Shadow Warrior 2

Unfortunately, this is nothing like SW1 or Doom2016 -- this game quickly becomes a first-person looter, All pacing and immersion goes out the window and RNG enemies delay progression and enjoyment with fragmented difficulty spikes and terrible looting mechanics. Wish I could get a refund for disappointment. On the plus side the game runs well.

First off, it is probably not a bad game overall, but you have to know what you're getting into. I for example loved the predecessor a lot but was not very happy about the upgrades system. SW 2 takes this very system and makes a game around it, complete with experience, level ups, tons of weapons/weapon mods, NPCs, shops, fast-travel, open maps, World of Warcraft style Kill X of this enemy and gather their (insert body parts here) quests. Throw in having to compare loot drops (epic? rare? legendary?) every other step of the way to really kill the game's pace (which should be fast, I guess..) and the most cringe-worthy voice acting, dialogues and one liners since Duke Nukem Forever. If that is your cup of tea (the Borderline-lands comparison seems to really fit here), then you might consider this, but if you're a fan of the real old Shadow Warrior game in the Build Engine, chances are you might enjoy this only as much as trying to please yourself on a cheese grater. Meaning it might be somewhat arousing if painful, but there's certainly much better ways to get off. Avoid.

Seriously, everything that was great about Shadow Warrior 2013, the swordplay, the humor, the enemy variety, the over the top gore, the movement, were all vastly improved from the previous game. The movement ability lets you soar across the map with dashing, as well as quickly moving out of the way of attacks, and the swordplay's controls were improved to be much less clunky and landing special attacks is much easier. Gunplay is definitely secondary to the swordplay, which is fine as swordplay is where the reboot Shadow Warrior series in general shines. Definitely the greatest first person swordplay system ever made. The humor is good as ever, with Lo Wang's smartass comments contrasting nicely with everyone else and in an age where Duke Nukem is saddled with Gearbox Software, the wisecracking badass is always welcome. Of course, the actual Diablo/Borderlands style upgrade system doesn't really help the game. While the menu isn't too clunky once you make use of the junk system, allowing you to shove anything you're not using into a separate menu and making upgrading far less tedious, it's still annoying that everything is RNG based rather than allowing you to prioritize upgrades. Nevertheless, the rest of the game is still great enough that this doesn't detract too much from the game, and it rivals the awesome 2016 version of Doom as one of the greatest FPS released this year.

I find it pretty funny that for the last two years the last 2 years, I've only really been excited for 2 games. In 2015 it was Witcher 3, and now in 2016 it's this. Because my god let me tell you this game is absolutely 100% worth your buck. It takes pretty much everything that makes the first game good and refines them into what I would consider to be near perfect. It adhear's to some of most carnal pleasures when play video games. Big open environments with plenty of exploration and secrets, extremely fast faced and gratifying combat, super fluid controls and movement mechanics. Only real problems I have are with the performance, but I'm running on some older hardware, so it comes expected at this point that I can't push a solid 60fps unless I pump all the settings down to low. I can't wait for some more of my friends to pick this game up so I can play Co-Op with them over LAN when it's eventually implemented.

If you liked the first Shadow Warrior from 2013, this is different. The Levels are bigger, there is wang more weapons and modifications for the weapons and yourself. The game is wang more RPGish (still a FPS, more like Borderlands), which leads to a game with more running from A to B, visting the same loacations again and again. The story is not always as present as in the first game, nor is the game packed with atmospere. Story still good. Wang, the one-liners, the fortune cookies, all still there. This is why there is still 5/5. It's different than the first part, still great.