Traversal is fun and fluid, though not always as precise as it should be, but I’ll admit to losing my temper with a few boss fights and reducing the difficulty. It’s Serious Sam with more self awareness, Doom with a little less posturing. Shadow Warrior 3 delivers a riot of noise and colour with all the subtlety of a firework jammed in your nostril, but it does it with considerable style and confidence.
Standing still will get you killed very quickly. It evokes Doom’s pace, particularly on any difficulty above easy. The screen is often a mess of bright pick-ups, fire, explosions, and gore. These aptly named “gore weapons” are great fun, and their removal is often gloriously disgusting to watch.Īction takes place in tight arenas where you can activate bloody traps or explode barrels to kill large numbers of enemies. Alternatively, you can rip the drill from another enemy’s head and go to town with it. For example, you can tear the sword from one enemy’s hands and use it to one-shot everything you target. Lo Wang has a finishing meter, which allows you to hit both bumpers to instakill an enemy and utilise its weaponry. The system is simple, and ensures you never stop moving, shooting, slicing and quipping.
#Shadow warrior 3 date upgrade
You can upgrade your blade to cause enemies to drop ammo when you slice them to death, or your Chi Blast to generate health pick ups. The result is a frantic, circle-strafing, grapple-swinging, demon-squibbing adventure that plays like a Saturday morning cartoon version of Doom Eternal. Early on you’ll receive a grappling hook, which becomes the source of a few self-referential jokes, and Wang can wall run now in addition to double-jumping and dashing. Wang himself can also be upgraded, to take and dish out more damage. There’s no open world, no scattered collectibles beyond upgrade orbs, and only 6 weapons which you’ll unlock before the halfway point.Īll weapons, including Wang’s katana, can be upgraded 3 times using upgrade orbs. It’s in service to a more linear, story-driven experience, designed to be torn through in around 10 hours.
The between-mission hub is gone, as are procedurally generated levels, bounty missions, and a good portion of the upgrade systems. With demons and Oni unleashed on the world, Wang is in a race to prevent the apocalypse in a way that doesn’t involve the sacrifice of his friend.Īnyone expecting a structure similar to Shadow Warrior 2 may be disappointed. As impulsive as ever, Lo Wang steals the mask in which Hoji resides and legs it. However, Zilla’s intentions clash with Wang’s, as the former intends to sacrifice the spirit of Wang’s friend Hoji to save the world. It picks up more or less where Shadow Warrior 2 ended, with Wang and his former enemy Zilla attempting to defeat the enormous dragon they unleashed. This is a game that refuses to take itself seriously, and it’s actually incredibly refreshing. Another quotable classic was “That’s what I call a PowerPoint presentation! I point, you die!” But while it’s cringeworthy, it’s also indicative of Shadow Warrior 3’s intended tone. “That’s a face only a mother could love!” he yells at one enemy as he reduces its upper body to smoking lasagne.
While I’ll give props to the writers for giving him such a massive array of things to shout while eviscerating demons, I’ll also take the same props away for wheeling out such uninspired non-exclamations. A highly trained ninja with a Jack Sparrow level of situational good fortune, Lo Wang is equal parts unstoppable badass and dribbling cretin. Wang himself is a total idiot who just happens to have a superhuman grasp of his own motor skills. Sadly, that leaves very few things to actually laugh at. Wang is now voiced by Asian actor, Mike Moh, and there are fewer jokes about the fact that his name is a funny word for penis. In 2022 however, they have had no choice but to tone it down. The main character’s name is Wang, after all, which Flying Wild Hog might once have assumed was a bottomless pit of killer gags.
Shadow Warrior’s one-note comedy arguably became rote before the first game ended, its cultural misappropriation raising eyebrows more or less from the get-go. As evidenced in Shadow Warrior 3, it can also be deployed as an offensive weapon with which to relentlessly bludgeon people until they either become numb to it or start laughing out of nervous habit whenever developer Flying Wild Hog raises a hand. It can diffuse tense situations, bring out a smile in a moment of tragedy, or unite people through shared joy. Humour can be a great tool when applied in the right way at the right time.
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