What really was Shadow Warrior 2?
Shadow Warrior 2 Hit the scene in 2016, Following the 2013 remake of the first Shadow warrior game. Our mouthy protagonist Lo Wang had just hacked, slashed, and perforated his way through an action packed single player campaign in 2013 and when Flying Wild Hog studios announced a sequel for 2016 it was a welcome surprise, a promising addition to the resurging fps genre. Though hindsight is 20/20 and we can now all look back from our armchairs, stroke our beards, and ask; was it the Wang we really wanted?
Wang's second outing in the Shadow Warrior franchise reboot boasts a bevy of new gameplay mechanics, a continued story from the 2013 game, and a less linear mission system, in fact, you wont be playing through the campaign like any of the old build engine titles Shadow Warrior originated from. This entry is more complex and nuanced with upgrades and character leveling. Seemingly endless sidequests allow an arpg like grind for items and XP. Visceral violence is punctuated with damage numbers, passive buffs, and ammo restoring shrines, we certainly aren't in Kansas anymore. For all the faults you may find in the changes, you certainly cannot claim that the title hasn't carved it's own little Wang shaped niche into the genre.
Whats a looter shooter without the bounty board?
Becoming an arpg adds some essential requirements to your fps. Featured now is the main hub area, a place to buy ammo, gems, weapons, and accept a variety missions and side quests. During any mission you can teleport back to the hub with a simple keypress and hold, this gives a vital chance to reload, level up, and reconsider the difficulty setting. Note; as long as you don't start another mission in lieu of the current one, your progress is saved between trips to the hub. Choosing missions already available, or revisiting some areas can easily be done through the map, now accessed from your menu. These features don't quite make it as open as a borderlands, but it's a far cry from linear type fps games.
Felling demons and robots left and right will reward you with more than satisfying gore and sound effects. Gems of all kinds and rarities will litter the battlefield, some being worth a fortune. Every weapon can accept 3 gems, each with their own modifying properties; fire modes, damage bonus, elemental effects, rarity, even letting you fire multi-barrel guns in a volley! Collecting gems like Sonic in a jewelry store isn't the only benefit to butchering baddies, your characters overall level can increase, boosting key stats. Now we aren't just burning through levels anymore, but growing more and more powerful to take on tougher challenges in a non-linear way, very rpg inspired, but with nonstop action.
Lo Wang never says where we're sticking these "player" gems... :s
Gems can only make a gun work so differently, you really do need the fps arsenal brave the hordes of robots, mutants, demons, and shade addicts. Weapons can be found or bought. There are 60+ guns in the game and each is an alternate flavor to its type. So your shotgun can be the double barreled doomguy style, or a semi-auto drum fed scattergun with base ice damage, either can be used with gems to make a custom shotgunning experience. Though sharing the same limited ammo type will force you to pick at least one more weapon, maybe even melee, this of course can be gemmed itself to modify it's base melee attack with some extra juice.
Shadow Warrior 2 wanders into a fresh new direction, maybe a first for an originally 3D Realms IP. Pushing into the emerging looter shooter and fpsArpg genre, it forms an entertaining if not awkward evolutionary step in the franchise. Will there be a Shadow Warrior 3? will we see Flying Wild Hog studios port these features to a different fps IP creating a spiritual successor? It's hard to say, they definitely know how to make a blistering paced action game with satisfying gunplay. In the future I may delve into the nitty gritty elements that made it stand out to me, but until then, stay erect, comrades!
Shadow Warrior 2 Hit the scene in 2016, Following the 2013 remake of the first Shadow warrior game. Our mouthy protagonist Lo Wang had just hacked, slashed, and perforated his way through an action packed single player campaign in 2013 and when Flying Wild Hog studios announced a sequel for 2016 it was a welcome surprise, a promising addition to the resurging fps genre. Though hindsight is 20/20 and we can now all look back from our armchairs, stroke our beards, and ask; was it the Wang we really wanted?
Wang's second outing in the Shadow Warrior franchise reboot boasts a bevy of new gameplay mechanics, a continued story from the 2013 game, and a less linear mission system, in fact, you wont be playing through the campaign like any of the old build engine titles Shadow Warrior originated from. This entry is more complex and nuanced with upgrades and character leveling. Seemingly endless sidequests allow an arpg like grind for items and XP. Visceral violence is punctuated with damage numbers, passive buffs, and ammo restoring shrines, we certainly aren't in Kansas anymore. For all the faults you may find in the changes, you certainly cannot claim that the title hasn't carved it's own little Wang shaped niche into the genre.
Becoming an arpg adds some essential requirements to your fps. Featured now is the main hub area, a place to buy ammo, gems, weapons, and accept a variety missions and side quests. During any mission you can teleport back to the hub with a simple keypress and hold, this gives a vital chance to reload, level up, and reconsider the difficulty setting. Note; as long as you don't start another mission in lieu of the current one, your progress is saved between trips to the hub. Choosing missions already available, or revisiting some areas can easily be done through the map, now accessed from your menu. These features don't quite make it as open as a borderlands, but it's a far cry from linear type fps games.
 |
| Whats a looter shooter without the bounty board? |
Becoming an arpg adds some essential requirements to your fps. Featured now is the main hub area, a place to buy ammo, gems, weapons, and accept a variety missions and side quests. During any mission you can teleport back to the hub with a simple keypress and hold, this gives a vital chance to reload, level up, and reconsider the difficulty setting. Note; as long as you don't start another mission in lieu of the current one, your progress is saved between trips to the hub. Choosing missions already available, or revisiting some areas can easily be done through the map, now accessed from your menu. These features don't quite make it as open as a borderlands, but it's a far cry from linear type fps games.
Felling demons and robots left and right will reward you with more than satisfying gore and sound effects. Gems of all kinds and rarities will litter the battlefield, some being worth a fortune. Every weapon can accept 3 gems, each with their own modifying properties; fire modes, damage bonus, elemental effects, rarity, even letting you fire multi-barrel guns in a volley! Collecting gems like Sonic in a jewelry store isn't the only benefit to butchering baddies, your characters overall level can increase, boosting key stats. Now we aren't just burning through levels anymore, but growing more and more powerful to take on tougher challenges in a non-linear way, very rpg inspired, but with nonstop action.
 |
| Lo Wang never says where we're sticking these "player" gems... :s |
Gems can only make a gun work so differently, you really do need the fps arsenal brave the hordes of robots, mutants, demons, and shade addicts. Weapons can be found or bought. There are 60+ guns in the game and each is an alternate flavor to its type. So your shotgun can be the double barreled doomguy style, or a semi-auto drum fed scattergun with base ice damage, either can be used with gems to make a custom shotgunning experience. Though sharing the same limited ammo type will force you to pick at least one more weapon, maybe even melee, this of course can be gemmed itself to modify it's base melee attack with some extra juice.
Shadow Warrior 2 wanders into a fresh new direction, maybe a first for an originally 3D Realms IP. Pushing into the emerging looter shooter and fpsArpg genre, it forms an entertaining if not awkward evolutionary step in the franchise. Will there be a Shadow Warrior 3? will we see Flying Wild Hog studios port these features to a different fps IP creating a spiritual successor? It's hard to say, they definitely know how to make a blistering paced action game with satisfying gunplay. In the future I may delve into the nitty gritty elements that made it stand out to me, but until then, stay erect, comrades!
😂
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