Shadow Warrior Classic Complete

A personal favourite among the old Build-engine games and the one I keep returning to from time to time. The game is a marriage of outlandish humour and brutal violence featuring a 3D Realms trademark action hero with a strong personality with all the quirks. One that was way beyond the correct taste in its time and even more so today! Master Ninja Assassin Lo Wang did some things cartoonishly bonkers way in one sense and others with superb precision and ruthlessness. Voice actor John Galt and the crew creating the game clearly had a lot of fun, and didn't take things too seriously. The game itself: one of the last times the matured Build-engine, just before the advent of 3D-accelerator cards and about the time the powerful Pentium 2 came about, delivered a world created around Asian stereotypes of movies, anime and manga, with the creators putting all their love and frustration to the mix. This can be seen for example in the game art where many have later on discovered, for example, that the anime/manga posters among other things, are based on real ones, maybe the ones the crew were watching at the time. The levels had perhaps the most diverse environments of all the build engine games and also compared to many true 3D-games of the period too. Whether it be a battleship, a monastery, a sky temple, industrial areas or forests, the Shadow warrior had it all. The game tied Japanese high technology to all around Asian mystic past, just the way one who has watched too much anime, Asian themed movies and 1980's action flicks would have in the mid 1990's. It required a few more years for the full 3D-engines to deliver the same amount detail this game had. If one likes the 90's build engine games the likes of Duke Nukem, Blood or Redneck Rampage, I would recommend to try this as well. A word of advice: The game might feel a bit crankier, if one has gotten used to the modern mouse aiming. If so, the Build-engine game to try first is the Excellent Ion Fury of Voidpoint!

Before we start, I'm playing this game with version 4.3.1 of SWP, ported on mac with a simple wineskin port. Why I use SWP and I don't use dosbox? because with that source port is easier to use the mouse on the y-axis. that said, I love this game. I'm not a nostalgic, I got it for free today and I cannot stop playing this great game. there are lots of weapon, lots of secrets, lots of nude anime girls (LOL), lots of monsters, and Lo Wang is a badass. it is a difficult game, you need to save and load often, and you need to use that key in the right door. But once you have done it one time is really easy to do it again. The level design is awesome, I love it. the 2.5D graphics is not that bad, there is some style in this game, I would love to see some new games made with that technique. Just get it and try, right now is free but this game was already free on steam (and this classic version is also drm-free on steam).

You, as a gamer that doesn't shy away from old games and also a Steam user, I had so much Wang in my life that I don't feel like talking about all the Wangs that I have. It's kinda a Duke Nukem 3D like game, albeit with worse balanced but still rewarding. When you figure out that you should lob grenades around corner and use inventory-grenades for ambushes, that is. Otherwise, higher hitscan rate than true old-school shooter should have. Well, Doom era ones. But eh, here is a GOG Wang. It's a free Lo Wang, so it's a fine Wang. Shadow Warrior Classic Complete is indeed Complete as it comes with two free expansions packs already packed in. If you fiddle with settings you should have it up and running in comfortable modern controls way, albeit you have to tolerate lower mouse sensetivity for vertical than horizontal. And it's all good, but first, you have to manually use DOSBOX to setup.exe the controls for Shadow Warrior and Watson Destruction. Twin Dragon expansion uses it's own setup.exe that GOG actually has a link to it in "other" category, but not for others. Eh. Oh, and for some reason everytime in Twin Dragon you have to turn on music through in-game options. Wacky. Overall, you probably should go for Redux due to small differences but these differences are so small that actually maybe you should stick with this free deal instead. Plus, Redux has no multiplayer while it looks like this one does have it. Maybe sorta have it. Not sure if it works or if it's stable. But yea. Too much Lo Wang for me.

I really like the game but dosbox kills it so that is why I play the Redux and 85Hz refresh rate is needed.

It's a real gift to have this as freeware. Long live Build Engine.