Shadow Warrior (2013), fantastic slasher/shooter from FWH

Paul_cz

Paul_cz

Mildly Dipped
How can there be no thread about SW ? This is probably my favourite first person shooter of the year.
Very well done melee with nice system of upgrades, weapons with great feel, beautiful graphics and level design. But what suprised me most, where Hard Reset had some of the worst videogame writing I have ever seen (despite being great game overall), Shadow Warrior has really well written dialogues. It is essentially a buddy movie where one of the buddies is an asian nerdy ninja hitman and the other is a demon from another dimension. Their banter is often hilarious.

This is really just such a great game. Did Wooz work on it as well?
 
Yeh, bought it on GOG at release (also comes with a classic katana reskin, which looks much better than the normal one, imo).

It was not bad, but some maps could have been a bit shorter, especially in the beginning (the forest parts). Also it felt rough here and there.

I mainly used the sword, every once in a while the pistol and in worst case the rocket launcher. Still melee is the most fun of it all.
 
What is standard of good level design?
One of old-school gamer of my country said similar thing.
I wonder your and his opinion are similar.
 
woo1108 said:
What is standard of good level design?
One of old-school gamer of my country said similar thing.
I wonder your and his opinion are similar.
Click to expand...

For me, good level design is one that is fun to go through, that does not piss me off, and that is nice to look at and kill people in. Which Shadow Warrior provides. If you are looking for some "objective" definitions though, sorry, can't help there.

sea said:
I heard mixed things about it. Some said the action was okay but the balance was such that the game encouraged you to use the sword all the time. Also heard the level design was pretty poor at times compared to the original.
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Using only katana doesn't work, not only because some enemies cannot be hurt with it, but also because other weapons are very well done and great fun to use. Especially that upgraded four-barelled shotgun. And upgraded napalm flamethrower. And upgraded akimbo uzis. And...you get the idea.

As for level design, I only played demo of original SW, do not remember it much, but cannot really complain here. It is mostly good, with some rare level that goes a bit too long but nothing unbearable. Especially with the core gameplay being as fun as it is.
 
The problem with the level design is that non-linearity in shooters has fallen completely to the wayside these days, even among the "old-school" ones like Shadow Warrior and Painkiller.
Some illustrations I stole from the codex:
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serious_sam.png


Just travelling between monster arenas and checking corners along the way for secrets or ammo. No open levels to explore at your own pace really, though it deceptively looks like that occasionally.


The game isn't bad though. The sword is very powerful, which does encourage you to use it a lot, plus ammo is stupidly expensive to buy and a little scarce if you don't have upgrades to the ammo drops or don't explore. I wouldn't say that this is a bad thing though, since the sword is fun to use.
 
It is not that linear, some levels are a bit more maze like, but you know what? Fuck the old school maze Doom design. I personally prefer this arena style. This is not an RPG where I would require open locations and multiple ways of solving objectives and what not.
 
Keep in mind, that even the above shown Doom map isn't *that* open. You are locked out of certain areas unless you find a key. You can't access every floor from the very beginning.

Beside this, the Shadow Warrior reboot actually does have similar map design every once in a while. Open arena-styled areas with locked doors for which you have to find levers or keys to further progress into other areas of the same map.
 
You will probably hate the reimagined Lo Wang. He's fine in his own right, just not the Lo Wang you know. I wish they had taken the original character and developed him instead, but... they didn't, and it works too.

I'm about half-way through, and I'm itching to play on, but I don't have the time. The story is suspiciously promising, but I can't tell if it falls apart later on. I can tell you that it is fun, slightly different kind of fun than the original, but just as good, if not better.
 
That's exactly what I expected.
while playing Thief, it makes me thing lot's of FPS don't uses map as a game but just linear road to enemy.
 
You guys are late to the party, huh? I sunk about 20 hours into the game, beat it on insane difficulty. Surprisingly good game, but a few of the fights are ridiculously difficult because the levels are small and there's not much room to maneuver. The last boss fight was actually easier than one fight that happens before it where they throw every type of monster at you in a tiny courtyard.
 
fedaykin said:
You guys are late to the party, huh? I sunk about 20 hours into the game, beat it on insane difficulty. Surprisingly good game, but a few of the fights are ridiculously difficult because the levels are small and there's not much room to maneuver. The last boss fight was actually easier than one fight that happens before it where they throw every type of monster at you in a tiny courtyard.
Click to expand...
The boss fights were kinda uninteresting overall, on top of being easy.
Maybe the last boss fight is a little harder if you don't have the regen from the sword, because I literally just stood there swinging ineffectively and never losing any health, except when he moved too far back and I had to switch to a gun.

That courtyard was pretty awesome even though it was tough as hell. Juggling the 3 big monster types at once was cool, even if the berserkers feel like cheap assholes.
 
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