Shadow Warrior (2013)

Yeah, it's a fun FPS. What's not to love?

Don't buy unless you like torturing yourself with shitty enemy design. Very unbalanced. Broken enemies and combinations of enemies make it not challenging... but pulling-hair-out-of-head-head frustrating. I got 15 hours in--near the end of the game--where they throw literally every enemy type at you... at once. Given how the enemies synergize, it makes it simply impossible to beat. I've fucking tried. Over and Over. This is after a series of encounters in the game involving broken enemies that teleport and block your movement, enemies that swarm you, enemies that revive the dead. Enemies that do a TON of damage if you let them touch you.... when you put all of these in a single room you get broken enemy design. Which is a shame, because otherwise I would recommend this. I WANTED to like this game, but Shadow warrior goes over the line from challenging into a frustrating slough.

I saw a friend play this game and one thing just instantly caught my eye: Why can't I instantly join his carnage campaign playing on my own computer with my own Lo Wang incarnation? Consequently the new Shadow Warrior has one big flaw that's exactly the same deal-breaker (at least for me) as in Duke Nukem Forever... It has NO CO-OP MULTIPLAYER??! Why?! Why don't you (developers) think about such an opportunity to increase the replay (and also the general play) value of your game a thousandfold? The level (and narrative) structure is perfectly fitting for co-op gameplay and it would be a lot more fun than playing the game alone.. At least in my opinion (and the opinions of some of my friends). Other than that, I have to admit that both the Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem games are nice reboots that provide a couple of hours of fun gameplay. In that point I agree with most user reviews. But it still would have been much better with co-op! Like in the good old times. The old games feature co-op modes...! OK, now I hope that I've made my point and that some of the games developers read this post and either patch their games to add a co-op mode or provide the damn source code (or other means) to the community so that they can implement such a modification. Without co-op I'd give it 3 out of 5 stars, with co-op it could be 5 out of 5 stars. Again, it's a bit of a wasted opportunity and that disappoints me just a wee little bit....

Includes reference to Half Life 10/10

Buy now? Yes.