So you might be wondering, why am I making a review for a game that came out in 2016. Well apparently the third game comes out soon this year. And I have some harsh words for Shadow Warrior 2.
So where do we start, I’ll start from the beginning. Going through the game for the first time, actually isn’t bad. While playing through the game you are given a very fast pace Doom-like gameplay. Except unlike Doom, there is a ton of melee weapons and good melee combat that is interesting. The original Shadow Warrior (1997) and the remake (2013) were pure doom clones. So what does Shadow Warrior 2 do differently? Well, it becomes a looter shooter of course.
So Shadow Warrior 2 came out right when the looter shooter craze started to happen. Density 1 came out in 2014 then Shadow Warrior 2 in 2016. Now because its gameplay is branded and inspired by these genres I will be comparing it to others that are similar. And because I hate Density and will probably never give it a fair chance I will compare it to Borderlands 2 for two reasons.
1.) Borderlands 3 came out later.
2.) I still think borderlands 2 had better end game and progression.
So the combat itself is pretty good. you have to move around fast, and you have to play around the dangers of enemies. Its smooth, fun, and works as intended. The loot at the beginning is good and stays good until you realize at the end there isn’t much else to do with it, which is only apparent after you beat the game. there are guns and melee weapons. Each can be modded to have different elements and effects. Which is different and new. I think there is an interesting thing to be done on how loot works in that game. But the game never really expands and gets interesting with it. And after you beat the game you start to realize that there is only so many mods, and they don’t really matter in the end.
Ok so the game is good until you beat it so what’s so bad about the ending. The ending got me physically mad. So I do have to spoil it. So this is what I’ll do, I’ll do a Spoiler warning if you don’t want this 5 year old game spoiled and then say when its over so you can scroll past it.
Spoiler Warning
So during the story we have this lady who has been separated from her body I believe if I remember correctly. We have to destroy it because it mutated into a giant creature trying to break down this door to another evil world. So, in a weird twist because the seal is going to break, the ghost lady (forget her name its been 5 years since I played the game) says, “How about we merge with the seal and open it anyway.” She does so, a black goopy shadow chinse dragons slowly emerges, then eats the player/attacks him. It just leaves off at this huge, and in my opinion shitty cliff hanger. There are many things wrong with this. This is the worst way to do cliff hangers, we don’t know what happens to our character Lo Wang, we don’t know what happens to the ghost in our head either. Did she merge with the dragon then attack us? It leaves the player just annoyed because now we have to wait who knows how many years to know what actually happened. (aka 2021) So the ending was very unsatisfying right when we had an ok story up till then.
Spoiler Warning Done.
But it just seems to fall off after you beat the game. They seemed to want to add replayability but they didn’t get to it. There is no end game content to do like most looter shooters, the OP levels you would see in borderlands 2 don’t really seem to matter or give better loot. There’s very little side content. Tt gets very boring once you played it once. Not only that but it seems the developers just abandoned the game after release. There was like two free DLC and that was it. There wasn’t much to it. just some challenges. I think there was this really annoying lava challenge where you had to kill enemies but most of the floor would almost instantly kill you.
So after the really crappy ending, the stale gameplay at the end, and no new content, it makes to be a really crappy looter shooter in the end. other than that the rest is good, visuals are fun with very gory parts. The sound is good. Its polished if anything. But in the end it felt like they wanted to do much then ran out of ideas and money to even do it.