So I just finished Shadow Warrior (2013) and I wasn’t blown away by it but I had a decent time. I always like hearing about experiences that people had with the game when it first came out and whether or not a modern perspective paints it differently.
To summarize what I thought: The writing is humorous, but not outright funny to me. The graphics hold up very well and the gore is great. Combat is mostly pretty good. Some enemies are annoying or overly difficult on the hard difficulty but overall it’s pretty good.
I did think it was modeled to be kind of akin to a Serious Sam type game and it lives up to that but similar to that game, many of the weapons/enemies/levels overstay their welcome a bit. Other than that I had a pretty good time with it, thought it was an 8/10 fun time.
What’s everyone’s story with this game series? When did you first play it and what did you think about it?
It was an interesting game. Came out at a time we were going through a bit of a fast paced FPS drought and was one of the - relatively - big name reboots, but curiously one that didn’t have a lasting impact. I had fun at the time, even with the comically awful fall damage (dashing and dying from going down the stairs was equal parts frustrating and hilarious), and hold no nostalgia for the old games. There were fun guns and cool enemies to kill, as well as a story that landed with one of my favorite bittersweet endings.
At the end of the day, I think “enjoyable” would be my final mark; save for the big, busy arenas during the final levels, the game didn’t feel as high octane or thrilling as future releases like DOOM and Titanfall 2, and from the little that I played of the first sequel they really lost their way.
I hear your point about the last part. It’s great that this sort of old school FPS got made in 2013 but ultimately I feel it’s been outpaced by newer games like the modern DOOM games. The two newer Doom games are just FPS perfected honestly even if they aren’t for everyone. They’re fast paced, varied, and compared to something like this they make this look slow and unsatisfying. But reject that comparison and this game is still enjoyable, if buggy at times.