My Final Thoughts on Shadow Warrior 2
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| *prods gently* |
So after playing a boat-load more Shadow warrior 2, procrastinating and eating copious amounts of sausages, I've come to the conclusion that doing nothing is fun but not rewarding, whereas work is rewarding but not fun. What does this have to do with a 5 year old game from Flying Wild Hog studios? A good game is both fun and rewarding, this is where design, balance, and difficulty make the difference. So let's get down to business and determine just what Shadow warrior 2 has to offer in terms of both fun/reward aspects.
Replaying Shadow warrior 2 means tweaking the difficulty options, but first there’s a few things in the graphics and gameplay department that add a lot of value to the game. Most notably is the wealth of graphic options including high refresh rate supports. Now I know this seems like non-issue, but the addition of a “weapon sway” adjuster is a godsend for me. Allowing the weapon sway to be reduced to zero adds stability and weight to the game. It really matters as I grew up on a steady diet of Duke 3d, Serious Sam, Halo, and Goldeneye, all of them having a stable platform to shoot from.
Not being one for subtlety, I choose the hardest difficulty available for our hardened wang; No pain No Gain. To my surprise this difficulty offers a drop down menu called “insanity”. After a brief stint of level 2 nastiness, I stuck my now flaccid Wang back into tier 1 insanity. Like many rpg’s and looter shooters, difficulty is a dynamic setting, it can be changed on a whim to suit your needs, just don’t be lazy and choose “normal” for all the boss fights.
Difficulty and insanity levels aren’t the only strong points of SW2’s replay-ability. Shadow Warrior 2 allows every cutscene, conversation, and audio log to be skipped. This allowed me to skip all the old story stuff and get right into the action. Even my most favorite games force a lot of in-game cutscenes, story specific missions. Important the first time, but kills the fun of replaying, not in SW2.
Where other games require passing a certain mission or reaching a certain level before other players can join in co-op, SW2 let’s players jump right into the action, no more awkward waiting on discord while your comrades scramble to finish tutorial missions.It really is tempting to invite some allies to fight through the demon hordes. I have yet to seriously attempt a co-op campaign, but it's no doubt heaps of fun looting together.
Enemies who once put on a tough face but withered under light gunfire now have a renewed motivation to disembowel me. Gigantic special enemies lumber throughout the maps sporting massive health bars to match. Smaller mobs pursue me through levels with renewed vigor to swarm me. It’s a big change from normal mode, hostiles are actually hostile now. The game has me leaning forward in my gaming chair, ignoring my nachos and reaching for a second Redbull.
With goons really dealing some goon-worthy damage, I find myself making full use of Lo Wangs movement abilities. Double jumping, dashing, climbing, mid-air dashing. Shadow warrior 2 puts some 3rd person shooters to shame (except Warframe). Maps almost always offer ample room to bounce about like a blue hedgehog. An excellent detail is the ability to vault out through windows with a single press of the jump key. cramped corridors and hit scanning enemies make an appearance, but are fortunately rare. I find SW2 plays like a mix between Doom 2016 and Serious Sam, sometimes pushing the offensive, punishing foes and chaining together kills, but also backpedaling to escape and regain some health.
Where enemies can now drain my health like a steam sale drains my bank account. They can take a gun-store of bullets to dispatch of too. The first play-through had me living the good life, only using my favorite weapon types, rarely buying ammo, guns for fun. Now I find myself frantically searching for ammo restore totems and teleporting to the shop mid-mission. That’s not to complain, it adds a challenge where before there was none. An added benefit is being forced to use guns that rely on different ammo types, not to mention ammo upgrades.
When it comes time to skedaddle and resupply Shadow Warrior 2 shows it’s ARPG influence. Simply holding the “T” key lets you return to the hub area and re-arm at Larry's, the local demon/merchant that profits from the murder of his own kind, sometimes I really wonder what this game is trying to say. Larry sells not only ammo, but gems, upgrade cards, and a handful of guns. It becomes essential to buy these ammo upgrade cards and spend xp leveling them, the more you carry, the more you can shoot.
Ammo boosting skill cards aren’t the only thing I relied on. Basic magic skills like self heal, force push, and shadow rage can all be upgraded with hard earned experience points. I almost never used these abilities in my first playthrough, but desperate times call for desperate measures, Shadow rage was now my go-to life saving skill. It takes a lot more of everything to beat missions now.
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| so much damned loot |
With the eventual risk of becoming stuck on harder campaign missions, it is imperative to grind for loot Diablo style. Old maps from previous missions can be revisited for the purpose of looting chests and killing endless enemy spawns, but what really gives xp and masume orbs (more on them later) is the bounty board that I admittedly overlooked first playthrough. Take on a host of sidequests, all rewarding xp, masume orbs, gems, and anything you can pry from a monsters cold, dead, claws.
Unlike other looter shooters, Shadow warrior 2 has a set amount of guns that aren't replaced, but each can hold 3 upgrade gems. Every upgrade gem has it's own value, rarity and effect on your firearm. Effects from gems can vary, some change fire mode, others offering elemental damage. This gem upgrade system really let's tinker with different effects to create your dream gun. A grenade launcher that fires sticky fire grenades, or a multi-barrel pistol that fires a charge-shot salvo. Progressing through the game will mean experiment with gems and guns to make the perfect loadout.
Another feature I completely overlooked first time around was the Masume Orb system. The magical balls are dropped less frequently than gems, only finishing missions and killing the rarest mobs will reward you with these orbs. To actually make use of these glorious globes requires completing a set of trials. The challenges are brutally hard, but the rewards are game-changers. Six trials and a seventh bonus one unlock the following; Trials of transmutation, trials of purification, trials of embedding. they are arena style maps that require a certain kill count to complete, some arenas having lava hazards to warm your feet, they are worthwhile though.
Orbs of Masume unlock some late game boosts. The ability to merge several gems into a better one Diablo style, or remove the negative effects from a gem through purification. It costs a lot of Masume orbs, but it's even possible to embed stat boosts into individual guns, so I can put a lot of orbs into a specific gun to boost it's damage, fire rate, etc. Orbs of Masume are really a late game feature, as it takes so long to accumulate orbs and unlock the trials, but it really pays off during a new game plus, once you've already leveled up and collected most of the guns.
When it comes to gunplay Shadow Warrior 2 is like a fresh sip of Redbull in a sea of Fortnite bathwater. Cartoony looter shooters and multiplayer games skimp oft fail to give register and weight to their weapons, but almost every gun I fired in SW2 felt powerful, save for some spammy machine guns. Enemies and their dismembered parts are subject to physics, the perfect weight is used, not too floaty or stiff, shooting stuff makes it jump, tip over, or explode into pieces. Guns really do help connect me to a game world that's a giant shooting gallery.
Now there are other looter shooters, but what irks me is the fact some are rated T for teen, what's the point of blasting a guy with hundreds of bullets just to be rewarded with a puff of smoke? If the original Doom from ID Software was written gospel, then every shooter rated "T" would be branded a heretical blasphemy. SW2 spares no expense in gruesome detail, literal holes blown through enemies or gibs flying about. Enemies will be sent tumbling or slump over,unable to withstand the hail of bullets. The game delivers where both action rpgs and fps games should, visceral gore and power projection.
I've played through the campaign 1.5 times now, this is where gameplay is really put to the test. Does the formula hold up? Looting and shooting is an addictive genre. Typically I battle a group of enemies, finishing off the biggest toughest last, barely surviving and being treated to a shower of loot, not unlike a gladiator being pelted with coins after crowd satisfying bloodshed. These little battles play out several times per mission until it's time to return home and start anew. It's fun, very fun, there's lots of replayability here.
I'm partial to looter shooters so I've at least sampled the competition. Destiny2, Division, Warframe, and Borderlands 1,2,3 all differ from SW2 quite a bit with Borderlands nearly matching in violence, but bringing it's own humor and art style to the table, not to mention it plays so much differently than Shadow Warrior. All looter shooters play differently, but none bring the visual style, gameplay, gore, and leveling system that this game offers. So If you're picking games just by variety, then you haven't seen the whole looter rainbow until you've tasted some Wang.
Finally my opinion after 50+ hours of gameplay. Shadow Warrior 2 is something of a hidden gem, drowning in a sea of fps games it's underappreciated, underrated, but most importantly; it's undermined by it's own lack of initial challenge. The game does shine though, it has charm, spunk, Wang, 4player co-op, and enough features to keep you blasting away for hours. During the massive sales we see every year it's price will undoubtedly drop to affordable levels even for a starving hipster artist, so it's not only worth buying, but buying and playing. That's all for now. stay thirsty, Comrades.
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