You No Mess With Lo Wang! (Shadow Warrior (PC))

Member Name: Burning_Darkness

Product:	Shadow Warrior (PC)
Date:	05/07/09 (17 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great fun, excellent weapons, varied levels

Disadvantages: Level design can be monotonous in places

Shadow Warrior is an early first person shooter that relies on the 'Build' Engine, also used in Duke Nukem 3D, a game to which Shadow Warrior shares a great deal of similarities.

You play Duke Nukem's oriental counterpart Lo Wang, a gun-toting ninja warrior and walking oriental stereotype with a penchant for bad one-liners, and have to blast your way through 28 varied levels fighting against uzi-wielding assassins, oriental spirits, huge demons, serpent creatures and undead kamikaze coolies who walk up to you laden with TNT before detonating themselves in your face.

The weapons are particularly inventive and fun, ranging from a samurai sword that cleaves your enemies in two, dual uzis, a clunky semi-automatic grenade launcher, a futuristic railgun, a rapid-firing riot shotgun, a rocket launcher complete with a nuclear missile setting and best of all a severed Guardian head: a Medusa-like weapon which when held up shoots pillars of fire from its eyes immolating anything in its path. The shareware version of the game incuded shirukens too, but these were replaced by pub darts at the last minute after the censors got upset. Apparently cutting people in half with swords and submachineguns is fine, but throwing sharpened metal stars around is simply Not On.

Whilst essentially just a Duke Nukem clone, Shadow Warrior plays around with the game's engine to add some interesting new gameplay touches, such as allowing players to climb ladders and control vehicles and apparatus such as tanks, cranes and gun-turrets, all of which adds to the overall gaming experience. The level settings range from Chinatown, dojos, oriental castles, monastaries, temples and palaces, a haunted mine, offices, a shipyard, a forest, a construction site and even a submarine. Whilst inventive, the level design is not quite as good as in Duke Nukem although the levels are all still great fun to play through. The cartoony, sprite-based graphics have dated considerably, although they remain colourful and engaging and in any case, the enjoyable gameplay quickly makes their crudeness cease to matter.

Whilst a little dated then, Shadow Warrior is as delighfully peurile, un-pc, violent and unashamedly fun as Duke Nukem ever was, and remains a joy to play in both single and multiplayer modes despite its age.

Summary: A violent, fun first person shooter with a great sense of humour