Shadow Warrior review

On May 13, 2019, one of the “Three Great Shooters” turned twenty-two years old. From now on he can legally smoke, get a driver’s license and buy alcohol. In honor of our birthday boy’s coming of age, let’s remember the barefoot childhood of Shadow Warrior – a game that, to the delight of nostalgic gamers, appeared “when the trees were big”.

Shadow Warrior is one of the games of the so-called “Great Three”. Three shooters created on the Build engine, which at one time were simply crazy popular. The pioneer here was Duke Nukem 3D, released on January 29, 1996. Shadow Warrior added a new dose of blood to video games, which we were able to play on May 13, 1997. Finally, the orgy of cruelty was crowned by Blood, released two weeks later on May 31.

In 1996, Duke Nukem 3D reigned supreme in the first-person shooter world. Unlike the serious Doom, the game about the “Atomic Duke” was full of jokes and references to popular culture. And we thought that the game could not be more fun. Until "Shadow Warrior" came out.

… in Sunday’s fight between two yokozuna
The main character of our “Japanese” action movie is the mercenary Lo Wang. This mustachioed guy with a morbid sense of humor, one might say, was a representative of the “office plankton”, selflessly working for the Zilla Enterprise corporation as a senior fine-cutter of individuals disliked by his superiors. But one day, when the company suddenly discovered that it had run out of enemies and had no desire to do dirty tricks, it decided to take and enslave all of Japan. And so that the Japanese authorities would not mind, the head of the corporation, Mr. Zilla, summoned demons from the Japanese Hell, all sorts of devils, gods and other abominations to help him. And for starters, he killed teacher Lo Wang. Our protagonist got very angry and decided to take revenge! Rave? There is a little, but it was the nineties, we played what we were given.

This pastoral landscape will soon turn red.
In fact, the game Shadow Warrior cannot be taken very seriously. Here literally everything is subordinated to the task of amusing the player. Blood gushes from the bodies of defeated enemies in ten-meter fountains. A single blow with a katana cuts the enemy into five or six pieces. Napalm is pouring literally on an industrial scale. What about napalm – Shadow Warrior is almost the only game that gives you a rocket launcher equipped with one nuclear charge! At the same time, the main damaging factors of a nuclear explosion are conveyed in a very naturalistic manner: a light flash, shaking from the passage of a shock wave and radioactive contamination of the area at the epicenter of the explosion.

The gameplay of Shadow Warrior was https://vegas-mobile-casino.co.uk/ quite simple. Is there you. There are enemies. There are weapons that must be used on enemies, otherwise they will most likely rip your head off. And there are many, many different levels, dotted with demons, devils, ninjas, skeletons and all sorts of nasty things that literally sleep and dream of how to quickly become organ donors. Provided that after the meeting with Lo Wang there will be at least some organs left for transplantation. Let’s go forward, shoot and chop – pure fun!

…followed by Musashimaru
There were opponents to match the daring gameplay. The developers approached the creation of enemies with all the humor that God gave them. There are ninjas here who, when they fail to kill you, out of grief, shoot themselves in the mouth with an Uzi machine gun. There is a peasant here who owes Mr. Zilla a forty-seven-figure sum, and is simply happy to blow up a box of dynamite next to any of his opponents – and he will apologize to you for a long time. There are some very frivolously dressed girls who are anime fans, who, after a few greasy jokes made at their expense by Lo Wang, will take out the Uzi and try to finish you off with a funny "no". There are fighting carnivorous bunnies breeding right before your eyes… In Shadow Warrior you can die simply because you laughed too long at what was happening on the screen.

When Luo Wang picked up the second ultrasound, he remembered John Woo with kind words.
Weapons to match your enemies. Katana that cuts enemies into five pieces with one blow. A rocket launcher with a nuclear warhead – after the explosion, Lo Wang will definitely remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are shurikens that, after being thrown, can be picked up from the floor or the corpses of enemies (1997, remember?). There are dual ultrasound machines… There is a severed head of a demon, which, swearing dirty, spits napalm. There is a heart torn out from a living monkey demon, which creates a double of the main character, capable of very non-illusory attacks on opponents.

Godzilla returns!
All the chaos is happening in various places of the Japanese islands: from rural areas to modern neighborhoods of Tokyo. From medieval castles of oni sorcerers, to industrial zones and office “cubes”. What is striking, however, is not so much the scattering of the scenery as their elaboration. We have not seen such detail, perhaps, even in Duke Nukem 3D. Food is smoking on the tables in the pub. There are pots of flowers on the windows. There are crumpled napkins and broken glasses lying at the bar counter, and a beer installation proudly rises above it, from where, by the way, you can take a couple of sips to improve your health. Corpses smeared on the walls do not disappear anywhere. Bullet holes and shell casings remain in place until the very end of the game. The corpses of enemies can be kicked and crushed with a nasty chomping sound. It’s amazing how much has been done with today’s primitive looking Build engine.

Shurikens could be thrown at the wall and then picked up.
The soundtrack – even if it was inaccessible to many due to the rare sound card in those days – was simply amazing. Lo Wang delivered all his barbs with a great Asian accent. The monsters naturally swear like shoemakers. The ninjas were saying something pathetically in Japanese. The radio played wonderful Asian tunes. The katana crashed into bodies with a savory, standard crunch, broken glass creaked underfoot, and a nuclear explosion seemed real at that time.

Finally, this wonderful game had an online mode. And if duels in 1997 were not yet particularly popular, then the opportunity to go through the story and beat up all these otherworldly monsters in the company of a friend was highly valued.

After the resounding success of Shadow Warrior, an era of oblivion began. The additions released in 1998 could not even catch up with the original in terms of humor and recklessness of the gameplay – one gets the impression that they were made by third parties. After which they forgot about the “Shadow Warrior” for many years. On September 26, 2013, Shadow Warrior was restarted – which means we will return to this amazing game. And finally we will kill the damned Zilla!

strengths and weaknesses of the project

+Exciting gameplay
+Amazing weapon
+Colorful enemies
+Total banter and numerous jokes

-A series of completely illogical riddles
-The game is almost impossible to run on a modern PC