Game review 28 February 2022, 15:00

author: Alexander Eriksen

Shadow Warrior 3 Review: Wang-Boom-Bang!

Shadow Warrior 3 review is here. Is SW3 good enough to justify its price and convince the players to choose it over the very similar Doom Eternal?

The review is based on the PC version. It's also relevant to XSX, XONE, PS4 version(s).

Shadow Warrior has had something of a strange journey as a franchise. What began as a Duke Nukem clone and later revived by studio Flying Wild Hog and publisher Devolver in 2013 now has a third installment. And going back to play the previous games for this review I can’t help but wonder why Shadow Warrior and its wisecracking protagonist Lo Wang (yes, his name is a penis joke) was ever revived from the obscure annals of gaming history to begin with.

Despite very positive reviews for both Shadow Warrior 1 and 2 on Steam, if you play these games today you’re in for a fairly generic FPS romp with a heavy sheen of far east aesthetics (most levels look like the inside of a Benihana) and some of the most cringeworthy dialogue ever uttered in a video game.

You see, Lo Wang is basically just asian Duke Nukem but unfortunately the era when you could bombard your audience with fart and dick jokes is long past. The developers are in a bit of a bind because in order to pay homage to the original game, their Lo Wang has to be a surly wisecracker too and writing effective comedy is a very tricky thing indeed.

I give the developers a pass for the most part because who’s going to shell out a ton of money for a decent comedy writer when that cash could be spent on programmer salaries? With the third game they’ve effectively rebooted Lo Wang yet again and cut back on some of the cringe one-liners. Lo Wang is pretty much asian Deadpool on this go-round, complete with red leather jacket.

Gameplay is fun

Shadow Warrior 3 picks up where 2 left off - a giant dragon has been released and is wreaking havoc. You’ll team up with antagonist turned ally Orochi Zilla to turn the tide against the scaly beast and save humanity. It’s a conventional setup and one that doesn’t really amount to much. There’s no obvious antagonist (the dragon doesn’t even know you exist) and slicing your way through demon hordes, while enjoyable, isn’t backed by a solid motive for the player.

I’ll give Flying Wild Hog credit for upping the budget for cutscenes as there are quite a few and they look pretty dang good. And while none of the jokes really landed, none of them had me groaning either, which isn’t the case with previous installments (seriously, the writing there has not aged well).

It’s also a very different game compared to earlier installments which were basically Duke Nukem and Serious Sam respectively. The gameplay is the best thing about Shadow Warrior 3 - it’s fluid, runs super-smooth on max settings, and is genuinely fun. Gone is the massive arsenal from SW2 with its complicated rune upgrade system. Replacing it is a streamlined approach and unified aesthetic where all of Lo Wang’s hardware looks like they came from the same manufacturer. This is a big step up from the hodge-podge of modern and mystical weapons found in SW2.

A Doom Eternal mod

Upgrading is also very simple as each weapon has three perks that can be unlocked and Lo Wang has four abilities he can sink upgrade tokens into. SW2 had you free-roaming levels to grind up weapons by farming runes - something which was fairly different in 2016 but today feels like a slog; the new upgrade system is a vast improvement.

There’s also been some upgrades to movement as previous games had you firmly stuck to the ground. Now though you’ll be wall running, sliding, and grappling your way through environments. There’s also glory kills now ala Doom Eternal and this, while a welcome change, raises an interesting question - can a game that is a near carbon copy stand on its own merits?

The answer is complicated. While Shadow Warrior has never felt better as a shooter it’s pretty much Doom Eternal. You have the same dodge ability as Doom, you have a similar loadout of weapons, and even enemy types are reminiscent of the Doomslayer’s foes. I’m happy to report though that there are just enough differences to make SW3 feel like a really good Doom Eternal mod.

First off, it’s not just non-stop glory kills. Glory kills in SW3 are valuable resources you’ll need to use effectively. You’ll build up your meter to unleash them and, depending on what enemy you’re up against, you’ll get a weapon or item from them once dispatched. Steal a sword-wielding demon’s gigantic blade and use it to slice through his friends, rip open a demon’s guts and use it’s toxic liver as a grenade, the kills are gory, over the top, and yield a useful resource for combat. This is a great way to make glory kills feel unique and I was eager to try them all out to see how they could give me an edge over the demon hordes.

Though each glory kill only has one animation, it’s understandable that they couldn’t do as many as Doom Eternal because they aren’t anticipating selling 20 million copies. The animations are also all really well done so it’s not the worst thing in the world to watch them over and over again.

Fight, rinse, repeat

You’ll also have quick use of your sword as this is mapped to your right bumper on a gamepad and you’ll no longer have to switch to your sword as if it were just another weapon. This is incredibly useful as smaller enemies can get in your face quickly and are begging for a good slicing. Melee kills yield tokens for glory kills while ranged kills drop health - this is another decent riff on Doom Eternal’s health and armor drops.

The levels are also extremely similar to Doom Eternal as you’ll drop into arenas to dispatch enemies before moving on. There will also be some environmental hazards you can use to your advantage like massive spinning blades of death - just don’t get caught on the business end of them. Once the enemies are all down for dirt naps you’ll proceed through some corridors to the next arena. Fight a couple of bosses. Rinse and repeat and that’s Shadow Warrior 3.

I will say that the game is incredibly short, only lasting 6-8 hours depending on your skill level. This is fine if you’ve got an afternoon to kill but SW3 is $50 at launch with no multiplayer, no horde mode, no challenge mode. Maybe there’s more content planned but for what it is this feels like $30 worth of content being upsold for $50. For nearly the price of a full game it’s reasonable to expect at least a 16 hour campaign.

By the time the credits had rolled I didn’t feel much beyond “that was a video game”. Which is fine, SW3’s combat has been finely tuned, but it takes so many pages from Doom Eternal’s playbook it begs the question of why people shouldn’t just go play that game instead. SW3 doesn’t offer a riveting story, it plods forward without any surprises or a real hook, and ends as generically as it begins.

Which brings us nicely back to the question of why bring this franchise back at all? The original game plays well enough but it is a literal clone of Duke Nukem and maybe that makes the franchise a fine enough vehicle for emulation - but is that what players want? Are they going to be satisfied by more of the same meal served on a different plate? That really is up to the player. I had some decent fun with SW3 because I really like Doom Eternal. That said though, it would have been nice to see a little more originality and a little more content in this installment.

But maybe that’s Lo Wang’s fate - once a clone, always a clone.