited about.
Watching the chronologically jumbled mix of memories and mysteries unravel drove me through the game's frustrating failure to capitalize on its mechanical strengths. Their characterizations and motivations borrow from various origin-of-the-world myths, from Chinese to Roman-era religions, and are easily the most consistently interesting parts of Shadow Warrior. There's a backdrop of cosmic pantheon politics behind Shadow Warrior's more immediate concerns - the demons' home dimension is in the midst of an epic family squabble involving a coterie of powerful forces. It's not the most inventive story, but there is, at times, more going on than a simple "idiot on a quest for absolute power for someone else" kind of tale. Shadow Warrior starts well, despite a main character named Lo Wang Dying of injuries, Lo Wang is forced to strike an ill-defined bargain of sorts with the spirit Hoji and sets off after the Nobitsura Kage and the demon army following it.
Plans go in the direction of "force" pretty quickly from there, but things get weird when a demonic invasion kicks off and a magical construct flees with the sword. Lo Wang works for a crimelord in Japan and has been tasked with acquiring an ancient sword known as the Nobitura Kage from its current owner, whether by commerce or force. Shadow Warrior starts well, despite a main character named Lo Wang - a half-Chinese half-Japanese bundle of nerd fan-service and dick jokes, because wang. But Shadow Warrior can't quite manage to juggle its melee potential with its shooter framing, resulting in a game that feels like it could have been so much more than it is. 2013's Shadow Warrior eases up on the former, and commits more fully to the latter. The original game was very much of its era, predicated on Duke Nukem-style humor with a healthy dose of racist jokes to boot, but it also added melee combat to distinguish itself from its peers. Developer Flying Wild Hog's reboot/remake/reimagining of the 1997 3D Realms game has an odd collection of expectations and obligations to meet - or to ignore.
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