Shadow Warrior 3 is a disappointing relic of the Xbox 360 era

Shadow Warrior 3 isn’t a breath of fresh air for first-person shooters. It’s just passing wind. And that stinks.

The latest game from Flying Wild Hog feels like a title from the Xbox 360 era — and not for the better. But if you’re interested in Shadow Warrior 3, it could be worth a buy.

On sale. After some patches — maybe.

The story so far

Shadow Warrior 3 takes place months after the events of the second game. The dragon that was unleashed upon the world has wiped out most of the population and Lo Wang is the only person who can stop it. The problem is, he’s lost his mojo.

Knowing that he’s their only chance for survival, Wang’s former employer and rival, Zilla, has come to beg Wang to help him stop the dragon. And that’s all you get. If you were hoping for answers to the massive cliffhangers from the previous game, you’re out of luck.

The story in Shadow Warrior 3 — to put it kindly — is sparse. There’s very little in the way of motivation for what you’re doing and that leads to forgettable moments throughout its campaign.

Instead of offering new content, the writers chose to rehash moments from prior entries. Hoji is back, and while it’s great to hear that iconic voice again, it doesn’t feel like his return was earned. You’ll see every twist coming from a kilometre away. That’s a saying, right? No? We’re a Canadian site, let me have this one.

Fans of the previous games will notice that the voices of Lo Wang and Zilla have changed. Devolver Digital and Flying Wild Hog decided to recast the characters to be played by Asian actors. But the execution misses the mark.

Mike Moh, the actor behind Lo Wang, takes a while to settle into the role. His performance at the beginning of the game feels forced with even the best jokes falling flat due to his performance. Throughout the game, the performance improves drastically, to the point that I eventually forgot about the change altogether. And Moh’s acting shines in more dramatic moments, selling Wang’s frustration and fear in a way that felt far more genuine than in past games. SungWon Cho does a great job as Zilla, but he isn’t given enough material to make Zilla feel like an essential part of the story.

There’s nothing special here, but the story is serviceable enough to get you from point A to B. If you found the humour from the previous games to be up your alley, you’ll still find lines to love here. They throw so many jokes at the wall that a few are bound to stick. Just don’t expect to be laughing consistently. Or at all, depending on your tolerance for fart jokes and pop culture references.

It would all be more tolerable if the game didn’t rely on calling out its own poor mechanics so often. Being self-aware can only excuse so many problems.

A dull blade

Shadow Warrior made its name in part thanks to its over-the-top writing, but also thanks to its excellent combat. This entry manages to have some of the series’ best gunplay to date thanks to its incredible speed. But this comes at the cost of its swordplay and depth.

While Shadow Warrior 2 might have gone overboard with its weapon levels and customization, 3 boils its combat down to the basics. If you loved the swordplay in past games as much as I did, you’ll be sorely disappointed here. Gone are the sword combos and abilities, instead replaced by a single button that delivers the same three animations. Slashing your sword is no longer a viable way to wipe out hordes of enemies. Your sword is used almost exclusively to replenish your ammo.

The team at Flying Wild Hog has clearly been influenced by Doom when it comes to Shadow Warrior‘s combat loop. You’ll need to use your arsenal of guns to take down enemies, but to refill your ammo, you’ll need to either pick up blue ammo packs or slash enemies with your sword. I appreciate the way this keeps you in the action at all times, but it comes at the expense of depth.

With each enemy killed, you’ll gather finisher orbs, allowing you to build up to a Gore Kill. Each Gore Kill fills your health and gives you the unique Gore Weapon of the enemy you used it on. The weapons range from bombs that freeze the field of enemies to deadly swords.

This loop gives each encounter a particular rhythm. You’ll dance between enemies, leaving explosions in your wake. But it’s a very different approach from the developer’s past efforts, something that may not sit well with fans. More importantly, it pales in comparison to its contemporaries.

Gore Kills — a play on Glory Kills from Doom — may serve a purpose to the loop, but the animations pause combat for far too long, interrupting the flow entirely. They don’t feel satisfying, nor do the abilities they offer.

The abilities feel unbalanced, with some feeling completely broken, while others offer no value in combat. The Hattori Sword can take down the strongest enemy in the game in a matter of blows before automatically targeting the next. It makes even the most challenging encounters too easy. By contrast, the Oni Hanma hammer does very little damage and feels weightless in your hand despite its enormous size.

This same inconsistency applies to the weapons in your arsenal. Some weapons feel satisfying to use, while others lack the appropriate level of kick. I believe the technical term is “oomph.”

For example, the riot gun finally makes its return to the series, but it feels much weaker than previous iterations. If you upgrade it to its full potential, it can deal devastating damage at close range. Even so, the sound design and animation doesn’t give the weapon the heft it deserves. The pistol by comparison feels great from beginning to end, though it won’t be levelling enemies in the same way.

When constantly swapping between the weapons, the arsenal offers just enough variety to keep things entertaining, but there aren’t any weapons that stand out from the crowd. You have your standard array of pistol, shotgun, grenade launcher, and rifle. For a game that’s so creative when it comes to describing human anatomy, I’d have hoped that the arsenal would reflect that same level of creativity.

The movement is fast and fluid though, and the controls are responsive. This helps to stave off the shooting fatigue, even if it can’t overcome it.

Repetition, repetition, repetition

The bigger problem is with the repetitive enemy and level design.

New enemies are introduced every few levels. Each enemy brings with it a unique challenge. But even with new enemies being introduced at regular intervals, they quickly grow tiresome.

Every encounter includes all of the enemies you’ve met up until that point. By the end of the game, you’ll have faced the same enemies — and combination of enemies — time and time again. There’s no variety.

And the enemy types aren’t unique enough to save these encounters. Despite different attack patterns and barriers, you can often brute force your way through every encounter.

The arenas occasionally offer interesting ways to approach them, such as using taking out enemies with traps, or hiding health packs on platforms only reachable by wall running, but these are few and far between.

Most encounters feature arenas only distinguishable by their level’s colour palette. And far too many have pits that I found myself falling into regularly. Though, this is sold as a feature, not a detriment. The developers intended these to be used to knock enemies into with your chi blast, but it’s far too weak. Only the smallest enemies are moved with it, and even then, it feels like they are shoved, not blasted.

I enjoyed dancing around levels, finishing foe after foe. I just wish that there was more variety, more challenge, and additional polish.

A platform for bad jokes

Platforming is back in Shadow Warrior 3 in a big way.

One of the few new features in the game is the grappling hook. By its own accord, this is just following the trend of other first-person shooters. But just because they call out that it’s following the trend doesn’t mean that it excuses the poor implementation.

Unlike games such as Titanfall 2 that use the grappling hook to great effect, Shadow Warrior 3 only allows players to use it with glowing green rings placed conveniently throughout the world. Why are they there? We may never know.

The grappling feels sluggish, locking the player into an animation until they release from the swing. It moves far too slowly, and the physics miss as often as they hit.

In between the combat arenas, players are tasked with overcoming platforming sections. These have been a staple of the series in the past, and this latest iteration has the most emphasis placed on them. Despite that, these sections feel like mere distractions — an excuse to drop dialogue and exposition.

There’s never any challenge to them, other than grappling with the game’s many performance issues and bugs. If you see green on a wall, you run towards it. If you see a green ring, you press the grapple button. Rinse and repeat.

There’s even several areas with sliding sections straight out of the Xbox 360 era, complete with instant death and lack of save points. This isn’t a welcome throwback. Much like the combat, the challenge doesn’t come from intention, but rather the lack of polish.

Whereas I can count the number of times I died in combat on one hand, I died during the platforming sections constantly.

There was one particular level where the grapple pulled me towards the ring instead of swinging me below it, leading me to fall to my death repeatedly. And while this is just a bug, I also had instances where platforms failed to start falling until after I’d already jumped in their direction. I found myself stuck on the environment on multiple occasions with no way to escape.

Some of these issues may be fixed with the day one patch. I wouldn’t count on it, though.

Not a top performer

Shadow Warrior 3 has chosen a different art style than its predecessors. At times I appreciated the brighter colour palette, particularly in some of the later levels. However, on the whole, the visuals were difficult to distinguish, with all of the colours blending together in one big rainbow blur. The last thing you want when you’re fighting for your life is to be confused as to what’s happening on screen.

This is also due in part to the game’s graphics and performance. Playing on PC, I saw consistent stuttering, texture pop-in, and low frame rates. Considering the game is designed for last-gen consoles, this is disappointing.

Even with NVIDIA DLSS, the game ran poorly at the best of times.

And it isn’t down to demanding graphics. Shadow Warrior 3 is a very minor upgrade to the previous titles in terms of fidelity, and those weren’t particularly impressive for their time.

Over the course of the review period, the performance improved with patches, but I still experienced stuttering, especially when beginning new levels.

Annoyances and bonuses

Before I wrap things up though, I wanted to touch upon some minor annoyances and positives that didn’t warrant their own sections in this review.

I thought we were beyond the days of games not allowing their cutscenes to be paused. Alas, I was mistaken. So beware of pressing buttons, lest you accidentally skip one.

The dialogue during gameplay also won’t repeat if you die, so if you fall off of a platform, you’ll miss that section of the story entirely.

But the music is consistently strong throughout the game, with a particularly great song during the boss fight with the Ancient Cock. Yes, you read that correctly.

And to its credit, it wraps up the story of the trilogy. I wouldn’t call it satisfying, but it doesn’t have any major cliffhangers like the last game.

Shadow Warrior 3 feels like a game that should have launched a decade ago. It feels like a step forward from the second game in some ways, but also two steps back for the franchise. It’s been six years since the last title, and that doesn’t show. This doesn’t feel like a game born out of passion for the series. Instead, it feels like a game born out of expectation.

If we’re going by the rule of three, this should have been the funniest game in the series. But maybe that was a high bar for this Lo Wang.

Image credit: Devolver Digital