Shadow Warrior 2

I was open to the multiplayer elements, but it is clear that by including those elements the experience of the 2013 game was left behind. This game reminded me how much I liked the one before it, so I'm gonna go play that one instead.

To start I'd like to say I'm a huge fan of Devolver digital and its generally a good idea to give them your money. Sadly though I feel as if this game missed the mark in reguards to level design and gameplay direction even though it is a polished and professional game. Initially I dont have a problem with the borderlands influence, and I get that they wanted to extend the replayability of the game while keeping the series fresh. My problem here is what they had to sacrifice in order to achieve it. The levels are huge but they are empty, theres tons of loot but its mostly worthless, there are lots of abilities but there is no incentive to use them, and my list of complaints goes on. This is an open world game with a shadow warrior skin so if that sounds appealing to you then go for it but if you are a fan of what made the 1997 original and its 2013 remake great then I cannot reccommend it.

Shadow Warrior 2 takes place at various open world locations; none of which are actually intersecting and are reached by teleport. You select a mission or hunt and then head out and explore the large open areas to accomplish mission objectives and then return back to your base of operations to upgrade. Weapons are available randomly, like vending machines in Borderlands. This game is actually much more comparable to Borderlands than the first Shadow Warrior remake. This isn't a bad direction to take the series, and give you a better opportunity to continue doing missions without advancing the story than the first one. The main missions are well thought out, but the side missions get repetitive quickly if you do a lot of them. The game is solid overall and very much worth playing through.

This game is always '75% off' for a reason. I can't be entirely sure what happened. While never out-right terrible, SW2 manages to get a C- in every aspect of its design. The art, the story, the gameplay, the RPG elements, even the SHOOTING. It's all... subpar. Never worse, but never any better. In terms of story, it takes Shadow Warrior 2013's sense of parody, and turns it into an exhausting cliche. It's art is incredibly inconsistent, ranging from 'technical masterpiece' to 'why am I in GTA IV?' The loot is a DISASTER. Think: 'what if Borderlands had spreadsheets?' (with an inventory system akin to a TI-85 calculator) My best explanation? It feels like Devolver tried to break into the looter/shooter market, but didn't want to commit financially. Fortunately, this cynical and poorly envisioned entry flopped - and we haven't seen any attempts since. In my mind, a sequel should build off the achievements of its predecessor - ideally, design around critiques the first game faced. SW2 does none of that. Don't buy SW2 at full price. If you play games when you're too tired to think, and need a time-waster: get it on sale. If you're addicted to looter/shooters and DESPARATELY need something new: *maybe* get it on sale. Otherwise, go play Doom 2017 or any Borderlands game. They offer the same things, but done properly.

I got this game free from GOG so I didn't lose much but please don't make the mistake of paying for this. In the 2 or 3 hours I've managed to have with Shadow Warrior 2, it's great. Graphically incredible and plays smooth as silk. The problem with the game is that it is plagued by memory leak problems that the developers still couldn't bothered to patch, almost 4 years after release. With 8GB of RAM and 6GB of VRAM, I can play for about 30-45 minutes before an out-of-memory crash. Turning the visuals down didn't help much. I suppose you may be able to play 3 hours in one sitting if you've got 32GB of RAM, but that really doesn't free the developers from their responsibilities of releasing a product that isn't broken. Your mileage on your machine may vary, but if you google the game's bugs you can see that the memory crashes really aren't unique to my experience. It's up to you if you want to take the chance on a broken product.