tl;dr: Does some interesting stuff with the Build Engine and made some bold choices with level design and exploration. Everything else is mid or worse. The Unreal Tournament joke was funny, though.
Shadow Warrior isn't bad, exactly, but some of the things it tries, despite how cool they are, don't stick. Specifically, I think Shadow Warrior does some really cool things with how its levels are laid out. In addition to being very visually interesting and varied, a lot of Shadow Warrior maps loop back in on themselves in really surprising and pleasant ways. It makes spaces feel more natural and "real" and can make the flow down a level's central path really, really smooth.
The trouble is that this central path is never clearly outlined or hinted at. Granted, that's just how it was back then, but needing to take a big 5 to 10 minute break from the actual game just to find one tiny switch or pickup one forgotten key or go through one slightly out-of-the-way door kills that aforementioned flow. This happens a lot in Shadow Warrior; it took me ~10 hours to beat all 4 episodes and most of that time was spent backtracking.
Shadow Warrior does not, consciously or subconsciously, lead the player anywhere. It has the general direction of "forward", but which way forward is is often unclear. I think a lot of gripes with Shadow Warrior could have been avoided if that under-the-hood level guidance that's super common these days had been present in Shadow Warrior
I understand that that judgement might not be contextually fair; I'm playing a rereleased version of a game that came out before I was born with my head full of design knowledge that hadn't been invented yet for the first time. It's entirely possible that, had I played this game on release in '97, I would have liked it more, especially if I played it a few times through instead of just once. But I'm playing it today, so I'm gonna judge it by the standards of today.
The only other thing to talk about in Shadow Warrior that isn't muddled by the rerelease or just flat-out bad are the guns. The guns are cool. I like the twin uzis.
Review Caveats:
I: This game makes a lot of racist jokes. If you're sensitive to that, don't play it.
II: This game makes a lot of sexual jokes. If you're sensitive to that, don't play it.
III: Lo Wang can optionally hit on the canonically 14-year-old Sailor Moon, which confirms my headcannon that he is a pedophile
IV: I ran into a lot of weird technical and sound issues and I'm just gonna assume that's Classic Redux and not Shadow Warrior itself
V: Everything I said goes for all 4 episodes; even though Twin Dragons and Wanton Destruction weren't made by 3D Realms, they have the same issues.
Shadow Warrior isn't bad, exactly, but some of the things it tries, despite how cool they are, don't stick. Specifically, I think Shadow Warrior does some really cool things with how its levels are laid out. In addition to being very visually interesting and varied, a lot of Shadow Warrior maps loop back in on themselves in really surprising and pleasant ways. It makes spaces feel more natural and "real" and can make the flow down a level's central path really, really smooth.
The trouble is that this central path is never clearly outlined or hinted at. Granted, that's just how it was back then, but needing to take a big 5 to 10 minute break from the actual game just to find one tiny switch or pickup one forgotten key or go through one slightly out-of-the-way door kills that aforementioned flow. This happens a lot in Shadow Warrior; it took me ~10 hours to beat all 4 episodes and most of that time was spent backtracking.
Shadow Warrior does not, consciously or subconsciously, lead the player anywhere. It has the general direction of "forward", but which way forward is is often unclear. I think a lot of gripes with Shadow Warrior could have been avoided if that under-the-hood level guidance that's super common these days had been present in Shadow Warrior
I understand that that judgement might not be contextually fair; I'm playing a rereleased version of a game that came out before I was born with my head full of design knowledge that hadn't been invented yet for the first time. It's entirely possible that, had I played this game on release in '97, I would have liked it more, especially if I played it a few times through instead of just once. But I'm playing it today, so I'm gonna judge it by the standards of today.
The only other thing to talk about in Shadow Warrior that isn't muddled by the rerelease or just flat-out bad are the guns. The guns are cool. I like the twin uzis.
Review Caveats:
I: This game makes a lot of racist jokes. If you're sensitive to that, don't play it.
II: This game makes a lot of sexual jokes. If you're sensitive to that, don't play it.
III: Lo Wang can optionally hit on the canonically 14-year-old Sailor Moon, which confirms my headcannon that he is a pedophile
IV: I ran into a lot of weird technical and sound issues and I'm just gonna assume that's Classic Redux and not Shadow Warrior itself
V: Everything I said goes for all 4 episodes; even though Twin Dragons and Wanton Destruction weren't made by 3D Realms, they have the same issues.