Lo Wang is back from the immortal realm, and he’s brought quite the massive arsenal with him. Forget whatever you remember from the previous Shadow Warrior, because SW2 does not give a shit about any of that. This game is absolutely bonkers, in every way imaginable – From the amount of weaponry you can wield, to the insane story the game is trying to tell. In fact, I am not sure what the story is about, and I ran through the game twice. In Lo Wang’s total domination of the demons from the previous game, he somehow unleashed hell onto Earth, and now demon and man live together, side by side, in this procedurally generated world… somehow.
Is 2016 the year of “procedurally generated levels”, or was that last year? Or the year before that? I can’t remember, and either way, I wouldn’t hate something new to take its place. What happened to the hand-crafted levels of past shooters, where every corridor and enemy encounter was designed with a challenge in mind? Who decided that level designers can be replaced by number generators? Why does every game need pseudo-RPG elements forced into it? These are questions a better reviewer would ask, but I honestly found myself not too bothered. I’ve played far too many ARPGs with randomized levels to be bothered at this point.
In a way, this game is a slimmed down version of Borderlands. The basics are the same, you have a hub world from where you retrieve your quests (or missions if you prefer), then you make your way to bigger (emptier) levels where you complete your quest and get your reward. There’s plenty of loot to go around, though as you level up you’ll realize it’s just vendor trash. Unlike Borderlands however, and unlike everything else in this game, the weapons were actually created by humans. So there are only a limited amount, most of which you get as quest rewards, or drops from map bosses. Maybe two dozen or so, and a lot of them are just slightly upgraded versions of others, but some are actually quite fun and unique.
Unfortunately the Borderlands parallel doesn’t end just there. There’s also the enemies, which are a mirror image of their Borderlands counterpart – massive health pools and status immunities define their difficulty. An enemy that’s resistant to Ice, but immune to Fire? Better equip my Shotgun with a Fire Elemental bonus attack. Long gone are the days of learning an enemy’s weakness, where to shoot them, when to attack them, which enemy to prioritize, and so on, because it matters not in this game. Just click it until it’s dead. Being overwhelmed by tougher enemies? Just press Z to enable God Mode for 12 seconds.
But the combat is fun, even though it is executed poorly, especially the sword-swinging. My favourite weapon was a chainsaw-sword. Yes, a chainsaw-sword. That’s a sword, that’s also a chainsaw. So when you’re swinging your sword around, you’re not just cleaving enemies in half, you’re sawing through them, and it is so bloody, so brutal, and so fun. Sure, I wish there was more to it, but you have to understand, I played loads of Borderlands too. I don’t hate these kinds of games, I just prefer a challenge that these kinds of games don’t present.
So in the end, I say this game is a good one. A recommendation, a thumbs up. It’s fun, it’s quirky, and Lo Wang is still Lo Wang. So what if the rest of the game doesn’t make any sense – It’s not like we’re in it for the riveting story-telling either way. Still, I’d recommend the first game (from 2013) over this one, any day of the week, but here’s hoping you’ve already played that one if you’re considering this.
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