Quick Look: Shadow Warrior

I'm way okay with this. So skeptical about this going on, but this quick look sold me. God, I can't even believe I'm saying that about an FPS these days...!

That's an art from Hotline Miami on those walls in the arcade.

A world where the arcades have Hotline Miami in them sounds like a great place to be, even if there are aliens.

The rabbit bit was pretty good.

I made it to the second act of the game and I am really enjoying the game a lot. I thought that perhaps the opening levels were a bit boring but the game does an ok job of ramping up the combat by adding in a lot more enemy variety and slowly getting new weapons. The guns are pretty cool especially once you get some of the secondary fires for them. But I found it best to use guns to weaken enemies and then use the katana. Once I got the basic unlock for all the ki abilities and all the katana moves, it was fun to learn how to use them situationally.

But I also liked hard reset so maybe if you really don't like fast arcade shooters wait until its on sale. The story is slightly more interesting than usual for this style of game but definitely its just the fun combat that is the appeal of the game.

can't believe they missed it.

As per usual, Vinny with the right call. Also, loved the demon rabbit.

By the way the katana has several control modes in the options. They're kind of hidden away but with advanced I think it controls better than Chivalry or M&B (having played a ton of those). I mean, sure, you can button mash but if you learn how to control that thing in advanced you become a beast. Definitely needed for hardest diff.

Looks very polished and pretty fun, I had never even heard of this game besides someone on the forum mentioning its awesomeness..But that price point...yeah cannot swing that right now.

Yeah, I think that the price and the reviews really did it for them. :/

The game has a pretty high userscore but being a small game only has like 8-9 reviews, so even with the positive ones, some random dipshits gave it low scores, bringing the aggregate to 70.

If I didn't know about this game beforehand and I saw it was that expensive and had 70 Metacritic I wouldn't touch it. Sadly, this is exactly what happened. It was 4th at launch and 12th the next day in Steam. It's not even in the top 20 now. :(

Even I wouldn't have gotten it if I didn't have stacking coupons that brought it down to 15 Euro :/ It's a damn shame, since it is a really fucking awesome game.

About the nunchaku: You think California is bad? Try Europe!

They had to rename the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" to "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles" for Germany/UK/Ireland, because they considered "ninja" to be too violent for a children's program.

They had to edit out all of Michelangelo's nunchaku use, because back than these things had been banned from even showing up in 18-rated movies. That's also one of the reasons why Michelangelo ended up using the "Turtle Line" from season 3 on.

Source

People are crazy o_O

I just want some numb-chucks! :)

Dunno why people see this as a "smaller" title, and find the price expensive. Let me elaborate.

It's 10+ hours long. It's polished as fuck in both visuals AND gameplay. Got a fully fleshed melee system with combos, a magic system with combos, a dash mechanic that just changes everything, much like how Blink changed Dishonored's combat . It's priced just right for a digital release.

I swear, people cry about how every FPS game is a dudebro modern shooter, then pull facts out of their asses to avoid buying other types of shooters like SW.

Fucking hell. And this happens every time with an out of the mold release. Every single time.

Yeah, there even was an Hotline Miami arcade machine which Brad blew up before any of them registered what was on the screen.

I need to get this, love me some swordplay in a FPS (Chivalry, Dark Messiah).

Why don't you guys check the controls before recording? Heck, if you're a few minutes in and realize you don't know the controls, figure them out and start over.

Yeah, the combat is kinda rough at the start. Most of the guns aren't great until you get some of their more special upgrades (revolver fanning, SMG akimbo, etc.) and the sword is pretty good, but it gets fucking nuts once you max out the swordsman tree and start shitting shockwaves and circles of iron.

It definitely feels kinda punishing because you can very easily do what these guys did and think 'yeah, fire resistance is good' when there are so many other upgrades that are way more useful early on.

That revolver looks so awesome. I love the wrapped grip that looks like a sword.

I can't seem to find a picture of it on the internets, though.

Game seems pretty damn good for a modern look at the Shadow Warrior remake, seems they did a better job here than other studios did with reviving a lost franchise, sold & thx GiantBomb. Crazy how Cali is with it's laws on how you can go through acres or daemonical red tape to buy a gun but something you can easily make at Home Depot (nunchucks) are illegal.

looks like a lot of fun. I like the silly sense of humor.

The rabbit! Ohhhhh my god.

This game is waaay better then they portrayed it here. For one you don't need to follow the "tier" system with upgrades in weapons and with 1 upgrade you can make the revolver a very fearsome weapon.

Going for healing upgrades in the start is just a way to slow down when you got about 5-7 active skills, from flinging enemies in the air helplessly to do defence shield to a roundslash that destroys everything.

Brad didn't even cycle between the different trees to check it out. Lets not even mention he didn't knew the controls for the PC when the game is based after old school PC shooters.

There are also a ton of weapons from the standard revolver to a flamethrower to a rocket launcher to a demon head (yes, i am not kidding here)

Oh and for the people complaining about the price, its a single player fps that takes 10-15hour to complete on normal with tons of secrets like upgrades and references to the old shadow warrior.

Demons DO inhabit arcades. Didn't you watch the Nightmares horror anthology?

The katana from Hotline Miami was actually a pre-order bonus (as well as the sledgehammer from Serious Sam 3)

I dunno brad, you could have been a bit more prepared for this QL (and longer into the game). I expected a bit more, I know dunking on fools with huskar is awesome, but they are other games that also need your love.

The game is worth $40. It looks as good and is as fun to play as any $60 AAA game, the only difference is that the production value outside of the graphics (voice acting, music, cinematics) isn't quite up to those levels, but it still a great game nonetheless.

Unfortunately, constant Steam sales have caused long term damage to market psychology and made people devalue what games are worth. It seems that if not a yearly sequel from a big publisher, no one is willing to pay more than $10 for a game anymore. Then those same people complain about microtransaction heavy "free to play" games. Guess what, if you're one of the people saying $40 is too much for Shadow Warrior, you are the reason why microtransactions exist.

Myeah, I think I'm going to get this after I've finished GTA V, whatever it's on sale or not.

Oh couple little points about the game:

Although this game has lootable containers, you don't actually need to manually pick up the individual things inside. As soon as you open a cabinet/box/whatever you'll just automatically grab whatever is inside - even if you run away from it (it's not super obvious because there's a little delay before it grabs the stuff). Now that's what I call progress!

The Shockwave (Tiger Claw) spell that Brad chose to get is a bit lame (though very useful later on specific enemies), but Flux spell he passed over is actually pretty cool. Sends out a "crack" in the ground in front of you that will lift enemies into the air for a few seconds. Fun to play with.

Brad was rushing through the level a bit - and that's completely understandable, watching someone hunt for secrets is boring - but there are quite a number of little details and easter eggs in the game if you go looking for them. Mostly a lot of homages to the original game, sections of levels that are made to look like the Build engine, stuff like that.

Also you totally CAN spin the gun:

@yodzilla: yea looks really fun. cant wait to try it out!

MMA fighter, Bruce Leroy is Patrick Klepek's long lost brother.

You had to break out the Holy Hand Grenade to take out that rabbit.

Holy shit this looks good. I'm so much more into dumb FPSes like this than most of everything else out there in the genre these days. I just hope there's a demo at some point so I can see if my computer will handle it before I drop the money on the game.

This is a fairly cool and good game

Incorrect. Those are in the Special Edition. Pre-Order has a Laser Sword.
There's also a Saints Row IV dildo bat if you own Saints Row IV. I'll let you guess what the reload animation for that is. Haha

Is it just me or is the video sped up? Or is the framerate bad? Something is up, it looks really weird...

Its 60fps compared to the 30fps normally i think making it look more smooth. Exactly how it should look.

This game is pretty fun. The swordplay is especially nicely done.

Also a small hint "watch for the bunnies" especially when there are 2 of those. After that kill every bunny that you see and something very nice will happen.

Thats a bit short-sighted. What a game is worth to someone is entirely subjective. And when there are comparable or better products on the same service that are cheaper even when they are new then i can see why someone would say its too expensive. That's not to say you wont enjoy it at that price, but it i personally dont see this game selling well at that price point.

On a side note, i dont see how this figures in to free to play at all.

Bottom line, i think you're drawing conclusions that are not at all accurate.

This makes me wish I finished Hard Reset. That was an awesome game.

It's not the wrong side of the road. In Japan, they drive on the left and as such have RHD cars.

Who is the master? I can't hear you Leroy.

nice Deadly Premonition reference, Jeff

Also I would love a podcast of you guys discussing Breaking Bad.

To clarify what somebody said above, ki is the Japanese word for what Chinese call chi. It is pronounced like "key".

@samjiman: do you really think they don't know that?

A death metal fire bunny? I'm sold!

Jeff "Superlative" Gerstmann.