Shadow Warrior 2

Shadow Warrior 2 is an excellent example of video game sequels done wrong, while the initial taste is quite nice, it doesn't take long 'til it becomes apparent that Shadow Warrior's core design philosophies were thrown out the window, to create a rather bland First Person Looter. Story: It's a silly story full of crude humour. Basically humans and demons co-exist, you play as Lo Wang again and you fight against Zilla's brand of Demonic Influence. It's delightfully cheesy and very 90s TV show-esque. In other words it's exactly what I expected from Shadow Warrior. Gameplay: This time the game has procedural levels, that means the levels are instantly forgettable and there's no real reason to explore them, no hand-crafted secrets, no environmental story-telling, just lazy uninspired levels with a slightly different theme. But that's okay, because this game has loot this time around. Not really, when the loot takes away from the impact your super weapons have, it strips any reason to use an alternative weapon other than the fact you ran out of ammo, and yes there is plenty of those instances in SW2. Where a supposed 'power' weapon is about as good as your standard issue weapons and enemies are beefed up bullet-sponges and it's really not fun. Along with loot, the biggest problem I have is how often I have to stop and look at menus. Shadow Warrior was never about looking at menus, it was a fast paced game with secrets and maze-like level design, often rewarding exploration and speed running. Very rarely you looked at the menu, yet this game is pretty much is staring at menus and comparing stats, looking for an optimal way to deal death. What could have been an excellent companion to DOOM (2016) had it stuck to it's core philosophies, has became a poor-man's Destiny. It tarnishes two different styles of FPS, while burning bridges with it's core audience and for that I just can't recommend Shadow Warrior 2.

Forget handcrafted levels and a decent amount of meaningful upgrades and say hello to... big, sprawling, generic levels that are EMPTY except for small waves of enemies here and there about 10 billion little 'gems' and stuff to tweak your weapons, none of which really matter unless you plan on swapping them all every time you encounter a different monster than the last, which is always no improvements to the actual gameplay. In fact, guns feel worse, have no visible impact on enemies and all feel weak, even shotguns graphics look the same, or in some cases worse, than the original (tho its been a year since I played it so could be wrong) really wish they had a demo (I think the 1st did?) but the 1st was so good i figured there was no way to mess this up. Just give me more of that, some gfx upgrades and new weapons, and done. but noooooooooooooo they had to go and turn it into a co-op centric slog. i've logged abvout 4-5 hours and am done

After playing the 2013 Shadow Warrior, I had only one wish: that the next SW be Co-Op. Lo and Behold, here it is! Game-wise it an essential cooperative experience! The difficulty is scale-able to accommodate both numbers and skill of people playing, which is great if you are introducing new ppl to shooters or SW. The host experiences a 1-second lag of the joining players' actions, but it's not PVP so it doesn't hurt too much. The mix of careful precision and utter madness arouses and engages the pleasure center of the brain in ways that I haven't felt since HALO's co-op back in 2002! Joining and hosting friends could only be easier if it didn't require the awkward peculiarities of GOG's GALAXY client, which is the only point where things go wrong: 1. WARNING! If you are playing on a laptop, DO NOT LAUNCH SW2 FROM THE GALAXY CLIENT! SW2 will NOT recognize your graphics card and will only use the integrated display adapter (very bad). 2. WARNING! If you accept a game invite through Galaxy's friend system, you MUST already have SW2 running, or SW2 will NOT recognize your graphics card and will only use the integrated display adapter (very bad). 3. Telling the game to run on "High Performance Graphics Processor" will not fix the problem and you will not be able to change the selected processor in-game. 4. You cannot invite friends to play through Galaxy, you must launch Galaxy, then the game, then invite friends from in-game, who must first launch the game (not from Galaxy!) and then open galaxy to accept the invite, or else no GPU usage for you! The only thing Flying Wild Hog and GOG did wrong with this game was to force multiplayer to be done through the Galaxy Client. It adds a frustrating asterisk to "DRM Free" and unnecessarily complicates multiplayer. I'm sure the GPU issue is fixable with a patch, but several people I know were already about to refund the game because of the GPU/Galaxy problem, until I showed them the workaround. Great Game, bad DRM

If you put together fantastic graphics, superb soundtrack, great responsivity and in-game mechanics, very good inventory and skills customization, excellent performance and optimization, fair price and mix it with the legend of Lo Wang you'll receive this awesome game. I've been waiting for this game and absolutely love it. I enjoyed every bit of it when played it for the first few hours. Added Co-Op option makes it even better. A full Polish language support option in game would be my cherry on the cake there but on the other hand certainly Lo Wang would not be the same if spoken other languages :) This is a game made for gamers and by gamers. Thanks.

TLDR; The game is very very good but your enjoyment may vary depending on what you expect. Shadow Warrior 1 was a perfect remake in my opinion, modernizing an old classic without transforming it into something it was not. Shadow Warrior 2 does do exactly that, it transforms the game rather radically. Do not get me wrong, I really enjoy this game. It blends together the new-found mobility of recent shooters (double jumping, ledge-grabbing) with old school traditions like carrying many weapons and effectively utilizing them in the right situation. This is a GAMEPLAY-FIRST kind of experience and the core combat gameplay is BRILLIANT, even better than in Shadow Warrior 1. It is a fast, loose, loud and intense shooter that requires reflexes and spur-of-the-moment decisions without becoming a shooting gallery. Visuals, animations and gun-handling are all excellent and the hit (and slice) feedback is very well realized. Graphic settings are plentiful, performance is good and music and sound effects rock hard. The new part is the Borderlands-like structure and focus on loot and weapon-customization. While Shadow Warrior 2's predecessor had some of the usual RPG and upgrade elements so very custom today, this new game comes with elemental effects, different resistances to damage and random loot to pick up everywhere (not the weapons themselves but basically mods for them, a nice compromise). For me, this is actually a DISTRACTION. Similar to many modern RPGs, the game's insistence on item pickups and stats forces you to spend a great deal of time in menus optimizing your character build and equipment instead of shooting demons. I would prefer a more focused approach. In short, SW2 falls victim to recent trends here. The other area the game feels weak is its story and general atmosphere. You are thrown into the middle of things and there is no inherent logic to the SW universe anymore, unlike in is predecessor. Things, people and places just "exist". I blame the Coop here.