While this is partly because full 3D environment shooters were beginning to rule the genre, the larger problem that such a fun, well designed game (despite some frustrating traps) got lost in the sands of time becomes apparent the moment you hear the voice of the main character.
Yet, it tends to be overshadowed by its many contemporaries. Shadow Warrior is a game of many firsts, and it did clearly influence the genre in small ways. Using your katana is also acceptable and can easily drain half of its health before the effect is over. This can be abused very easily, like in the final boss battle, where you can just use a smoke bomb and go up to the boss and punch it in the crotch repeatedly with no real threat to you until the effect wears off. Use it, and for the next twenty seconds or so, not a single enemy will be able to lock onto you and attack. The one exception is the smoke bomb, which is basically broken. There are a large array of gadgets and grenades that aren’t particularly useful outside the dark areas that may benefit from having the night vision goggles, which just highlights enemies for easier targeting, and a good old med-kit. The extra tools you can make use of are a more mixed bag. There’s even sticky bombs, which are not recommended for this game because shooting a missile or bullets or a rail laser at a monster is usually more effective. The ripper hearts are arguably better, summoning a mirror image for max carnage. You can use two uzis at once, there’s a rail gun because why not, and you can stick your fingers in a monster’s head and make it shoot fireballs. The pistol is switched out for shuriken, which you can throw three at a time and can bounce off walls. The missile launcher allows you to also fire heat seekers and the very rare nukes, the latter so powerful that you can die just from witnessing the blast going off. The game’s shotgun equivalent, the riot gun, has an alt fire for a full clip fire, making it viable for larger enemies. The weapons aren’t as wacky as they were in Duke Nukem 3D, what with no shrink rays and the like, but there is fun to be had. The anime girls scattered around the game all look like terrible, potato faced homunculus, though in a charming “oh they tried” way. While some of the more nature and old ruins focused areas are a bit plain, the few levels in urban areas have a real life to them, the secret level Auto Maul sticking out for the fun concept of exploring a car shop and display. The map designers really hit it out of the park, majority done by Stephen Cole and Keith Schuler, making great use of the crunchy textures of the Build engine.
Like the best old school shooter, there was a focus on replaying maps and doing better than before, even challenging you to beat the devs’ time. The vehicles were surprisingly fun to mess around with, even though they mainly looked like abstract blocks in most cases, and the nasty monster spawn traps just added to the game’s manic action vibe. This was basically a victory lap, 3D Realms spinning their wheels by doing some of their old tricks but better. It’s not at Serious Sam: The First Encounter levels, but those shadow ninjas are used in some phenomenally nasty ways. It is action gaming distilled, focused on exploring a dense area and dealing with the legions hidden in there, often in hateful ways in this particular game. Most noises are demon screams and explosions. Otherwise, your time is spent killing everything that moves and diving for the water while also launching a nuke at an army of mauling rippers, protected from the blast by the pixely liquid. Things do not let up from there, except when you get stuck trying to find a keycard or a switch hidden in a fireplace, but that was the norm for 90s shooters. Things get going from the first second, a demon ninja jumping into your home and needing a good old katana to the face. Still, it must be said that Shadow Warrior is an absolute blast to play. There is reason why you don’t see it talked about much anymore. You probably forgot by choice, but now that there’s an entire reboot franchise out there as Devolver Digital’s AAA wannabe big boy game, it’s time you all remember the original, the OG, the first Shadow Warrior. What you may have forgotten is that they followed it up with an even more technically impressive game in 1997 that was the first to introduce vehicles in a first person shooter. They left a massive impact on the gaming world and created one of the most popular characters of the 90s, you all know this.
Eduke32 shadow warrior software#
The legendary Apogee Software re-branded to 3D Realms in 1996 and released Duke Nukem 3D, a challenger to the massively influential Quake that met the first fully 3D FPS with high interactivity made possible in Ken Silverman’s Build Engine.
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