Shadow Warrior 2 is another game that goes back to the roots of classic fast paced first person shooters and does so with style (And some crass humour). As for the basic objective, which is basically ‘Go HULK SMASH on anything that moves’, the game does a pretty good job in stringing together everything albeit a few flaws.
Shadow Warrior 2
Detailed Review
Blood, Gore and Kaboom!:
Just like Doom, Shadow Warrior 2 does not shy away from showing off it’s moves wherever possible, rather it boasts every pixel of it’s existence. The fact that the game does not take itself seriously enough and allows you to have a relaxing time, at first by mashing buttons through hordes of enemies and later on by making you think slightly strategically (Not much) before going guns blazing. I would call this a perfect mixture between- Doom and Borderlands with it’s fully Doom like playstyle and Borderlands like RPG and number system. As for the action, it is high octane and the the controls bind you to the character on an unprecedented level. The controls are super smooth and super tight allowing you to completely immerse yourself in the gameplay.
The game has you using all kinds of weapons from melee to ranged to semi-melee-ranged (Or whatever it may be called) an this keeps the game fresh at all times. The gore system melds in with the combat almost seamlessly allowing for greater depth in gameplay- Especially rewarding if you are the melee kind of guy. Swords and any kind of slashing weapon allows you to amputate parts of enemies bodies which can be huge advantage if surrounded by numerous enemies. Git gud, aim for the enemies’ hand which has a weapon, then it’s considerably less grindy and when dismembered parts start flying around like leaves in Autumn, you get a feeling of satisfaction that is almost unparalleled. Apart from that, if some enemy was too frustrating when it was alive, the game doesn’t stop you from cutting down defeated opponents even though it may sound stupid.
As for the ranged weapons, there is quite a variety, if ranged is what suits you, varying from Revolvers to Shotguns to Assault Rifles, even a LMG. Shotguns especially are satisfying since holes can be bored into enemies which can then be used as scopes to smack other enemies.
Apart from weapons being a part of the combat, the player is handed a set of 4 spells which use up Ki and give you an advantage in battle. They can be used in battle or outside of it as well, but I rarely used them, because I never felt the need for them, heck, I came to realize that I had them at my disposal after I had completed almost 3/4ths of the game. Also runes/perks can be added to weapons to give the player that extra edge, the design of which I liked a lot, but implementation/execution was what disappointed me, which i will talk about later. The runes give you all these elemental effects such as that of- Fire, Ice, Toxic etc to add to any weapon, and surprisingly all weapons seem to have the same number of slots for runes, which is, 3 allowing us more badassery. The rune elements cannot be mixed and matched and hence the game forces you to select runes of one type. I liked the fact that the weapon changed it’s color an design according to the runes/perks you chose.
Autumn Blockbuster?:
The game does not have a strong story, in fact it’s too loose, but characters on the other hand are just what you would expect from a top notch movie. The voice acting is great, the characters are well realized, although the facial animation looks pretty bad. There may not be many characters, but the 10 (Tops) characters that are there, are all unique and have varied perspective of the world. No character develops through the story by much, but that’s not much of an issue.
Truly 18+, Not Actually:
AS you must have heard already, there are a plenty of dick jokes and by that I mean, a looooot. But some people have dismissed them as non-funny or just nonsensical. To be fair here, if you are truly an adult and think that you need to have some maturity, and other blah blah blah, then yeah, you won’t get the humor you old fart. This type of humor wants the 10-16 year old you to be playing the game, and while you may think that the character/game has a shallow personality, it is quite the opposite.
Menus, Menus, Menus, Everywhere
OK, this is probably the only aspect of the game that will turn you off. In a game that is fully based around it’s gameplay elements, menus are not something you would want to fiddle in, and to be completely honest, if I were to spend 1 hour playing the game and 10 minutes fiddling in the menus thinking about the different skills I wanna upgrade, or the runes I want to put in weapons, it becomes an annoyance. One workaround could have been that the developers themselves decided to give us an upgrade whenever there was a level up, though that would have reduced the freedom of the player to a certain extent. Coming to the topic at hand, I sincerely think that the menu is cluttered, but it is after all the result of a huge amount of customization available to the player.
A small complain is the health bar system and the RPG like progression, I do appreciate it for what it is, but sometimes these mechanics come in the way of having pure fun. You always have to use a better weapon even if you like the look of a previous weapon, just because of stats. I personally would have liked to keep the older weapons because some of them look awesome.
PS- The game has a lot of Easter Eggs and references, so enjoy the treat if you understand it.
Just Stuff:
The multiplayer or rather co-op I should say is just as fun as the game, the only problem being that there are not a lot of avatars to choose from which does not matter all that much. You can change the difficulty of the single player campaign and can also select difficulty for the amount of players. Theoretically, the hardest difficulty would be just switching up the difficulty to 4-player and keeping the difficulty at ‘No Pain No Gain’. Personally I kept it at 3 player difficulty while playing single player and Invite only option on (I’m not sure if it really affects the amount of enemies spawned), which felt very aggressive at first, but then I got accustomed to it.
As far as soundtracks go, from my previous reviews you all know that I am not the greatest judge of music, but the OST is pretty damn awesome and gets you in the grooves for going into a killfest