To keep weapons from getting old too quickly, Shadow Warrior 3 often restricts ammo to force you to switch around your strategy. They’re fun, simple additions that make weapons more powerful, but they won’t change how you think about using them. Instead, weapon upgrades hand out extra ammo capacity or other small tweaks – one that I found particularly useful slowed down time whenever I charged a shot with the railgun. Upgrades do remedy that just a bit, changing how some weapons behave, but none of them are overhauled entirely. That said, with such a small list of weapons and no alternate fire modes, a few of them inevitably got stale. Each one feels punchy, and seeing how enemies react to their hits makes them that much more fun to shoot. It’s not that Shadow Warrior 3 is doing any of this poorly, it’s just not nearly as exciting when I’ve seen all its tricks before.Įach of the six weapons are satisfying to use, from the starting six-shooter pistol to options you’ll eventually unlock like the single-fire railgun and the shuriken launcher. You can zoom around combat arenas without a problem, but mixing platforming into the regular shoot-em-up fare isn’t exactly a new idea either. You can shoot an enemy and chunks of them blow off in gruesome fashion, something that’s been normalized in FPS games since 2016’s Doom did it so well. In fact, it follows the standard FPS playbook in pretty much every way I can think of. When it comes to actually killing hordes of demons, Shadow Warrior 3 isn’t doing anything too unique. But it’s too bad that missing one means you’ll have to wait until a second playthrough if you want to completely kit out Lo Wang’s arsenal of gear and powers. Thankfully, these collectibles aren’t hard to spot, and you’ll get enough of them without exploring to easily finish the campaign. Without an option to revisit levels, any upgrades you might have missed along the way are simply gone. What’s an absolute shame is that Shadow Warrior 3 spends so much time looking forward that it doesn’t give you a chance to go back. That also means it’s not a very complex or robust FPS, but I always knew that all I had to do was keep moving forward if I wanted more action. It gets to the point, and as a result felt more respectful of my time across the roughly four-and-a-half hours it took me to reach the credits than any other game I’ve played recently. You can occasionally go off the beaten trail to find upgrades that improve Lo Wang’s weapons and abilities lightly (effects like increasing ammo or making certain attacks drop more resources), but outside of those few instances you’re only ever fighting or making your way toward another fight.ĭeveloper Flying Wild Hog’s approach to Shadow Warrior 3’s linear campaign is simple but effective. The platforming sections that separate each fight never last very long or get too complicated, and exploration during those stretches isn’t really a thing. In between killing demons, Shadow Warrior 3 generally only gives you one thing to do: run to the next arena full of demons. Every arena you fight in is built around these movement mechanics, turning battles into wonderfully frantic flurries of gunshots and katana swipes. Lo Wang moves lightning fast, able to double jump high above the heads of enemies or quickly dash away from their attacks.

Shadow Warrior 3 takes the same exciting approach as Doom Eternal or Titanfall 2, emphasizing speed and maneuverability above all else. Killing demons keeps all of those pesky thoughts about the nonsensical story away. If you were given the opportunity to stop and think about what was happening, you might end up asking questions like “how did Lo Wang survive in a ramshackle shack on top of a mountain?” or “why did this dragon get so big when it was so much smaller at the end of Shadow Warrior 2?” It generally doesn’t slow down from there either, and that breakneck pace is probably for the best.

Its very first fights take place on the back of that Earth-threatening dragon, which you run and jump across like an action movie hero.

From the get-go, Shadow Warrior 3 makes clear that it wants to be exciting more than anything else.

Shadow warrior 2 ps4