Sometimes these will be static parts of the map, and you can shove and explode your prey into their awaiting maw, other times you will have a huge contextual button waiting for an errant bullet to activate its deathly offering – sending a massive rolling bulldozer of death charging through the arena, annihilating everything in its path. The upgrades are quite creative and lean into the breakneck pace of gunplay by opening up new and exciting player options.Īs if killing demons with their own mechanical guts wasn’t enough, perhaps the most exciting gameplay element that is present in Shadow Warrior 3 is the inclusion of ridiculous environmental hazards, ranging from mundane spikes and pits, to glorious wood chipper blades the size of a city bus. Another gave my railgun-like Basilisk cannon the ability to pierce enemies, while also slowing time briefly when I charged the shot.
#SHADOW WARRIOR PS4 REVIEWS UPGRADE#
One upgrade simply removed the need to reload my shotgun – turning it into a near-bottomless barrage of slugs that would simply empty every shot I had with nary a pause. These weapons could then be upgraded to ratchet up their potential, turning them from simple death-dealers into more creative, nasty little buggers. The enemy variety intuitively nudged me into using particular weapons to dispatch the different neon-coloured shitbags that sought my demise, by way of bullet or by blade, with a tasty little side dish of explosions for a treat. Sporting a far smaller number of weapons this time around means that each can have its own thunderous niche, and I was super satisfied at how naturally I would cycle through almost every one of them throughout a combat encounter. This was unnerving, because I actually did use my video capture at that point (I am calling it coincidence for the sake of easing my mind though).Īnd stylish killing is by all means the main course, with a bundle of fun weapons and methods to turn enemies into soup. Stylishly evaporating a horde of yokai demons is made all the more satisfying by Lo Wang asking if “We clipped that,” in a crazy meta fourth wall break. That isn’t to say the game is without its signature one-liners – they come in spades, adding a tidy exclamation point on the carnage you display. This is the promise from Flying Wild Hog, that while Shadow Warrior has always had a very puerile sense of humor inhabiting it, they can still tread a path to teach us all a little more about what makes humanity worth fighting for. Every character may well have an agenda, but they are not too proud to admit when it may not be in their best interests to pursue it – allowing a somewhat warm tale of human nature to form the core of this tale. What follows is a curiously flawed set of hare-brained schemes and failures, all anchored by Lo Wang learning about trust and hope. It is this uneasy alliance that plants the seed for character development within the game.
#SHADOW WARRIOR PS4 REVIEWS SERIES#
Thankfully Zilla (former antagonist and well known series Asshole) turns up and offers a truce to perhaps stop the dragon from eating the entire world.
Turns out the giant dragon from the end of Shadow Warrior 2 is a real bastard to kill, and the epic failure on Wang’s part has left him feeling washed up and pathetic. The third instalment reaches deep into its own mythology to take another step into the absurd nature of its storytelling, finding the protagonist Lo Wang alone in his ruined Wang Cave – moping about in his underpants. This time we see a pretty savage crank on the tone knob, blasting a severe injection of colour and zaniness into the IP – and it works. Starting off as a fun but overtly stereotyped DOOM clone in 1997, the rebooted version from 2013 managed to identify what made it neat and focus on its strengths, ditching the racism to instead form a modern foundation as a series that continues to one-up itself and surprise me time and time again. Shadow Warrior is a franchise I have always been rooting for.
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