New Shadow Warrior game looks pretty awesome

I'll probably play this anyway because the swordplay looks cool. I played Hard Reset and thought that it was underwhelming. There were some cool weapons, but it still misunderstands the classic approach to FPS games. Ever since the first Serious Sam, "classic" has meant mostly a linear series of arenas with lots of monsters with bad AI. Not to piss on Hard Reset. It's not a bad game.

Also, kotaku had an interesting preview although it is completely beyond me why the ghost demon guy is channeling Heath Ledger's joker. It's really distracting.

2 things I'd like to point out many of you are complaining about. 1. regenerating health. Yes it goes to 65% ... but it's not passive. You can choose not to play with it. Or choose how much you actually want to regen up to. I don't think the game will be balanced particularly well then but you can do it.

2. Arena shooting and linear map design. I see many of you don't like slaughter maps then. TB has a pretty bad time navigating levels he's not seen yet, but he says in the vid that he missed all 8 secrets on the first level, and he found 1 throughout the gameplay part. So there is stuff out there. I just wouldn't expect secret areas as ridiculous as E1M2 has.

The concerns that combat looks kinda boring besides the awesome kills is legitimate and I hope that there's more enemy variation than was shown in maybe 1 1/2 levels. Also it looks like there is checkpoint saving, which sucks.

I'd like to add, for atmosphere, TB talks over all the sounds, so you're not going to get the full picture of the game off his vid, look into other sources. He's pretty bad about that, though it's a concern if he didn't play just the music for a minute, so it's probably not that interesting.

Overall I'm optimistic, but like RotT, I won't likely be playing/getting it anytime soon because my laptop is too old.

ArmouredBlood said:

2. Arena shooting and linear map design. I see many of you don't like slaughter maps then. TB has a pretty bad time navigating levels he's not seen yet, but he says in the vid that he missed all 8 secrets on the first level, and he found 1 throughout the gameplay part. So there is stuff out there. I just wouldn't expect secret areas as ridiculous as E1M2 has.

There's really nothing wrong at all with linear map design, even if some people here would love to believe otherwise. As a proof, there's a ton of wonderful linear maps littering idgames that we all have played. The real problem with level design in modern games is that it sucks, and the Painkiller-Hard Reset-Shadow Warrior -trio seems to be a great example of that. Of course I'll reserve judgement on Shadow Warrior for now, but in the other two you'll be stuck in relatively small arenas or rooms that are, almost always, very flat with no interesting layouts and terrible monster placement. I've clocked five hours into Hard Reset and I can remember only a few fights that had anything slightly interesting in their level designs - and some of those were boss arenas. The fact that they recycle the same monsters through the entire game with very minor variations doesn't help either. Imagine a flat room in Doom with teleports at the entrance and exit spawning hordes of imps and demons and nothing else, and you'll have a good idea what the level design in majority of those two games is like.

I feel like we're a tad spoiled with our expectations of varying heights, interesting layouts, good monster placement and interconnectivity in level design - things that are very rare in commercial releases nowadays. Sadly, that is also a trend that's unlikely to change unless something really drastic happens...

ArmouredBlood said:

2. Arena shooting and linear map design. I see many of you don't like slaughter maps then.

I really, really don't.

Meh, sword play looks pretty cool but that's about it, everything else is pure Painkiller (not so bad but not good either). Will wait for a very good deal, if at all.

Captain Red said:

I really, really don't.

Me neither and I've been saying so since I've heard about slaughter maps.

Looks pretty OK in my book, if tad linear, and enemy choices are mostly boring, both in concept and as challenge. Melee looks intriguing.

Also, what's the fucking problem with "regenerating" health? Seems more like Jedi Knight 2 style healing, in my opinion.

I'm disapointed about this, I was hoping for something a little more faithful to the original with semi-Non Linear levels and Politically incorrectness. Also I hope they change Lo Wangs voice

Lighting rabbits on fire. I'm sold. The levels look like there is an element of exploration.

sgt dopey said:

Also I hope they change Lo Wangs voice

The game is suppose to take place before the originals while Lo Wang was still young, so it makes sense he sounds different.

Looks fun!

sgt dopey said:

and Politically incorrectness.

In an age of Kotaku and privilege checking? Ha!

hardcore_gamer said:

The game is suppose to take place before the originals while Lo Wang was still young, so it makes sense he sounds different.

He also apparently changed ethnicity between games.

It's not like he had an ethnicity beyond "Asian" in the original game. Shadow Warrior was pretty much "wait, you mean there's a difference between China and Japan?: The Game".

Gez said:

It's not like he had an ethnicity beyond "Asian" in the original game. Shadow Warrior was pretty much "wait, you mean there's a difference between China and Japan?: The Game".

Exactly. It's clearly just supposed to be funny and reminiscent of dumb old movies about ninjas, or martial arts, or something like that.

Jodwin said:

I've clocked five hours into Hard Reset and I can remember only a few fights that had anything slightly interesting in their level designs - and some of those were boss arenas.

Do you really have time to pay attention to level design during fights where 2-3 wrong moves will kill you?

The fragility of the player and a weapon set that puts strong focus on crowd control with gravity-stasis and utilising environmental damage are much more important to the fun factor of Hard Reset than its level design, which is good enough anyway.

Actually boss fights were the lowest point of the game for me when playing Heroic mode, as they get quite annoying.

Aliotroph? said:

Exactly. It's clearly just supposed to be funny and reminiscent of dumb old movies about ninjas, or martial arts, or something like that.

I would have liked the series to have taken on a Kill Bill-like style. It is a missed opportunity in that respect, and the safest rout to have taken to preserve that grind house feel found in the original. The grim-dark atmosphere is the bigger turn off for me than anything else.

Too many things have a grim, dark style. I had to mod FO3 to have some blue-sky days to keep from getting depressed while I played it.

I'm really struggling to see how this is anymore 'grim-dark' then the original Shadow Warrior. Are you just talking about the orange hue?

Two levels in, I'd say that this game is great. The melee combat puts this apart from pretty much any other FPS into its own category - the closest there is would be Chivalry Medieval Warfare, but Shadow Warrior is much faster and less deliberate than that. There's a surprising amount of on-the-spot strategic thinking involved when you're figuring out the best sword moves to use while considering the enemies, their positions and the environmental hazards around (doing a full 360 arc slash in an arcade full of explosive game cabinets = not a good idea). You could play the game with guns only I'd assume, but it's clear from the level and monster design that the swordplay was the focal point all along - and I love it for that.

Besides gameplay, graphics look pretty damn neat. Not the highest fidelity game out there, but the lightning work and visual set pieces are really nice - the beta version videos don't do it justice. The ambient music with taiko drums and other obviously-Japanese elements help to build up the atmosphere nicely. Overall, I'd say that anyone who's a fan of action-packed FPSs and skips Shadow Warrior for whatever superficial reason is a silly goose.

DooM_RO said:

P.S Did you guys know there are Shadow Warrior NOVELS out there? I wonder if they're as bad as the Doom novels.

Yep, planning to buy them when I find both of them bundled on ebay. I liked doom novels. They went crazier and crazier from first book the the last. Some individual scenes are stuck in my head for eternity like fighting with chaingun guy on alley, plane escape, mormon tower and broccoli aliens. I also got both doom 3 novels and those books took more realistic approach.

And my thoughts concerning the upcoming game: I'm really waiting it because I have played the original game and was left behind to crave more this kind of fps. I like this nowadays trend that they make remakes of old games. I dont care if some of them are bad, it matters that rest of them are good and even bad remake is better than no remake at all. I watched some 15min gameplay demo few days ago and liked what I saw. The humour was impportant for me in original shadow warrior and I hope theres some of it in the remake. I would be also good if they included original shadow warrior in the retail version as a bonus or unlockable game.

Advanced fish physics and fully destructible bicycles have me very interested.

sgt dopey said:

Politically incorrectness.

They took the bold direction of replacing lazy racism with jokes that are actually funny.

Well, this time I'm pretty much agree with Jodwin.
Swordplay reminds me of Dark Messiah (and that was one hell of a first-person slasher), while the overall setting evokes the memories of The Darkness 2 (especially Chapter 5, deja vu at its finest) combined with Japanese/Chinese look. Not a bad thing at all. Yet all the dismemberment, flying limbs and blood everywhere makes up for an even cooler experience than The Darkness 2 was with its slight annoyance and repetitiveness in terms of executions and available moves. See for yourself - I'm in Chapter 5 now and I rarely used guns since I like sword. It's a personal weapon, you know. And it's cool, especially when you pick the right upgrades to make sword swinging even more addictive and fun. Great.
Easter eggs rock.

Okay, I admit - Flying Wild Hog peeps are my new gamedev heroes.

Captain Red said:

They took the bold direction of replacing lazy racism with jokes that are actually funny.

I haven't played the game but I've watched the beta something build being played. Each joke sounded like something that clearly is meant to be funny... but it's not. Besides, I simply love it how people everywhere (forums, previews) keep saying "the original SW was so racist"... Bullshit. It's like people who say Duke3D was filled with strippers even though there was only ONE strip club in the entire game.

Is there physical copy version coming? I don't like or support digital download games. Those are just hideous and make me puke. I want to have the game in shelf. Collectors edition would also be appreciated

No, but you can just get it from the humble store for a DRM-free copy and then burn it on a disc or two: http://www.humblebundle.com/store/shadowwarrior

Jodwin said:

No, but you can just get it from the humble store for a DRM-free copy and then burn it on a disc or two: http://www.humblebundle.com/store/shadowwarrior

Still not the same as official shelf game. I'm waiting till I find official retail version from local gamestore. That day will happen sooner or later.

Waffenak said:

Still not the same as official shelf game. I'm waiting till I find official retail version from local gamestore. That day will happen sooner or later.

Don't count on it.

Technician said:

Don't count on it.

Happened with blood dragon and never thought it would happen.

the days of buying physical copies for games on PC has pretty much been numbered with all of the numerous DRM-services and shit that's been infesting them. you're better off buying a DRM-free copy, buy a pack of DVDs, and give your friends copies of the game. more value for the money than having it on an "official shelf game", wouldn't you say?