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New Shadow Warrior from Hard Reset devs - out now
- Thread starter Turisas
- Start date
HumanTotemPole
Augur
- Joined
- May 2, 2012
- Messages
- 407
Had been meaning to try this one after playing the second game a few years ago. Finished it this morning after nibbling at it for the past week. Some design choices in SW2 that frustrated me when I played it now make more sense when contextualised by SW1
The procedurally generated levels in SW2 are discreet "arenas" for each tileset that get stitched together to make the map for each mission. The tilesets have pretty decent visual design with rural Asian villages, cyberpunk cities and fantastical hellscapes the main locales. The arenas tend to be large with some nice verticality and multiple paths through them. You do begin to recognise recycled areas and art assets quite quickly. It does the job for a single playthrough but feels uninspired towards the end.
The level design in SW1, both from a visual and gameplay standpoint, is poor. Endless tight corridors broken up with rectangular combat arenas punctuated with very drab props. A dull trudge from ugly pagodas to ugly shipyards to ugly arctic bases made worse by actively offensive post processing effects and bad lighting. I swear Wang must have fucking digoxin poisoning, almost every area has this nauseating piss yellow sheen. The shadow realm boss arenas are the most appealing levels in the game because of how visually abstracted they are. They are also relatively free of the piss filter. The designers must have thought that it was better for the sequel to create fewer, better combat arenas rather than try and fail again to create a good linear set of levels.
The are 9 weapons in SW1 but really there are 7. Two are functionally powerups that drop from certain enemy types. All of the ranged weapons suffer from anaemic audio-visual design. The SMG (DPS), crossbow (precise spike damage and explosives when upgraded) or shotgun (spike damage and crowd control) are the effective options. The sword makes combat bearable. Without it the fappy, impactless character of the ranged combat would sink the game. Compounding this SW1 also penalises persistent use of the same weapon as Wang gets less XP if you don’t frequently change it up during a fight. You have to engage with the crappy ranged weapons or you will hobble your character development. You can move around quickly but only in a horizontal plane.
In SW2 the weapons have heft, can be modified to significantly change their performance characteristics and there are lots of them. Player movement is fast and quite unrestricted compared to the average modern FPS. The hit effects and gore are pleasingly OTT. Unfortunately as always the looter shooter mechanics suck. The usual suspects are here:
- Random weapon upgrades meaning farming.
- Enemy resistances forcing you to carry at least one weapon built for each elemental damage type.
- Enemy leveling leading to HP bloat.
The above means that the often cool looking and sounding weapons can end up quite useless without good gem drops. The game starts with fast, fluid and decisive combat but devolves into a tiresome DPS race. It is still a marked improvement over SW1 combat. At least for the 1st few hours the combat looks, sounds and plays lethal. SW1 only manages that when you’re chopping up basic mooks with your sword.
It’s funny because I remember wishing at the time that SW2 had a good series of linear levels with unique designs and a more concise, focused set of weapons. Maybe Flying Wild Hog recognised after SW1 that they didn't have the skillset to achieve either of these things and tried something different.
The procedurally generated levels in SW2 are discreet "arenas" for each tileset that get stitched together to make the map for each mission. The tilesets have pretty decent visual design with rural Asian villages, cyberpunk cities and fantastical hellscapes the main locales. The arenas tend to be large with some nice verticality and multiple paths through them. You do begin to recognise recycled areas and art assets quite quickly. It does the job for a single playthrough but feels uninspired towards the end.
The level design in SW1, both from a visual and gameplay standpoint, is poor. Endless tight corridors broken up with rectangular combat arenas punctuated with very drab props. A dull trudge from ugly pagodas to ugly shipyards to ugly arctic bases made worse by actively offensive post processing effects and bad lighting. I swear Wang must have fucking digoxin poisoning, almost every area has this nauseating piss yellow sheen. The shadow realm boss arenas are the most appealing levels in the game because of how visually abstracted they are. They are also relatively free of the piss filter. The designers must have thought that it was better for the sequel to create fewer, better combat arenas rather than try and fail again to create a good linear set of levels.
The are 9 weapons in SW1 but really there are 7. Two are functionally powerups that drop from certain enemy types. All of the ranged weapons suffer from anaemic audio-visual design. The SMG (DPS), crossbow (precise spike damage and explosives when upgraded) or shotgun (spike damage and crowd control) are the effective options. The sword makes combat bearable. Without it the fappy, impactless character of the ranged combat would sink the game. Compounding this SW1 also penalises persistent use of the same weapon as Wang gets less XP if you don’t frequently change it up during a fight. You have to engage with the crappy ranged weapons or you will hobble your character development. You can move around quickly but only in a horizontal plane.
In SW2 the weapons have heft, can be modified to significantly change their performance characteristics and there are lots of them. Player movement is fast and quite unrestricted compared to the average modern FPS. The hit effects and gore are pleasingly OTT. Unfortunately as always the looter shooter mechanics suck. The usual suspects are here:
- Random weapon upgrades meaning farming.
- Enemy resistances forcing you to carry at least one weapon built for each elemental damage type.
- Enemy leveling leading to HP bloat.
The above means that the often cool looking and sounding weapons can end up quite useless without good gem drops. The game starts with fast, fluid and decisive combat but devolves into a tiresome DPS race. It is still a marked improvement over SW1 combat. At least for the 1st few hours the combat looks, sounds and plays lethal. SW1 only manages that when you’re chopping up basic mooks with your sword.
It’s funny because I remember wishing at the time that SW2 had a good series of linear levels with unique designs and a more concise, focused set of weapons. Maybe Flying Wild Hog recognised after SW1 that they didn't have the skillset to achieve either of these things and tried something different.
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