🎎 Shadow Warrior 3 | XSX | Review | 7.5/10 | "More Wang Than You Can Shake a Shotgun At" 🎎 @ShadowWarrior #IndieGame #IndieGameDev

I’ve had a pretty good time with the Shadow Warrior games since their reboot in 2013 and, upon finishing the second title, I remember being completely in the zone, pumped up for the third entry in the series.

Now that it’s here…I enjoyed my time with the game, but the changes to design and focus – whilst I can clearly appreciate their appeal to some – removed some of the joy for me.

It’s some time after the events of Shadow Warrior 2 and the world of Lo Wang is in tatters; a giant demon snake runs riot and Wang himself appears to spend the vast majority of his time wandering around a shack in stained underwear whilst ranting at a mask.

Enter Zilla, Wang’s once-mortal enemy who gives Wang the kick up the jacksie that he needs to again start making wang jokes and start spraying demon blood and brains all over this damaged earth.

In terms of a technical machine, Shadow Warrior 3 runs beautifully. The animations and gunplay are ultra-smooth and the music keeps the energy up as Wang thrashes around, wall-running, grappling, hacking and blasting demons to pieces.

The game is very close to the design of recent DOOM games, in that certain kills make the enemies drop ammo and it becomes a kind of violent, movement-based ballet as your character hurtles along a linear path, drops into an ‘arena’ and then takes out all spawning demons that come his way until an exit opens.

This was the design choice that kind of slightly ate away at the enjoyment for me, as from memory – the previous entries seemed more open and exploration-based, whereas this feels like moving along a set path to occasionally stop and take out waves of enemies in specific locations, I do miss that freedom of exploring and wandering around but I fully understand that I’m in the minority, as the fame and popularity of the modern DOOM games have proven.

The other issues here are related to repetition. Wang’s constant stream of quips and quotes get grating pretty quickly, as does the special, scripted death animation sequences for each enemy – only one animation exists for the instakills and they get old fast. The juvenile humour in the game is to be expected from previous entries, and whilst I found several scenes amusing, my tastes meant that it was more the moments beyond todger and fart gags that appealed to me. For instance, an exchange close to the start where Zilla and Wang are chatting as they make their way across a mountain pass:

“Lo Wang… you are stress-talking again, are you nervous?”

“What? About taking down an immortal demon snake the size of a mountain armed with just a Halloween mask? Naaah.”

It’s more Zilla’s exasperation and Wang’s confidence and optimism against insane odds that are the highlights in the writing, as opposed to the pop culture references, oo-er gags and the approach to female characters.

Whilst I preferred the second instalment to this third, I still had fun in the time I spent with the arena-based action and high-octane violence that Shadow Warrior 3 offers. If, however, you are drawn to arena-based FPS titles, then this will certainly appeal more to you and should keep players entertained for the 6-8 hours of campaign runtime. 

Be warned, there is currently no two-player mode on offer, unlike the previous entry. this is a journey that only one Wang can take, not a long journey, but with the difficulty on high - it can be tough and full of blood spraying everywhere.