Shadow Warrior

shadow warrior rules, the levels are super memorable, one liners are funny most of the time, the combat is stellar for oldschool fps! the graphics are pretty with nice effects, cool enemy design and variation, some frustrating BS moments but its worth it. I loved playing thru every episode and seeing what kind of crazy stuff they can do with the level design, its all fun because the gunplay and weapon variation is just so fun to use

8/10

Pretty much everything Duke 3D did, this game does better. Well, except for the humor. But the art direction, weapons, and level design are all top-notch.

Duke 3D's artstyle always felt a bit unappealing to me, but the palette and textures here are very nice. The textures all mesh together nicely, and there are very few graphics that look obviously photo-sourced/cheap. Palette swapping is also used more effectively, with no odd/ugly swaps.

The workhorse weapons (riot gun, uzi's, rocket launcher, grenade launcher) are quite satisfying and effective. Just be careful with the grenade launcher, the explosion radius is enough that it's quite easy to kill yourself. There are gimmicky weapons as well that will see less use, but can be fun on occasion (including a goddamn tactical nuke). The enemies are mostly pretty well-designed and fun to fight. Oh, except for the fucking hornets. Those are just stupid. In general, the roster here is a lot more deadly than Duke 3D's bestiary, with multiple monsters that can one-hit kill you. This can feel unfair at times, but it also makes the combat more exiting. When certain enemies appear, you pretty much go "Oh shit!" and immediately have to figure out how to kill or escape them. This makes the combat actually flow more like Monolith's Blood than Duke 3D. The main issue with the enemies is the reskins. The basic ninja grunt comes in FIVE different palette-swapped varieties. This feels lazy, and affects gameplay by making them harder to differentiate (than if they had new sprites). Also the bosses are quite unbalanced. The final boss is ten times easier than the two previous bosses! But at least they're a bit more challenging than Duke 3D's bosses.

The Build engine, used previously for Duke 3D and the aforementioned Blood, has been upgraded significantly. In addition to ladders and drivable vehicles, there's the possibility of room-over-room, allowing for more complex, three dimensional level design. There are many new effects, and the amount of explosions (and accompanying destructible geometry) has been turned up to 11. The level design is mostly very good - probably more consistent than Duke 3D. However, there are definitely a couple bad levels, and a few good levels that are marred by overly-difficult progression. There isn't enough distinction between secrets and required progression - sometimes it's easier to find the former than the latter! But in general the maps are fun. There's a decent variety of environments, including city levels, ancient temples, boats, and more.

The soundtrack is excellent. As to be expected of Lee Jackson, who also scored 3D Realms'
Rise Of The Triad and Duke 3D. However, unlike those games, it's CD audio, not MIDI. This means the samples are more varied, but there is a lot less of it.

About the humor - I'm not offended or anything. It just doesn't feel as natural and charming as Duke 3D. They went a bit too far in the direction of grade-school humor. But it does have some funny moments.

The original Shadow Warrior is amongst the most essencial FPS of the 90's, and unfortunatly like many of its peer classics its a game that i have a lot of trouble playing. Even ignoring the occasional crashes of the game, as it needs to run on a DOS emulator. I like the setting and the protagonist, and up to a certain degree the gunplay as well. Some of the stuff that Wang says is very obviously racist and would get censored nowadays, but i do find it hilarious if yet a bit too much at times. The asiatic music fits the game way more than i was expecting.

But i dislike 3d realms formula of making me go humping walls in order to find the key to advance. This stuff should be left for secret areas, and never for the main objectives as it really drags down the flow of the game. Gunplay is ok for its time, though not on the level of Doom i find. And considering that it was released on the same year as Quake 2, its kinda let down to how terrible the hitboxes and auto aim is. Its a really hard game, and i found myself killing me half of the time due to the nature of the explosives here. You really need to explore to find enough items to survive, but unfortunatly when this involves wall humping i just dont find it all that enjoyable. Nice variety of enemies though. The reboot is much much better.