A little better than Duke, not quite as good as Blood. Considered giving this 3 stars so my friends don't think I'm racist, but had to give it 4 because it was fun to blame everything I didn't like on Randy Pitchford.
shawty can't know i fw this game heavy
~Fps retrospective 8~
Out of the build engine "holy trinity" this is def my least favorite but there's a lot to like. I honestly think the level design and set pieces are so cool. The arsenal is pretty interesting as well. Though Lo-Wang's character is kind of racist i wont lie.
Out of the build engine "holy trinity" this is def my least favorite but there's a lot to like. I honestly think the level design and set pieces are so cool. The arsenal is pretty interesting as well. Though Lo-Wang's character is kind of racist i wont lie.
Old school run and gun fun. Sumos, Robo Samurai's and Sailor Moon. Cool set pieces but final boss in the final episode is too easy. Who want some Wang!
Difficulty Played: Hard
Difficulty Played: Hard
A fun little look at the past with this game. Certainly a lot of fun, but definitely not easy. I'v enjoyed using the sword to insta-kill almost all enemies and it's quite awesome and a lot of fun. This game is for those who like Duke Nukem (from first game to 3D) sort of humour, but without the Duke and it based in Asia.
As usual there are many hidden little secrets and all kinds of strange things in it that will keep you entertained for hours. I'd say buy this game if you like Duke Nukem, but want to see what else the company did as it has the same kind of humour to it.
Edit: Chances are, I'll return to this later, but at the time wanted to speed through as many games as possible so will try to give this a real hard try later.
As usual there are many hidden little secrets and all kinds of strange things in it that will keep you entertained for hours. I'd say buy this game if you like Duke Nukem, but want to see what else the company did as it has the same kind of humour to it.
Edit: Chances are, I'll return to this later, but at the time wanted to speed through as many games as possible so will try to give this a real hard try later.
Fun old school shooter but it is very overshadowed by Duke Nukem 3D
tl;dr: Does some interesting stuff with the Build Engine and made some bold choices with level design and exploration. Everything else is mid or worse. The Unreal Tournament joke was funny, though.
Shadow Warrior isn't bad, exactly, but some of the things it tries, despite how cool they are, don't stick. Specifically, I think Shadow Warrior does some really cool things with how its levels are laid out. In addition to being very visually interesting and varied, a lot of Shadow Warrior maps loop back in on themselves in really surprising and pleasant ways. It makes spaces feel more natural and "real" and can make the flow down a level's central path really, really smooth.
The trouble is that this central path is never clearly outlined or hinted at. Granted, that's just how it was back then, but needing to take a big 5 to 10 minute break from the actual game just to find one tiny switch or pickup one forgotten key or go through one slightly out-of-the-way door kills that aforementioned flow. This happens a lot in Shadow Warrior; it took me ~10 hours to beat all 4 episodes and most of that time was spent backtracking.
Shadow Warrior does not, consciously or subconsciously, lead the player anywhere. It has the general direction of "forward", but which way forward is is often unclear. I think a lot of gripes with Shadow Warrior could have been avoided if that under-the-hood level guidance that's super common these days had been present in Shadow Warrior
I understand that that judgement might not be contextually fair; I'm playing a rereleased version of a game that came out before I was born with my head full of design knowledge that hadn't been invented yet for the first time. It's entirely possible that, had I played this game on release in '97, I would have liked it more, especially if I played it a few times through instead of just once. But I'm playing it today, so I'm gonna judge it by the standards of today.
The only other thing to talk about in Shadow Warrior that isn't muddled by the rerelease or just flat-out bad are the guns. The guns are cool. I like the twin uzis.
Review Caveats:
I: This game makes a lot of racist jokes. If you're sensitive to that, don't play it.
II: This game makes a lot of sexual jokes. If you're sensitive to that, don't play it.
III: Lo Wang can optionally hit on the canonically 14-year-old Sailor Moon, which confirms my headcannon that he is a pedophile
IV: I ran into a lot of weird technical and sound issues and I'm just gonna assume that's Classic Redux and not Shadow Warrior itself
V: Everything I said goes for all 4 episodes; even though Twin Dragons and Wanton Destruction weren't made by 3D Realms, they have the same issues.
Shadow Warrior isn't bad, exactly, but some of the things it tries, despite how cool they are, don't stick. Specifically, I think Shadow Warrior does some really cool things with how its levels are laid out. In addition to being very visually interesting and varied, a lot of Shadow Warrior maps loop back in on themselves in really surprising and pleasant ways. It makes spaces feel more natural and "real" and can make the flow down a level's central path really, really smooth.
The trouble is that this central path is never clearly outlined or hinted at. Granted, that's just how it was back then, but needing to take a big 5 to 10 minute break from the actual game just to find one tiny switch or pickup one forgotten key or go through one slightly out-of-the-way door kills that aforementioned flow. This happens a lot in Shadow Warrior; it took me ~10 hours to beat all 4 episodes and most of that time was spent backtracking.
Shadow Warrior does not, consciously or subconsciously, lead the player anywhere. It has the general direction of "forward", but which way forward is is often unclear. I think a lot of gripes with Shadow Warrior could have been avoided if that under-the-hood level guidance that's super common these days had been present in Shadow Warrior
I understand that that judgement might not be contextually fair; I'm playing a rereleased version of a game that came out before I was born with my head full of design knowledge that hadn't been invented yet for the first time. It's entirely possible that, had I played this game on release in '97, I would have liked it more, especially if I played it a few times through instead of just once. But I'm playing it today, so I'm gonna judge it by the standards of today.
The only other thing to talk about in Shadow Warrior that isn't muddled by the rerelease or just flat-out bad are the guns. The guns are cool. I like the twin uzis.
Review Caveats:
I: This game makes a lot of racist jokes. If you're sensitive to that, don't play it.
II: This game makes a lot of sexual jokes. If you're sensitive to that, don't play it.
III: Lo Wang can optionally hit on the canonically 14-year-old Sailor Moon, which confirms my headcannon that he is a pedophile
IV: I ran into a lot of weird technical and sound issues and I'm just gonna assume that's Classic Redux and not Shadow Warrior itself
V: Everything I said goes for all 4 episodes; even though Twin Dragons and Wanton Destruction weren't made by 3D Realms, they have the same issues.
Morbidly impressive that 3D Realms managed to fit just about every yellowface trope of the last 100 years into a single package! I'm not the biggest fan of those "this [film/show/song] is a product of its times and does not reflect the views of..." disclaimers, but this is a game that honestly deserves to have each level end with a video of Randy Pitchford doing a formal apology for all his game's crimes against good taste. If we can't get that, the game should have at least include the option to turn off most of the offensive dialogue barks like in Duke 3D. ("yikes bro!!" aside: there's a level name in this that Steam's anti-slur filter bleeps out!)
It really is a shame that the set-dressing around this sucks so bad, because mechanically it feels superior to Duke in just about every way I can think of. Wang moves fast as fuck, strafejumps like a coked-up Fatal1ty, and has one of my favourite FPS arsenals ever. Aside from the railgun (which only feels weak because I'm not long since playing Quake 2, I guess), every weapon feels like it has a time and place to be used, and switching between them in the heat of battle feels GASP better than it does in DOOM?! Heresy!!! There are very few FPS gamefeels better than instagibbing those little suicide bomber guys with a deflected grenade launcher shot.
The level design is about a straightforward as it possibly could be, and mostly just serves as an excuse to get you from kill-to-kill as quickly as possible. I'm certainly no John Romero myself, but it's patently obviously that every corridor and room was designed one after another without much thought given to how the space would exist as a whole - while there are some cool underwater tunnels and buildings to blow up, there is a lot of Wolf3D-ass shit in here. "Get key, go to door, get key, go to door" makes up about 90% of the lateral thinking in the game, and when the final chapter introduced the concept of both keys AND keycards in some levels, I simply had to laugh, folks! Maybe this game is funny after all!
The environments are pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a dev team whose only points of cultural reference were probably Big Trouble In Little China, Temple of Doom and Kung Fu - but hey! The trademark 3D Realms submarine is here to play too! Why are 3D Realms so obsessed with submarines, I wonder...
Anyway, you can get the DOS version for free on Steam and the widescreen/all-mod-cons port with all the expansion packs is only a couple of quid - it's a pretty sweet deal if you're willing to overlook deeply offensive 90s racism in search of some good gun gameplay! Why not turn the voice lines down and put on some of your favourite music instead?
It really is a shame that the set-dressing around this sucks so bad, because mechanically it feels superior to Duke in just about every way I can think of. Wang moves fast as fuck, strafejumps like a coked-up Fatal1ty, and has one of my favourite FPS arsenals ever. Aside from the railgun (which only feels weak because I'm not long since playing Quake 2, I guess), every weapon feels like it has a time and place to be used, and switching between them in the heat of battle feels GASP better than it does in DOOM?! Heresy!!! There are very few FPS gamefeels better than instagibbing those little suicide bomber guys with a deflected grenade launcher shot.
The level design is about a straightforward as it possibly could be, and mostly just serves as an excuse to get you from kill-to-kill as quickly as possible. I'm certainly no John Romero myself, but it's patently obviously that every corridor and room was designed one after another without much thought given to how the space would exist as a whole - while there are some cool underwater tunnels and buildings to blow up, there is a lot of Wolf3D-ass shit in here. "Get key, go to door, get key, go to door" makes up about 90% of the lateral thinking in the game, and when the final chapter introduced the concept of both keys AND keycards in some levels, I simply had to laugh, folks! Maybe this game is funny after all!
The environments are pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a dev team whose only points of cultural reference were probably Big Trouble In Little China, Temple of Doom and Kung Fu - but hey! The trademark 3D Realms submarine is here to play too! Why are 3D Realms so obsessed with submarines, I wonder...
Anyway, you can get the DOS version for free on Steam and the widescreen/all-mod-cons port with all the expansion packs is only a couple of quid - it's a pretty sweet deal if you're willing to overlook deeply offensive 90s racism in search of some good gun gameplay! Why not turn the voice lines down and put on some of your favourite music instead?
Duke Nukem 3d > Blood > Shadow warrior
Everything in this game is great!
A classic of the classics, one of the best old-school FPS games, fun and exciting!
This version also includes the expansions Wanton Destruction and Twin Dragon, which you cannot miss! I had so much fun playing this game, but retro FPS games have always been one of my favourite genres of video games (Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem, Doom, etc.), so if you also like this type of game, you should play this one! It also includes some easter eggs you might recognize - will you be able to find out where Lara Croft is?
This version also includes the expansions Wanton Destruction and Twin Dragon, which you cannot miss! I had so much fun playing this game, but retro FPS games have always been one of my favourite genres of video games (Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem, Doom, etc.), so if you also like this type of game, you should play this one! It also includes some easter eggs you might recognize - will you be able to find out where Lara Croft is?
fun game but also the worst out of the three good Build games. Also this port is ass use Raze instead.
More games should let you use nuclear weapons
More games should let you use nuclear weapons
Who wants some Wang?
20
Clearing My Backlog #1
I don’t have much experience with “classic shooters”, so when I originally tried this game out, I fucking hated it. I thought it was confusing, unintuitive, and plainly unfun; so I instantly shelved it thinking I’d never go back to finishing it, and while I have now gotten 100% on it, those problems that I had are still present.
This is the first game that I randomly picked to go back to and complete, with the hopes of finally catching up on all of the unplayed — and/or unfinished — games that I have in my backlog (which is a lot, 130-something) so it’s about to be a long 10 years.
I have a love/hate relationship with the level design here, sometimes it can be adrenaline-inducing leading to me zapping around the place like the fucking flash blasting everyone in my way, but then at other times it can be a disjointed mess that makes me take cover for several minutes at a time, makes me look for a singular item/key/switch which can take ages, and makes me feel like a snail taking forever to do a seemingly simple task, and unfortunately the latter is far too common. When the momentum hits, it really hits; it becomes fast paced, but then you’re immediately halted when the game forces you to backtrack through several hallways/rooms that all look the same to the point where I don't know where I’m supposed to be going, there’s no sense of flow, or a general sense of direction. Most of these levels can be beaten in 3-7 minutes, but I bet most people will be taking 15-20 minutes just because of how convoluted it all feels. There’s also this weird thing where some of the levels are rigged with explosives, so you’ll be killed out of nowhere, at random points in the level and it’s one of the most annoying things I’ve ever experienced in any game.
I found myself playing on the lowest difficulty with this one, which is the only difficulty that allowed me to have some fun with it. I tried the hardest one, and then also the second lowest, and they all bombard you with enemies which brings me back to the “makes me take cover for several minutes at a time” thing — which is easily the most boring way to play this game imo.
As for variety, there’s a decent amount of it. The guns all feel unique, sure, but the game doesn’t force you to use any of them on specific enemies, so you’ll probably just end up using your favourite one throughout the entire game — like I did — but they’re all mostly fun, except the shuriken. Enemy variety is okay too, but I found it weird how it’s basically impossible to dodge Evil Ninjas’ attacks, they literally have aimbot and will 100% hit you with every single bullet.
For the most part, this is an extremely outdated game with its humour, gameplay, and abundance of technical issues. I thought this was supposed to be a remaster? so why are there sound issues, no autosaves, no 1440p without the game breaking, and plenty more QoL issues that just aren’t resolved? I could’ve seen this game being good — maybe even great — but it’s just not very fun to play.
Playtime: 12.4 hours
Every Game I've Ever Played - Ranked (By Score)
Clearing My Backlog
2013 - Ranked
Clearing My Backlog #1
I don’t have much experience with “classic shooters”, so when I originally tried this game out, I fucking hated it. I thought it was confusing, unintuitive, and plainly unfun; so I instantly shelved it thinking I’d never go back to finishing it, and while I have now gotten 100% on it, those problems that I had are still present.
This is the first game that I randomly picked to go back to and complete, with the hopes of finally catching up on all of the unplayed — and/or unfinished — games that I have in my backlog (which is a lot, 130-something) so it’s about to be a long 10 years.
I have a love/hate relationship with the level design here, sometimes it can be adrenaline-inducing leading to me zapping around the place like the fucking flash blasting everyone in my way, but then at other times it can be a disjointed mess that makes me take cover for several minutes at a time, makes me look for a singular item/key/switch which can take ages, and makes me feel like a snail taking forever to do a seemingly simple task, and unfortunately the latter is far too common. When the momentum hits, it really hits; it becomes fast paced, but then you’re immediately halted when the game forces you to backtrack through several hallways/rooms that all look the same to the point where I don't know where I’m supposed to be going, there’s no sense of flow, or a general sense of direction. Most of these levels can be beaten in 3-7 minutes, but I bet most people will be taking 15-20 minutes just because of how convoluted it all feels. There’s also this weird thing where some of the levels are rigged with explosives, so you’ll be killed out of nowhere, at random points in the level and it’s one of the most annoying things I’ve ever experienced in any game.
I found myself playing on the lowest difficulty with this one, which is the only difficulty that allowed me to have some fun with it. I tried the hardest one, and then also the second lowest, and they all bombard you with enemies which brings me back to the “makes me take cover for several minutes at a time” thing — which is easily the most boring way to play this game imo.
As for variety, there’s a decent amount of it. The guns all feel unique, sure, but the game doesn’t force you to use any of them on specific enemies, so you’ll probably just end up using your favourite one throughout the entire game — like I did — but they’re all mostly fun, except the shuriken. Enemy variety is okay too, but I found it weird how it’s basically impossible to dodge Evil Ninjas’ attacks, they literally have aimbot and will 100% hit you with every single bullet.
For the most part, this is an extremely outdated game with its humour, gameplay, and abundance of technical issues. I thought this was supposed to be a remaster? so why are there sound issues, no autosaves, no 1440p without the game breaking, and plenty more QoL issues that just aren’t resolved? I could’ve seen this game being good — maybe even great — but it’s just not very fun to play.
Playtime: 12.4 hours
Every Game I've Ever Played - Ranked (By Score)
Clearing My Backlog
2013 - Ranked
Adding here as a note, don't play this game with Classic Redux, another source port is recommended, like Raze.
A classic 3D Realms boomer shooter. Hard as balls if you don't put in the effort to really "get good" You'll love it if you love classic Duke Nukem and Doom. Other wise there's nothing here for you that you haven't seen before
Shadowrun Reflux: Forever has all the hallmarks of a classic PC game: yellowface, puns about cutting people in half, yellowface, perhaps an oblique reference to a famous female icon in the TV series Twin Peaks (via yellowface). It's pretty spectacular. It's also probably offensive, and what's more although the gameplay is fun and it has that old-school 2D sprite visual charm--there's something lacking. The levels are confusing, and the platforming kind of blows. It's worth playing as an absurd time capsule of an era of PC gaming, otherwise save your money. That is to say, the game is free on steam (albeit a shitty port that is prone to crashes); but time is money, so don't waste it spending Shadowknight or whatever the fuck this game is called.