Shadow Warrior Classic Complete

Like most of us here I'm nostalgic about retro game experiences. I really liked the Build Engine and how things looked and felt with it, I remember how truly impressed I was that you could break objects and glass. But this sense of nostalgia is the only reason to play this game. It's a really icky game with basically every racist Asian stereotype they could think of. It's a boring, tedious, gross experience that made me feel like crap for playing. Can't recommend this to anyone.

我很不赞同用佛教雕像作为血腥战斗场景。 I don't agree with the use of Buddhist statues image as bloody battle scenes very much.

I'm not here to advocate Steam in any way. In fact, I hate Steam, but that's irrelevant. What matters is that this game is FREE there. Free forever. I wish someone had told me, because I've essentially been ripped off.

Shadow Warrior is the game that comes closest to Duke Nukem in style, gameplay, and level design. It has its own bag of tricks, including sword combat, controllable Build engine vehicles, and a mini nuclear rocket launcher that clears entire rooms. Unfortunately, it's also packed with nearly every Asian stereotype you've ever encountered, from coolie hats, fortune cookies, and naked anime girls to the severely broken English of the hero and his double entendre name. Like Duke Nukem, the goal was to push the boundaries of taste as far as they could to make an explosive pop culture experience. They pushed too far with Lo Wang. Duke Nukem was crude, but he fit the action hero template of 80's and 90's pop culture. Lo Wang is almost a throwback to the racist cartoons of World War 2, a character that exists to mock himself. The game is huge, there's plenty of Build engine mayhem, and the level design is first rate for a game from the Doom era. It would be easier to recommend if it wasn't so reliant on racial stereotypes for its humor.

Shadow Warrior isn't the worst game to use the build engine, but it's also far from the best. The enemy design tries to be 'unique' but often falls flat with monsters that are not very fun to fight, many of the maps turn into lame key hunts when they aren't devoting themselves to gimmicks that feel duct-taped into an engine not meant to house them, and the majority of the weapons err towards being wacky instead of being useful. If you've played Duke Nukem 3D and Blood and you are desperate for something that's sort of like that but not as good, it's worth playing... ...with the voice samples turned wayyyy down. This game was uncomfortably racist for 1997, and by now it must look like Song of the South. It's one thing to be 'politically incorrect' for the sake of a joke, but the only way you're going to get away with it is if the joke is actually funny. Instead the game regurgitates the "AH SO I ROVE YOU RONG TIME ME SO SOLLY FUH-GIV-I-NUSS PUREASE" voice you may remember from the 1940s. As a result it's not so much funny as it is grating and then immediately depressing.