![]() There’s decent variety in level size, elevation and terrain, as Wang travels through burning cities, huge forests, and the underworld itself to find the Nobitsura Kage. Even the constricting streets of Japanese villages contain a lot of secrets for the aspiring private eye. There’s not one set way to reach the gate at the end of the level sure, players will have to traverse one or two areas to get to the next one, but Shadow Warrior is surprisingly open for an arcade shooter. Lo Wang can find many paths through the same area by exploring the buildings and wilderness around him. Most levels are quite a slog, requiring players to shrug through literal legions of enemies to reach the end. Unlike its upcoming sequel, Shadow Warrior is an entirely linear game, with Lo Wang fighting through sequential formations of demons before reaching the gates out and going to the next level.Įven though the levels in Shadow Warrior are linear, they’re quite expansive and beautifully designed. ![]() In the grand style of Doom, Serious Sam and other games, Shadow Warrior pits the player alone against hundreds, if not thousands, of enemies. Who’s your dentist? A blacksmith?Īs previously stated, Shadow Warrior is a first-person arcade shooter. As demons begin pouring forth all over Japan, Wang and Hoji form an uneasy alliance and set out to complete the sword. Wang’s happy enough to try to complete his job for Zilla, but what does Hoji stand to gain from finding a sword that kills his own kind? Hoji also tells Wang that the Nobitsura Kage was split into three separate swords centuries ago to weaken its power, and that it can only be restored by reuniting the blades. Hoji informs Wang that the sword he’d been sent to collect is actually the Nobitsura Kage, an ancient blade with the ability to kill the immortal rulers of the afterlife. On the way out of the compound, Wang meets up with a demon named Hoji, a masked creature who deals out magic and sarcasm in equal measure. As the hellish horde lays waste to the temple, Wang picks up his sword and his gun to fight his way out. Wang wins the ensuing sword battle and manages to retrieve the sword, but not before a legion of demons teleports in and begins ravaging the ancient compound. Wang finds the ancient temple easily enough, but Mizayaki refuses to sell the sword and instead orders his bodyguards to kill him. Wang, assuming this to be like any other recovery job, sets out to collect the sword on his boss’s behalf. The game begins as Zilla orders Wang to drive to a remote Japanese temple to purchase an ancient sword from a reclusive collector named Mizayaki. Wang is in the employ of Orochi Zilla, a cutthroat industrialist and the most powerful man in Japan. Shadow Warrior is set in modern-day Japan and follows the life and times of Lo Wang, a potty-mouthed, self-absorbed mercenary who is an admittedly highly skilled ninja. Indeed, it can be argued that Shadow Warrior not only preserves the essence of the 1997 game, but improves upon it in more ways than merely the graphics. The 2013 version of Shadow Warrior is the rarest of reboots, in that it preserves the soul of the original game without losing it in shallow special effects. Like the 1997 original, Shadow Warrior espouses visceral first-person combat in a spectacular Japanese setting. ![]() Shadow Warrior was originally released in 1997, but the focus of today’s review is the 2013 reboot developed by Flying Wild Hog, a Polish indie studio. Shadow Warrior, the subject of today’s review, offers a similar opportunity, but it also adds a great deal of twists and tweaks that few would expect of an arcade shooter. From before the original Doom until now, the idea of shooting endless waves of monsters in the face remains one of gaming’s most popular opportunities. Though these genres rise and fall, the genre of first-person arcade shooter doesn’t seem to have skipped a beat since its inception. By the same token, a large number of gamers are tired of sci-fi first-person shooters, as evidenced by the negative reaction to Call of Duty: Infinite Wafares trailer. Open-world collect-athons began disappearing in the early 2000’s, but look to be making a roaring comeback with next year’s Yooka-Laylee. Video games are like any other medium specific genres will come and go with the times. Slay hordes of demons on your quest to recover an ancient sword.
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