![]() Levels are packed with environmental clutter that’ll sail gaily through the air at the slightest provocation-to say nothing of the frequent appearances of industry heavyweight Exploding Red Barrel-and overall there’s just enough chaos injected into the old-school run-and-gun routine to make it a hoot again. A single shotgun blast can send most minor enemies’ pieces raining down over the landscape like jellied pork, and while the game does commit the all-too-common action-RPG sin of telling you an attack is stronger because there’s a bigger number flashing up on-screen, it’ll probably be accompanied by a meaty explosion or the satisfying crack of a rifle barrel at the very least. Crucially, however, Flying Wild Hog are no longer supplying Lo Wang with weapons that fire puffs of stale air and bits of paper with mediocre thinkpieces on them: they’ve learned to make feedback that feels good, and they want you to know it. If you played the last Shadow Warrior, or any of the Serious Sams, you’ve danced this merry jig before: ricochet around wildly, juke the attacks of the slavering hordes, answer back with whatever part of your arsenal best fits the moment-an answer that may change roughly three or four times a second-and occasionally go ballistic with your trusty katana. ![]() ![]() What separates Shadow Warrior 2 from Borderlands, and Diablo, and every other game that upends a filing cabinet full of statistics on you if you so much as mouse-over a new piece of equipment, is that its core combat doesn’t feel like being slowly lobotomised by a man with a potato peeler and a bottomless well of patience. It’s about the arduous trails you hike to get your loadout justright, before the next weapon drop lands and upsets everything all over again. But then again, that’s never really been a problem with this sort of game, has it? It doesn’t matter what the story tells you you’re working towards in reality, you’re saving up for that spicy minigun in the shop, and trying to craft yourself a better elemental damage upgrade. It’s a well-liked gameplay loop, not entirely without good reason, but between long side missions and infrequent storytelling dumps, it’s easy to forget what exactly you’re working towards, or the juddering train of logic that connects it to the people you’re currently slurrifying. You take on missions, go into nearby hives of scum and villainy, turn the local inhabitants into many chunks of economy-brand dog food, and then take a breather to sift your half-decent loot from the mountains of garbage you hoovered up in the process. It’s Diablo with double-jumping Borderlands with bunnyhopping. ![]() See, the thing about Shadow Warrior 2 is that it is very much a shoot n’ loot. In this new, not-quite-post-apocalyptic world, Wang is still somehow able to live comfortably as a mercenary and/or human smoothie blender, until one day he takes on a job to rescue a Yakuza boss’s daughter and ends up… actually, never mind, it’s not important. Turns out that the whole demonic invasion thing wasn’t such a big deal after all, and everybody who wasn’t eaten alive or skinned and impaled on a spike just sort of elected to live and let live with the unknowable horrors from beyond the veil. So once again we put on the trousers of Lo Wang, the smuggest, most perverted dork-turned-billionaire-superhero to ever lay hands on Hanzo steel, whose wisecracks have not by any means been dampened by his failure to stop whatever the heck was going on in the first game. Do I approve of all the genres it’s hanging out with late at night? Not really, but at least it’s not mooching around the house all day, stagnating and hiding coloured keycards under the furniture. With Shadow Warrior 2, those steps are now confident strides. And how about Shadow Warrior? Whatever problems the reboot might’ve had, it showed the telltale signs of a genre taking the first few wary steps out its front door. Only earlier this year we were blessed with the new DOOM, a game that managed-in spite of its token AAA baggage and overtly self-balancing combat-to establish a fresh identity that was both respectful of its forebears and entirely its own. For far too long it languished at home on the sofa, living in a time warp where it’s always 1996 and the word ‘Doomlike’ is still an accurate descriptor for more or less the entire genre, but over the past few years it’s finally started to go outside, mix with other genres, and produce some more well-rounded works. My dearest child, the love of my life, the old-school first-person shooter, is finally beginning to grow up.
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