![]() ![]() There’s a sort of Force Push ability that can be used to break perforated enemies apart, scattering their gibs across the level.Īnd then there’s the chainsaw. And the gore really is spectacularly gruesome, the track of your blade leaving cuts in enemy models precisely where it lands. A plunging strike was my favourite, which combined with the double jump to allow for extravagant superhero landings that end with a shower of gore. ![]() Using sword-based abilities is as intuitive as in the previous game, with movement in any direction right before an attack unleashing different moves. There’s no need to kill everything in a level, given that you have a specific target and can always revisit should you want to gather more loot, but combat is so enjoyable that I found it hard to tear myself away before I’d torn everything into bits. We were a team of four and there was barely a moment when at least one of us wasn’t stumbling across a new mob of monsters to slice and dice. Whatever was happening, the demons didn’t like it and there were lots of green fumes. I made an uzi that fired frozen bullets and came in handy against a boss who was vulnerable to ice and accidentally created what I think was a rocket launcher that fired poisonous clouds. You can modify them as well, fusing loot items to them in order to grant new abilities or buff existing ones. There are more than 70 weapons to find, including swords, a chainsaw and all manner of guns and magical apparatus. Structurally, the game is now based around a hub from which 1-4 players can select missions and upgrade their abilities and gear. There are also petrified demon cocks to retrieve from chests, complete with withered ballsacks that look like dehydrated Maltesers, but what little I saw of the story was a paper-thin backdrop to the new banquet of demon-dissection. Shadow Warrior 2 is like first-person Diablo, with randomised levels, stitched together from hand-crafted sections, groups of enemies with minibosses leading them, and all kinds of loot to gather. That, along with hordes of enemies marching toward the slaughter, made for an enjoyable experience, heavy on the hack and slash, and light on the shooting. Where the reboot excelled was in recognising that the melee combat could become the central system, with unlockable abilities linked to simple inputs based around sidesteps and dashes performed with the sword in hand. Sprinkle some toilet humour and better-than-average melee combat on top and you have the original game. Levels that are mostly linear, enemies with their own distinct attacks and weaknesses, weapons that escalate in power as the story plays out. Shadow Warrior, both the original and the reboot, followed fairly traditional singleplayer FPS patterns. Maybe my crappy superpower is to expect the worst when it comes to remakes of nineties first-person shooters because the brilliance of DOOM shocked me as well, but Shadow Warrior is still the greatest surprise.Īnd now it’s as if the sequel wants to pull the rug out from beneath me all over again. I can’t remember having my expectations exceeded by a game quite so much since I started writing about the things on a daily basis. Flying Wild Hog’s Shadow Warrior reboot which reached into my chest and claimed my heart in 2013. That’s just about the only place that the sequel takes the “more of the same” approach though. The ultraviolence is more over the top than in the game’s predecessor, but it’s nothing new. They fold and flop, eventually disintegrating. They wibble and wobble, quivering beneath the teeth of my chainsaw. I’m carving one particularly big bastard open like a Christmas turkey and the segments that slide away are like the gelatinous gloop and gristle sliding from a tin of cheap dogfood. Demons, in Shadow Warrior 2, appear to be made of jelly. ![]()
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