Editor’s Note: This article mentions a piece of the ending of 2013’s Shadow Warrior.
As before, Shadow Warrior 2 is awash with puerile humor, terrible puns, and lots of gun and katana-wielding destruction of hordes of demons. Only this time, it’s gone open world with a focus on.
Shadow Warrior 2, much like its reboot predecessor in 2013 and said reboot’s original version in 1997, is not for the easily offended. If toilet humor or ultra-violence doesn’t equate to dumb fun for you, then this isn’t your type of game. There’s a segment of the gaming population, however, who appreciates self-aware stupidity (read: anyone who enjoyed Doom earlier this year), so if you fall into this contingent then you’re in luck. In a nutshell, if you combined 2016’s Doom with a lighter version of Diablo III‘s loot system and a whole host of South Park humor, you’d wind up with Shadow Warrior 2. It might not do everything perfect, but considering the general seriousness of all of the fall releases this year, Lo Wang’s return provides a healthy dose of lunacy, stupidity and a hell of a good time.
Quantifying fun in a video game review is one of the toughest things for a writer to do, and it’s a practice that’s generally frowned upon. My idea of fun could be very different from yours, but in general, if you’re the type of person that enjoys playing games, the difference between a serious game and one that’s hoping to simply be a blast is somewhat obvious. If you go into Shadow Warrior 2 hoping to be moved by an emotional story that’ll make you contemplate your mortality, then disappointment is soon to follow. It’s for this very reason that the mentality you go into this particular title with is imperative. Shadow Warrior 2 aims to put as much chaos and filth as possible on your monitor and in your ears, and it’s an absolute blast as a result. Then again, if you’re playing the second iteration in a series with a narrative that continues across sequels, the hope is that you’d understand what you’re getting into.
Shadow Warrior 2 takes place five years after the plot of Shadow Warrior, with our favorite foul-mouthed hero Lo Wang existing as a meager mercenary in a world now infested with the demon goddess Ameonna’s Black Rain. After taking on a job handed down from mechanic/soul-channeling blacksmith Master Smith, Wang sets off to rescue Kamiko, a young half-demon scientist responsible for creating the popular drug Shade. In the process of rescuing Kamiko, we learn that her body has degraded thanks to a demonic curse, which Smith solves by placing her soul and consciousness inside of Wang’s mind. As you might expect, this creates a dynamic similar to that between Wang and Hoji, with the constant bickering and snide comments between Kamiko and him make for a whole host of face-palm inducing dialogue.
A host of demonic favorites from the previous title are prevalent featured, notably Ameonna, Gozu, Mezu and Xing, but it isn’t totally necessary to recall past events to play Shadow Warrior 2. Of course, Shadow Warrior as a concept is meant to have you shaking your head in astonishment thanks to its self-aware stupidity, and thankfully developer Flying Wild Hog put a whole host of zany narrative content to keep players entertained throughout what is a pretty meaty campaign.
The core loop in Shadow Warrior 2 is not unlike Destiny, albeit with a more standard cooperative system that we’ll dive into later. Players get all of their missions from a main hub, which also plays host to shops players can use to buy and sell weapons and upgrades. After getting your loadout setup the way you’d like, you’ll access a map containing every side mission and story mission that you’ve unlocked up to that point before teleporting to the mission start area. Where Shadow Warrior 2 is more successful than Bungie’s massively popular shooter is that every mission is given enough context to give players a tangible reason to move forward. Whether you’re attempting to stop the publication of a demon sex tape, obtaining the ingredients to become the next great Shade cook or locating Kamiko’s massive demonic body, everything you’re doing feels like it has purpose. Granted, in practice, you’re always going to be killing a ton of demons, humans, bugs and robots for some pretty ridiculous reasons, but it never feels like you’re repeating the same thing over and over again.
Shadow Warrior 2‘s loot system and procedurally generated environments are definitely major factors in why this sequel surpasses its predecessor, but it wouldn’t be right to talk about these items without mentioning the star of the show here: combat. If you’ve played Shadow Warrior, then you know that it’s basically everything that you want out of a twitchy first-person shooter. From the more than seventy weapons, to the ability to double jump and air dash infinitely all the way to the insane amount of gore, Shadow Warrior 2 takes everything that makes a first-person shooter exciting and reckless and packs it into every encounter. This is absolutely not the type of game where you want to be sitting behind cover hoping that you don’t take damage. The average fight here involves strafing and dashing around your foes, switching from guns to swords to melee weapons in order to get an advantage on your foes, all while utilizing demonic powers to heal, stun and sneak around your foes. Oh, and lest we forget, Shadow Warrior 2 follows up on its predecessor’s industry-leading first-person swordplay with a massive arsenal of weapons and a procedural damage system that allows the angle of your slashes to actually effect how an enemy’s body falls apart. In short, cut someone across the stomach and they’ll split in two. It’s brutal and over the top, but frantically sprinting around swinging your sword like a madman feels unlike anything else in the genre right now.
Easily the biggest change that Flying Wild Hog made for Shadow Warrior 2 was the addition of an action-RPG-style loot system. Not only will you obtain some of the craziest weapons you’ll find in a first-person shooter, but you’ll also constantly pick up augments for said weapons, as well as your armor and power-set. These upgrades might range from an increase in damage, fire rate or critical hit chance, or they could allow you to place a heavy weapon as a turret or make your explosive ammo stick. It’s awesome to see a game get both really granular in its statistical upgrades while still feeling accessible and fun. Make no mistake, there’s definitely a bit more inventory management than you might expect in a goofy gorefest, but once you dive in headfirst into equipping elemental upgrades onto your weapons and combining gems via crafting, this system begins to shine. Oh, and lest we forget: there is a persistent leveling system with skill points that can be assigned to a massive array of character updates. As strange as it is to say, Shadow Warrior 2 scratches the same itch that games like Diablo and Borderlands do, all without losing the charm that made fans wild for Wang in the first place.
Whereas Shadow Warrior was a linear shooter in every sense of the phrase, Shadow Warrior 2 opts to open things up a bit. While it isn’t a traditional open-world title, every mission takes place in an open area full of alternate routes, multiple elevation levels and a variety of secrets and hidden powerful enemies. What’s more, all of these stages, with the exception of set-pieces designed for the main story, are procedurally generated, so there’s enough variety here to go back and free roam to farm loot. Granted, I’m not sure that Shadow Warrior 2 has the legs of procedural-generation hallmarks like Spelunky and The Binding of Isaac, but considering how gorgeous these environments look, it’s pretty awesome to see things change up a bit from experience to experience. These procedural elements also translate over to enemy and item placement, so the issue of going back to roam around an area only to find the same enemies in the same places is not a factor. To top this discussion of variation and replay value off, Shadow Warrior 2 supports cooperative play with up to four players, and whenever you load in a save, you have the option to open your play session to other players and scale difficulty accordingly. Because of the dumb fun factor at play here, the idea of jumping in and chopping up some demons while having a conversation is as awesome in practice as it sounds.
Despite being an absolute blast to play and being surprisingly good looking, Shadow Warrior 2‘s one downside is a notable number of technical annoyances. Shadow Warrior 2 is by no means broken, and anyone reading this should absolutely give it a shot, but it could use another patch or two to really shore up the final package. The biggest complaint that can be levied here is against the loading times, which even on capable PCs can stretch upwards of a minute. An attempt to load in a cooperative game with a player on a mid-range PC resulted in a loading screen that never ended, as well as a crash on the other player’s end. Though there are a whole host of graphical options at play, it’s not uncommon for the framerate to start chugging after around a couple hours of play, which can be remedied with a reboot. Shadow Warrior 2 is also host to some occasional bugs, with bizarre lighting flickers during cutscenes and some awkward lip syncing popping up here and there. Finally, if you’re a Steam Link user, you should know that after about ninety minutes of play, you might not be able to hit sixty frames and will likely experience full crashes. Considering that I’ve used the exact same Steam Link setup for portions of around a dozen reviews this year without this issue, it’s hard to ignore such an technical aberration.
Closing Comments:
Putting aside the technical complaints, Shadow Warrior 2 is legitimately one of the best shooters of 2016 thus far. From its quick, snappy gun and sword combat to its satisfying Diablo-style loot system, this is the type of game that players will find themselves coming back to whenever they’re seeking a good time. Yes, it’s blatantly trying to be offensive in the dumbest ways possible (lest we forget, your character’s name is Lo Wang), but its self-awareness has a way of bringing a smile to your face. Completely changing up the structure of a sequel is always a risky move, but Flying Wild Hog should be commended for nailing its goal of making a deeper, replayable, more open shooter. On top of all of this praise, it’s one of the finest examples of how to make a procedurally-generated game not feel like you’re playing through a repetitive algorithm like a certain ambitious space exploration game. It’s an absolute joy to report that the Wang is back and better than ever.
Matt Whittaker
Shadow Warrior 2
4
Version Reviewed: PC
Formats:. PlayStation 4. Xbox One.
PCFormat/Hardware Used:. PSN Download. PS4. HDTVExtras:. DualShock 4 Required (1). Move NoneTitle: Shadow Warrior 2Format: (6.99 GB)Release Date: May 19, 2017Publisher: Devolver DigitalDeveloper: Flying Wild HogOriginal MSRP: $39.99ESRB Rating: MPEGI: 18A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.Gameplay:Lo Wang is back and the world he roams has changed a bit since 2014. The dick jokes remain, but the linear arena battles are mostly gone and have been replaced with a larger playground for him to slice and dice through.The story finds the hero Lo Wang trying trying to lay low after the events of the first game, but because he is a mercenary by trade he is still taking odd jobs from various criminal organizations.
One particular job involving a young women leads to Wang having no choice but to get more involved as his life is turned upside down by the job.The story is filled with twists and turns, but at the end of the day the game is all about the action with the plot falling to the wayside, only serving to bring Wang to cooler and cooler locations.Shadow Warrior 2 features some of the best and most satisfying combat I’ve played in a while. The action is fast and the depth with which you can build your arsenal is fantastic. The game is consistently dropping bigger and badder weapons throughout the story or through the in-game store from katanas to shotguns to demonic guns that fire god knows what. The level of creativity for the weapons gradually builds and it’s easy to finish the game with a few favorites.As you play, you’ll acquire skill points which can be assigned to cards that build up your character’s chi powers which can be anything from self-healing to invisibility.
For the most part I only relied on the self healing because the gunplay was all I needed to get through the normal difficulty. It was only during boss battles that I had to really use the full bag of tricks at my disposal so that’s something to think about on the harder difficulties when it comes to building out your character.In addition to skill points there are gems that are randomly dropped and these can be assigned to individual weapons and they alter the weapon’s DPS (Damage Per Second) and abilities. The system can seem overwhelming at first with all the variables that can be added to the weapons, but on the less challenging difficulties it isn’t very necessary to dabble in this mechanic.
I could just bypass the enemies by running by them One of my issues with the original Shadow Warrior was how linear the story felt and how it seemed like I was being shuffled from corridors to arenas over and over again. In Shadow Warrior 2, the developers decided to go for a semi-open world experience.Now Lo Wang has a hub world to travel to between story missions to pick up side quests and interact with other characters. It’s a nice change of pace though it doesn’t feel like a fully fleshed out world.The mission structure sometimes seems too simple for its own good which leads to a lot of repetition in format. Too often missions require Wang to travel to one end of a huge area only to find out that he needs a key to open a gate and must backtrack to find it.This quickly grew tiresome for me and lead to me discovering that I could just bypass the enemies by running by them. It felt cheap, but after fighting my way to an objective only to find out I had to fight my way back and forth a couple more times, running became a time and life saver. From Asian inspired lands to dangerous hellscapes Most quests, main and side, end up all the same.
They are either fetch quests or the general kill all the bad guy type missions. This is fine since the combat remains exceptional and the game has stepped up significantly in terms of the variety of weapons and enemies you find.The right changes were made in this sequel to expand the gameplay and therefore the replayability, but it doesn’t feel fully fleshed out in some parts.Visuals:The world here is gorgeous, but sometimes can be held back by some nagging technical issues. One of the first things players of the original game will notice is the variety of environments.It jumps from Asian inspired lands to dangerous hellscapes and stunning cities dripping in neon lights at a nice pace that kept me interested in the world specifically for how beautiful some of the locations were. The dialogue and storyline can be very cheesy While not frequent, the unfortunate technical issues were extremely noticeable when they popped up. Framerate drops happened to me around some major checkpoints which caused the game to crash on more than one occasion. Thankfully the checkpoints come often enough that when it did crash I didn’t lose much progress.Another thing I noticed that took away from the presentation was a blurriness when looking at objects in the distance.
Up close everything looks fantastic, but in the outdoor daytime environments I noticed a little blurriness looking at trees and mountains in the distance. It’s a small issue, but for a generally beautiful looking game when you see stuff like that it’s hard not to notice.Audio:The voice acting is solid though it can rely on the campy tone a little too hard. For the most part the actors sound self aware enough to know that the dialogue and storyline can be very cheesy and they embrace it. I could easily see rejecting the crazy storyline and crass humor, but the performances do an excellent job presenting the game’s absurdity.As for the music, it’s a nice blend of Asian music with some metal layered on top of it to match the action. The game made boss music feel epic and it settles down enough when it tries to emphasize important story events. A better overall a game with a solid foundation to iterate on Online/Multiplayer:Taking full advantage of the new bigger playground, Shadow Warrior 2 features a campaign that can be played fully in co-op up to four players. With a scalable difficulty, players can leave their game open for others to join or they can hop into someone else’s game.
The campaign isn’t especially difficult on your own so you can imagine that it is much easier with three other people.In co-op the game is exactly the same, but there’s nothing stopping players from exploring an area and just grinding out enemies for experience while not interacting with the other players. The host is in charge of what mission is being done, but you are free to roam around as they complete their story missions.I hopped into a few games and outside of a lengthy load screen to join, the experience was pretty smooth. I was able to freely explore an area or fight alongside other players and it was an enjoyable experience.Conclusion:It appears that Flying Wild Hog took a lot of the criticisms of the first Shadow Warrior and set out to make a game with deeper mechanics and better replay value. And while they succeeded in some aspects and fell short in others, they have made a better overall a game with a solid foundation to iterate on if they choose to do another sequel.The story style remains campy and has found a comfortable mix of immature humor and action fueled set pieces.
The gameplay is fantastic and the fleshed out leveling mechanics have enough depth that make playing it worth a go, especially if you have not tried co-op.The addition of co-op is a great choice and I could see the hack-and-slash style of gameplay working well for those looking for a new game with low stakes to enjoy with friends.Score:. All screenshots used in this review were taken directly from the game using the Share functionality on the PlayStation 4.