So,
Shadow Warrior. It's basically the child of
Painkiller and
Bulletstorm, with the daft, one dimensional, racist shite mostly stripped away.
It (naturally) has fairly ludicrous dismemberment, in fact, the sword is easily the best and most enjoyable weapon available. A close second would be the severed laser projecting demon heads you can collect on occasion. The weapons are upgradable, though it's a linear progression of money = better, the shotgun could stand to take a few lessons from the one in
Blood Dragon - as quad barrel setups go, it felt somewhat anemic. In fact, all the weapons, bar the sword, feel lacklustre in effect.
Tied to the
Bulletstorm inspired ranking system, there's a basic RPGesque skill/spell system, which leads to a slew of passive boosts, three blade techniques (lunge/spin/ranged) and four spells (healing/shielding and two variants of stun). They're pretty useful, particularly healing (more or less) on demand.
Cutscenes are almost all skippable, and there aren't any painful CoD inspired walk and listen loading screen masks.
There are a decent variety of enemies, ranging from out of their depth human mooks to assorted demonic filth (such as, for instance, rabbits), and they are all quite entertaining to cut to pieces. Also, plenty of usually volatile scenery to destroy. Usually via unintended chain reactions of incineration and electrocution.
Graphics and music are pretty good, decently optimised engine, it ran well. Controls are responsive, though movement is a little floaty at points. The one irritating issue I encountered is tied to this, if you happen to dash off even a slight slope, it usually causes instant death. That aside, I experienced no freezes or crashes.
There are plenty of secrets in almost every level, including retro build engine inspired areas. Pleasantly jarring.
Voice acting is rather good, and the plot actually surprised me, in that it wasn't brain dead.
Flying Wild Hog have certainly learned a lot since
Hard Reset.
Oh, and Devolver Digital have alluded to acquiring the
Blood IP if it sells well . . .
All in all, good fun and recommended.
