New Shadow Warrior from Hard Reset devs - out now

[sser]

Game looks good, but I feel like the price is too high.

 

[bonescraper]

Why is it too high? It's fun as hell, looks good and it's pretty long. I'm in chapter 5 (out of 17) at the moment and Steam says i played for 6,5 hours. That's on insane difficulty though.

 

[sser]

Why is it too high? It's fun as hell, looks good and it's pretty long. I'm in chapter 5 (out of 17) at the moment and Steam says i played for 6,5 hours. That's on insane difficulty though.

Hm, that's not too bad. I dunno, when I look at a game that has shades of Serious Sam or Painkiller, I have a hard time justifying a $40+ purchase. A consumer oddity, probably, but I'm just peculiar about the genre even though I like it a lot. If I keep sticking around this thread, though, I'll more than likely end up getting sucked into getting it anyway. I could always go for some sword-action, and I do think highly of the series (still have the SW shareware CD, even)...

 

[Metro]

Why is it too high?

Because it's not 75% off.

 

[Eyeball]

Game is surprisingly entertaining. It even manages to be funny quite a lot of the time, although the main character sounds more like No Wang than Lo Wang. Swordhackery is amusing enough and the levelup feature makes it a lot more enjoyable. Not sure how to get the most points out of it yet, but it really seems to have to do with hitting a lot of combos and keeping cutting up Guys after they're dead. So far I've only found a pistol and an SMG, both are kind of shitty, and my mouse is broken so I have a hard time pulling off the special moves, but combat is fairly meaty and fun.

Put this in the "enjoyable garbage" section. I expect that it will get dull pretty quickly though, it really is extremely on rails so far.

 

[AlexOfSpades]

I have two 10% discount coupons on Steam for that game. Add me there if you want them. I'll edit these post when both are gone.

 

[Heresiarch]

The swordhacking is pretty sweet. Dodge attacks then go straight to a beheading slash is damn satisfying. One of the best done first person slasher (besides Messiah of M&M) I think.

Combat is chaotic and difficult on hard but not too cheap. You have a healing spell but it's slow and any hit will disrupt it. Enemies can be instakilled if you slash their head but they can dodge. You have a special attack that can instagib enemies but it takes time to charge up. Killing too many enemies will make a few of them go berserk (ASSUMING CONTROL) which spices up the combat somewhat. Finally, monsters are huge in numbers but you either have a huge area to maneuver or have tons of explosive shit like cars or even arcade consoles to blow up to help in your favor.

What I don't like is someone mentioned before those so-called witty humor one-liners which most are pretty lame IMO. Is that what westerners perceive as "asian humor"?

Also one thing that I find a bit annoying - those decorative bloody gore and corpses everywhere. They're way too many and their models are very repetitive, it's almost as bad as Fallout 3's bandit locations with the hanging corpses. Seeing too many of these unnatural gores just defeats the purpose of being disturbing.

 

[DalekFlay]

Also one thing that I find a bit annoying - those decorative bloody gore and corpses everywhere. They're way too many and their models are very repetitive, it's almost as bad as Fallout 3's bandit locations with the hanging corpses. Seeing too many of these unnatural gores just defeats the purpose of being disturbing.

Yeah, I justify that by saying this is a recent demon invasion, but it can be pretty tiring. I just got a chapter that moves the location though and haven't seen any corpses in a while.

Also, on the Asian humor thing, I don't get a real "har har Asians" vibe from this game. That was more the original. This game seems, to me at least, to be more "har har Egotistic asshole" humor that happens to be in an Asian voice. I could be wrong.

 

[Eyeball]

Guys, how do I get more stars/shurikens on the fight challenges? I seem to be stuck at 2.5 shurikens for most of it, and that's with me swapping weapons, going for decapitations and using the special sword moves. Are you graded on how quickly you kill stuff rather than how spectacularly you do so? Because I seem to get the best rating by blowing all the baddies up with nearby cars or explosive barrels.

 

[DalekFlay]

Guys, how do I get more stars/shurikens on the fight challenges? I seem to be stuck at 2.5 shurikens for most of it, and that's with me swapping weapons, going for decapitations and using the special sword moves. Are you graded on how quickly you kill stuff rather than how spectacularly you do so? Because I seem to get the best rating by blowing all the baddies up with nearby cars or explosive barrels.

I believe speed is a factor too, yes. The only time I got four stars was when I used explosives and the sword to very quickly defeat a whole mob. I wonder if difficulty is a factor as well, perhaps on harder modes you get more stars?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Chapter 1 impressions: shovelware.

Will continue through "chapters 3-4 (tm)" before adding more impressions.

 

[UserNamer]

I dislike the game so far.

The settings are extra repetitive (and I feel weird looking), and the level design from a combat stand point is absolutely crap. It's mostly narrow corridors with waves of enemies who don't take much effort to deal with. Just slashing randomly is enough, if they manage to hit you you always have your overpowered default healing ability. The game on insane is fairly easy, but shit to play because guns take too much time to kill humanoid characters (the epitome of lazy game design in my opinion). Serious sam 3 and painkiller were similarly arena based, but the arenas were bigger and more maneuverable.


The game has nothing to do with the original shadow warrior, apart from the katana. It doesn't feel like shadow warrior in any way, which makes me wonder what the point of this remake even was. Also why is lo wang so young? Lo Wang looks were peculiar, and I really don't understand why making a younger and "cooler" ("""""""""""") version of such an obscure character. Who is this game targeted to? New gamers or old ones? Difficult to tell.

The original shadow warrior had better designed levels, which were both more interesting to explore and fight in. Also the guns felt way more damaging and viable.

 

[UserNamer]

what's really weird is that most of the levels in shadow warrior were more intricate and "realistically" structured than this set of linear narrow corridors with random car carcasses and item containers randomly placed throughout. Seriously there is no point in playing this remake. the original is more impressive and fun in every way- and I'm not the biggest build games fan out there (the main problem of shadow warrior 1997 is that it has too much filler worthless levels and the enemies would have benefited from more variety and a more charismatic\unique design)

 

[DalekFlay]

Well, can't please everyone.

 

[Heresiarch]

Heh as an Asian I really dislike the fact that when a western developer make a game with an eastern setting they put wrong characters/words everywhere (that's including Deus Ex and DX: HR). The Kanji used as the names for various skills for example are completely messed up (e.g. "Money" kanji used for the stamina skill). If someone who think he's smart because he can read kanjis and put points into the skills based on the kanji he can read then he's completely fucked.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Yeah, okay, fuck this. I've seen enough

This game is like Hard Reset all over again, a horrible pseudo-oldschool shooter for people who hate shooters.

I dunno if it's some sort of an elaborate joke that I'm not getting, but I wonder if those guns are even supposed to be used at all considering how fucking horribad they are. A crossbow with no accuracy and no damage, akimbo uzis that do nothing but just chew up through ENTIRE AMMO LOAD ON A SINGLE MOB OF SHITTY GOONS, shurikens that seem to be just for flavour and a generic revolver that appears to actually be the only fucking gun that packs the slightest amount of punch. And you don't even get to use them too much because they do shit for damage and you just keep wasting ammo that's pretty scarce. Even the goddamned upgrades you can get are fucking underwhelming, holy shit, how can you fuck this up so bad.

Which leaves us with the katana which is the only viable method of going through enemies, but it's not even fun either. wowowowo look at me i spam LMB and people die how exciting.

Shit corridor levels with horrible visuals and bloom overload, hell yeah.

Generic copypasta enemies that can barely harm you (and if you do LOLOLO REGEN MAGIX), look like lifted straight from Clive Barker's Jericho, and obviously come in only two types for the entire of the fucking first levels because enemy variety is not fun amirite lololololo

BUT OMG IT HAS RETRO SIKRITZ SO COOOOOOOL

And let's not even get started on this tryhard humour that didn't even get me laughing once that's trying to be witty, but is just stupid, and badass, but never really getting offensive ("I don't wanna sound racist but all you demons look the same" OSNAP SON, I'M SLAPPING MY KNEE LAUGHING). And how the FUCK can you drop the ball on fortune cookies so much? Here's a cheap reference to sum movie or song, haha plz laff at dis!



All this piece of shit lacks to complete the experience is some kind of "look out Wang, it's an MG42!", HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG FUCK

 

[DalekFlay]

If you're saying all the levels are corridors and that smashing LMB with the sword gets you through fights, well... you didn't play very far.

And the uzis are tremendously good when leveled up at thinning out mobs or killing larger enemies. Use them headshots.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I played a bit into chapter four, about the time when the braindead dudes with machine guns that do no damage pop out and stand around shooting. At that point I decided to rage quit.

And okay you are right, smashing LMB with the sword is not as optimal as smashing WWLMB constantly. This game is a joke.

 

[DeepOcean]

Yeah, okay, fuck this. I've seen enough

This game is like Hard Reset all over again, a horrible pseudo-oldschool shooter for people who hate shooters.

I dunno if it's some sort of an elaborate joke that I'm not getting, but I wonder if those guns are even supposed to be used at all considering how fucking horribad they are. A crossbow with no accuracy and no damage, akimbo uzis that do nothing but just chew up through ENTIRE AMMO LOAD ON A SINGLE MOB OF SHITTY GOONS, shurikens that seem to be just for flavour and a generic revolver that appears to actually be the only fucking gun that packs the slightest amount of punch. And you don't even get to use them too much because they do shit for damage and you just keep wasting ammo that's pretty scarce. Even the goddamned upgrades you can get are fucking underwhelming, holy shit, how can you fuck this up so bad.

Which leaves us with the katana which is the only viable method of going through enemies, but it's not even fun either. wowowowo look at me i spam LMB and people die how exciting.

Shit corridor levels with horrible visuals and bloom overload, hell yeah.

Generic copypasta enemies that can barely harm you (and if you do LOLOLO REGEN MAGIX), look like lifted straight from Clive Barker's Jericho, and obviously come in only two types for the entire of the fucking first levels because enemy variety is not fun amirite lololololo

BUT OMG IT HAS RETRO SIKRITZ SO COOOOOOOL

And let's not even get started on this tryhard humour that didn't even get me laughing once that's trying to be witty, but is just stupid, and badass, but never really getting offensive ("I don't wanna sound racist but all you demons look the same" OSNAP SON, I'M SLAPPING MY KNEE LAUGHING). And how the FUCK can you drop the ball on fortune cookies so much? Here's a cheap reference to sum movie or song, haha plz laff at dis!



All this piece of shit lacks to complete the experience is some kind of "look out Wang, it's an MG42!", HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG FUCK

So, this game is a shitty Serious Sam clone pretending to be an old school shooter? Like Hard Reset? I will play the original Shadow Warrior then, it's free on Steam.

 

[iqzulk]

akimbo uzis that do nothing but just chew up through ENTIRE AMMO LOAD ON A SINGLE MOB OF SHITTY GOONS

Well, to be fair, in the original SW, UZI chew through the ammo load waaaaaaaaaaaaay too fast for the actual punch they were packing, as well.

shurikens that seem to be just for flavour

Shurikens were easily the most useless and flavour-y weapon in the original one as well (on par with the fists... and katana, and sticky bombs - although the latter ones were good for blowing up the cracked walls, etc., without wasting any of the actually useful ammo), the only saving grace being decent ammo carrying capacity.

Haven't played this installment though, so I can't actually compare these too.

 

[DalekFlay]

I played a bit into chapter four, about the time when the braindead dudes with machine guns that do no damage pop out and stand around shooting. At that point I decided to rage quit.

And okay you are right, smashing LMB with the sword is not as optimal as smashing WWLMB constantly. This game is a joke.

Yeah well, the enemy AI and sword combos in the original were so awesome it's hard to live up to that. Oh wait...

Seriously though, you cannot play this game just running around with the sword mashing LMB. You're either playing on an easier setting or constantly running away to health spell spam. Later on that won't work as well, since more and more enemies have long-range attacks and larger demons start showing up who resurrect enemies and other shit.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Well, to be fair, in the original SW, UZI chew through the ammo load waaaaaaaaaaaaay too fast for the actual punch they were packing, as well.

True, but they weren't as absurdly horrible as in this game.

Shurikens were easily the most useless and flavour-y weapon in the original one as well .

That they were. But I always thought later iterations were supposed to IMPROVE ON THE ORIGINAL?

Yeah well, the enemy AI and sword combos in the original were so awesome it's hard to live up to that. Oh wait...

It didn't matter when the generic ninjas in the original stood around just shooting you because they were ten times as deadly. Not to mention the special blokes that would throw grenades at you, or the invisible ones. Or the werepanthers that would hide in darkness. Meanwhile, you have blokes here that either bumrush you or stand around being useless, how's that for excellent next-gen 2013 AI?

And the melee combos pale in comparison to stuff like Necrovision. Not to mention they weren't as needed in the original because the original had useful guns (and lots of them, too, that you could get as far as the very first levels if you were inquisitive. No dice here, have fun with your uzi + revolver for 2+ hours straight!)

seriously though, you cannot play this game just running around with the sword mashing LMB.

Funny thing, it's exactly what I did. The enemies are useless and have shit for brains, the only times I'd die were when I'd hit a stray car or something with the sword and cause an explosion. And that was on hard difficulty (didn't start insane because knowing flying wild hog it pumps enemy hp 10 times over), without abusing the regen spell.

 

[UserNamer]

Darth Roxor I agree with all you have written, also

BUT OMG IT HAS RETRO SIKRITZ SO COOOOOOOL

this to me is one of the flaws of this game. The retro sikritz are literally pieces of the original game copy pasted in random location ie pure shit.

The levels, as you said, are horrible, just narrow corridors with random litter. The guns are incredibly bad, I seriously don't see the point of them being so weak. The first yakuza guys I met after getting the revolver... they didn't die after two to three shots to head (keep in mind that the revolver is incredibly slow and imprecise at the beginning, so this was already a bunch of time wasted on not funnily fighting a piece of shit basic mob), I literally got up muttering "bullshit... fucking bullshit" to myself. I had to quit and give the game another chance later.

Seriously though, you cannot play this game just running around with the sword mashing LMB. You're either playing on an easier setting or constantly running away to health spell spam. Later on that won't work as well, since more and more enemies have long-range attacks and larger demons start showing up who resurrect enemies and other shit.

on insane I can just randomly slash with the katana, only occasionally retreating to use the regen health power, which is a mechanic that makes the game more casual and easy than standard fare popamole health regen. Maybe the game does get better later on, but after reaching wang's cave I think I already invested too much in this, and I'm highly skeptical of it actually improving

 

[JudasIscariot]

I have to say that the crossbow is my favorite means of taking out bosses.

With the high tension upgrade I took out the minotaur looking boss and the flying horse guy. As far as accuracy goes, I had no problems, then again, it's nice having to aim on your won instead of having auto aim :D

 

[UserNamer]

the original shadow warrior had better balance in terms of hp\weapon damage, at the highest difficulty setting. The initial ranged weapons (shirkens and uzi) were "weak", but not nearly as weak as they are in this new shit. You could kill the standard enemies using a reasonable amount of ammo, within a reasonable time span, and they were fairly dangerous if you didn't pay them attention. On insane, shadow warrior's enemies soak up unreasonable number of bullets and time to go down. While remaining almost completely harmless.