Shadow Warrior 3: Definitive Edition - PC Review

Shadow Warrior 3: DefinitiveEdition by developer Flying Wild Hog and publisher Devolver Digital—PC (Steam) review written by Jim with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

I went into Shadow Warrior 3 without playing the first two games so I didn't know what to expect going into this one. I knew it was a fast-paced FPS that was supposed to be funny and that is exactly what I got. I also knew the game's main protagonist was Lo Wang who was the same as the two previous games.

The story is pretty straight forward. You're Lo Wang, a sword and gun-wielding ninja who must fight to save what's left of the world from the Evildoing Dragon and yes that is its name in the game. It seemed like the game was a direct sequel to Shadow Warrior 2 and playing this is making me want to play the first two games. And I probably will. Not fully knowing the story from the first two games didn't hinder my enjoyment of Shadow Warrior 3 though. The game's story reminded me a little of Deadpool as Lo Wang will break the fourth wall at times and the action is fast and furious. From what I can tell, almost all the characters in the game are returning from previous games. Mainly just Lo Wang, Zilla, Hoji, and the Evildoing Dragon.

The game levels are short and linear with a few hidden areas to find upgrade orbs for both weapons and Lo Wang's powers like his Chi blast and health. Each level has a set of challenges you can try to do to get upgrade orbs for completing and more challenges unlock once you beat the game once. Doing these new challenges rewards you with warrior rank points that can unlock special cosmetics for your weapons.

Lo Wang's arsenal has five guns and his katana. I liked all the guns and the katana as they all felt different and felt good to use for different enemies. Lo Wang can also use a Chi Blast to push enemies into spikes and off the edge of levels. You can even upgrade it to be able to push the bigger enemies which can come in handy at times. There are seven different enemies or Yokai in the game although not a lot every few levels a new one will appear. You will have to figure out the best way to kill it. There are only two bosses in the whole game which is a little disappointing. Some of the yokai designs are good though, so that makes up for the lack of different enemies and that even includes a gassy one that farts a lot while you fight it.

Lo Wang is a fast-moving character who can wall run and climb areas in a level marked with vines. He also has a grappling hook that he can use but with the levels being so linear you will mostly use it to get from one point of a level to the next. In combat, it is always best to keep moving much like in other games such as the new Doom games. As you kill yokai you can pick up health, ammo, and energy that they drop. Energy lets you use a finisher to instantly kill an enemy. The weakest enemy called a Shogai grants you health while the other enemies give Lo Wang a gore weapon that is strong but only lasts a limited amount of time and can turn the tide of a battle.

Shadow Warrior may not be the best-looking game on the market, but it does get the job done. They looked good in 4K and ran well too showing good optimization as my computer is starting to age. The sound and music were decent too. Nothing grand about the music but it wasn't bad either.

Shadow Warrior 3 is short clocking in at just about four to five hours to beat on normal difficulty but can be longer if you want to try to do every challenge and find every orb. Once you beat the game you unlock a new game+ mode that lets you select any level to go back to and have every weapon unlocked and all upgrades. It's a great way to try to find any orbs or challenges you missed. Also unlocking after you beat the game once is a survival mode where you will face wave after wave of Yokai. Before each wave, you will be able to select one of three guns, gun upgrade, or upgrade as none of the upgrades carry over from story mode to survival. It is fun and difficult but with only three different arenas the fun didn't last long. Getting so far in each level will again unlock cosmetics for Wang's weapons.

Summary

Overall Shadow Warrior 3 is a short, fun, and funny FPS that I enjoyed playing, but after beating it once I don't see any reason to return to it. The short time to beat may turn some people off, but if the game was any longer it would have gotten boring unless more things enemies, bosses, and weapons were available. The added survival mode is nice, but still isn't enough to keep me coming back. It's worth a play but don't expect anything more than a fun and short FPS, and a story that doesn't take itself too seriously. Good news! Anyone who owns the game already will get the Definitive Edition for free so it could be a good time to revisit the game.

Score: 7 out of 10

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Trek to Yomi Review

Trek to Yomi by developers Leonard Menchiari, Flying Wild Hog and publisher Devolver Digital—PC (Steam) review written by Robert with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes 

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Trek to Yomi by Flying Wild Hog and Leonard Menchiari is an artistically beautiful side-scrolling action-adventure game set during a turbulent time in a fictionalized Japan. Every new screen you visit is an artistic masterpiece that warrants smashing that screenshot button with jarring regularity. The beauty of Trek to Yomi is perfectly framed by the game's composer, Cody Matthew Johnson taking a more haunting approach with its music. Tie that to the black and white aesthetic and it absolutely screams "classic samurai film," a sentiment that I wholeheartedly stand behind but where Trek to Yomi stumbles though, is in the poor execution of combat.

Trek to Yomi is a bit of an interesting beast- visually stunning in its classic use of black and white cinematography and is aurally enchanting in that haunting-kind-of-way. The combination of the eerily beautiful audio and the fixed camera angle ensures we only see and hear exactly what the developers and artists want us to see. That can be a powerful mix and it's that very mix that is evident throughout Trek to Yomi; every shot is essentially perfectly curated with a complimentary soundtrack.

While creative artistry and overly-designed (in a good way) visuals are important to a good title, especially one that will inevitably draw some comparisons in setting, style, and overarching themes to Sucker Punch Productions' near-perfect, classic samurai media-influenced, and jaw-droppingly-gorgeous, Ghost of Tsushima; these two titles are wildly different from one another.

Ghost of Tsushima, a 90+ hour epic set in a massive, thriving world with a brilliantly designed main story, and exceptionally well-written side stories (I refuse to call them "missions" or "quests" because they are just so much more) that have set the bar so incredibly high that few games will match it. Trek to Yomi on the other hand is a relatively short (beatable in a about 4-5 hours if you struggle with the combat* the way I did) side-scrolling, action game that takes place in a relatively small but stunning environment that is only enhanced by the black-and-white color palette that Flying Wild Hogs went with.

Now, many of you may be scratching your head about drawing that comparison- I admit, at first glance, it seems rather silly to compare the two. However, as you peel away the difference in combat and world design (linear vs. open-world), both titles are clear love letters to samurai films of yesteryear like Kurosawa Akira's spin on Shakespeare's King Lear with 1985's epic, Ran or through their clear focus on setting a scene and letting it quietly carry the gravitas that oozes out of both titles' very makeup.

Toss in there the main story being about a man on the search for vengeance and... these titles could almost be twins; now, would I claim that Trek to Yomi is better? If you like side-scrollers it is, but it's silly to grade those two games against one another, it's just that throughout the relatively short campaign, I could not help but feel the same weight and heavy atmosphere that both games exhibit.

Though its combat at the time of this writing is frustrating, Flying Wild Hog have come out and publicly stated that they are hoping to push out a patch in short order that addresses many of the issues with combat (as well as a number of other issues, some console-related, some not). At the time of this writing, though, combat was still in a sorry state and that really puts a sour taste in my mouth. With luck, their upcoming patch will address these concerns, though a part of me does wish these struggles were caught (and addressed) in their QA process. Let's be real, though- it's relatively rare to see a title drop without some sort of chonky bugs to deal with.

Summary

Trek to Yomi is an enjoyable, heavy, and atmospheric side-scroller whose presentation along can place it with the greats by way of Flying Wild Hog titles that's hampered by poor combat. The engrossing story, immersive and highly cinematic presentation, and an excellent score are all indicators of greatness and Trek to Yomi seems to be on its way to being one of 2022's best Indie titles; only time will tell.

Score: 7 / 10

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Shadow Warrior 3 - XBSX Review

Shadow Warrior 3 by developer Flying Wild Hog and publisher Devolver Digital—Microsoft Xbox Series S|X review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes 

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At its heart, Shadow Warrior 3 keeps most of what fans of the series enjoy. It’s a gory, first-person shooter with a highly sarcastic lead character and plenty of enjoyable action to go around. That being said, Shadow Warrior 3 does take some departures from the prior game in the series, eschewing its more roleplay like elements for streamlined action.

One of the first things that stood out to me when first firing up Shadow Warrior 3 is the effort to actually tell a bit more of a cinematic story. Not that anyone is going to confuse Shadow Warrior 3 with a narrative masterpiece, but the opening scene with returning protagonist Lo Wang in his undies basically playacting the foundation of this story is delightfully unhinged, and throughout the game I found myself appreciating these cutscenes quite a bit.

If you are new to the series – the premise is pretty straightforward. Lo Wang is a one-time assassin who is now living out his days as the world is about to be devoured by an ancient dragon that he failed to kill previously. He is at a low point in his life where he feels he has no friends left when one-time enemy Zilla returns to suggest a plan of action to get rid of the dragon and to encourage Wang to get off of his ass and do something about it. The action is presented in first-person perspective, providing both melee and ranged combat as you tear through hordes of creative-looking if somewhat low variety demons.

If you are returning to the series, well – you generally know what to expect. Wang is as ridiculous as ever, cussing up a storm and making sarcastic remarks at every turn. This is no Like, the silent protagonist. In fact, I have no doubt Wang drives some gamers a bit nuts because he almost never seems to shut up. The character throws as much verbal content at the wall as possible, but by and large most of it sticks for me. Is every joke funny to me? Nah, of course not – but I certainly chuckled and even outright laughed an awful lot. I’m sure that says plenty about me, but I’m not apologetic about it.

However, if you played Shadow Warrior 2, you will see quite a few changes here. There was a strong action-RPG vibe to Shadow Warrior 2 that has largely been trimmed of that fat to make a more streamlined Doom-like action shooter. There’s still some character progression to be had as you find orbs and have a dozen or so objectives to complete (like collect 5,000 health or get 25 headshots with a specific weapon) that also yield these orbs that you can use then to give Wang some upgrades. As someone who enjoyed the loot-dropping, item customizing aspects of Shadow Warrior 2 however, the lack of these elements was a bit of a bummer.

The actual traversal is different as well. There is almost no focus on exploration and secrets, unlike Shadow Warrior 2, as the stages here are more tightly structured. The good news is, traveling is less confusing and I didn’t need to keep checking a map to figure out what was next. Level designs are usually quite good, and where to go next is generally pretty obvious. Instead of exploring, it is more like working your way through some platforming elements and then stopping to hit an arena-like section where waves of enemies come at you.

Kill all of the enemies, and then start platforming again. There is a grappling hook, double-jump and mid-air dash that put an emphasis on the platforming elements of stages, to somewhat mixed results. I definitely found one of the stages, where you are on a platform that is moving through a river in an on-rails segment to be very annoying. Platforming is not my strongest suit in gaming and it took me well over a dozen tries to get through it. There are difficulty modifiers here, but they seem to just pertain to damage taken / damage dealt and do nothing for these platforming sections.

If the platforming was super clean, it might not be as annoying, but it’s an area with some rough edges in the game. For example, in one underground cavern, there was a section where I was supposed to jump from a platform to a section to a wall run, but for whatever reason if you did not land exactly where they wanted you to – you just fell over dead like you had fallen into a pit. In another instance I was trying to grapple onto that floating disc in the aforementioned river stage and multiple times the grappling hook pulled me up short and dunked me in the water for an instant death.

There were a few other checkpoint-inducing bugs such as in the first stage an enemy spawned into a solid wall and I couldn’t hit him, and I couldn’t kill him to advance without reloading. I had one battle where I won with 1 hp left and suddenly died for no reason. I respawned with the enemies defeated but the ability to move into the next stage not having triggered, again forcing checkpoint restore. None of these were deal breakers and I was able to move past them relatively quickly, but added up they did irk me at times – especially during that stupid river section.

However, with those quibbles aside – there is a ton to like about the action in Shadow Warrior 3. Combat is satisfying, whether you are hacking someone with your katana or blasting them with a variety of different firearms. Enemy AI isn’t terribly smart, but they can do a lot of damage quickly if you aren’t careful. Again, level design during these arena-like stages is often pretty inspired. With the grappling hook, there is a verticality to the fighting that sees you hoisting yours out of (or sometimes into) trouble, looking for a vantage point, a health item or even just a moment’s peace before you have to take on the enemies again.

Some of the stages also have some clever environmental traps, such as exploding barrels, switches that open up trapdoors, buzzsaw boobytraps and more. There are also some ridiculously over the top finishers that can grant you bonus life or powerful ‘gore’ weapons that range from massive swords or bone clubs to vortexes that suck enemies into them and so much more.

For better or for worse, the playtime here is about a dozen hours – so it certainly felt shorter than Shadow Warrior 2 did, but that is probably a product of being a more on-rails type of game versus one with a semi-open world to explore. Shadow Warrior 3 sets a brisk pace as it follows Wang through his adventures.

Summary

Shadow Warrior 3 presents more streamlined action than its predecessor, and revels in his glorious gory shooting and potty-mouthed protagonist. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss some of the RPG elements from Shadow Warrior 2, and there are some rough edges to be found in this latest iteration of the series – but it’s a bloody good time all the same.

Score: 7.5 / 10

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Hard Reset Redux - Xbox One Review

As the name Hard Reset Redux alludes to, this is a revision of the popular budget shooting game that released a few years ago. The original title was fast, challenging but had its flaws. By and large Hard Reset Redux cleans up most of those issues while staying true to what made the original game so popular in the first place.

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