Shadow Warrior (2013)
I didn't play the original game, but this is a good recreation of it. This game offers more than the original, but at the same time is repetitive and doesn't do much to stand out. The voice acting, jokes and physics were all good or very good.
The environments have a pretty good art with a decent adoption of japanese and chinese references. The same can be said about the soundtrack. The soundtrack matches the asian atmosphere quite well. The environments offer some good variation of snow, military facilities, traditional houses and neighborhoods, harbor areas, ships, temples, graveyards and the demon realms. The level design is pretty good in hiding secrets. The artistic cutscenes with 2D art reminded me of the 2D cutscenes made for Diablo 3.
The gameplay is fun and satisfying with the swords, guns, skills and upgrades. The depiction of skills as tatoos was creative. The interface mimics brush strokes and it's a bit crude, but it works. The japanese art style to depict the skills is beautiful and matches the theme very well. The fact that you can open up the menu and buy upgrades at any time is much more convenient than Bioshock's vending machines. Killing with the sword can make a demon gain a powerful boost, similar to a frenzy or rage mode. It is a nice trade off.
Their proprietary engine is pretty good. It has good graphics, it's light weight and doesn't seem to suffer from unnatural animations or janky combat. It's all fluid motions and fluid transitions between weapons. It doesn't have animations that cannot be halted and leave the player vulnerable with no way to block or evade an attack for example.
The bad side is that there is very little variation. The game repeats the same pattern "door is closed, defeat hordes of monsters to pass" from start to finish. It has the same old pattern of having to find three keys to unlock the path to continue. In this case, three seals have to be broken. The enemies do not interact with the environment. Over time it becomes extremely repetitive and boring to defeat the same enemies over and over.
The level design is bad. I did comment about it a lot in my site. It's pretty flat most of the time, with little Z axis. The lights misguide you a lot to dead ends. Even the environment art was done in a way that deceives the player, because it places bright things on unreachable locations for example. They did make levels with objectives such as having to turn on the power, raise a gate or activate something to pass. What I felt lacking was that they didn't explore stealth mechanics, levels aboard moving trains, vehicles or assassination objectives. It's all the classic boomer shooter, kill monsters, walk forward, reach the end, repeat.
I strongly disliked the excessive saturation and abuse of strong colored lights. The abuse of bloom may look cool but it puts a strain in the eyes. It's also one of the reasons for making the player confused about where to go. The environment art, while good at capturing the japanese and chinese architectures, is also very bland. They just repeat the same doors, furniture, lamps, etc everywhere. Which renders the world in this game pretty soulless if you understand what I mean. They didn't really built places that feel alive, where people would really live there and with distinguishable architecture.
The hitboxes were also somewhat exaggerated. I couldn't believe that from far away my sword would hit enemies and the same for their claws. I'd be hit from very far away, judging by what it's seen on screen.
It's a pity that this game had a really cool storyline and a really nice art style, but plagued with an average gameplay that doesn't offer much beyond killing the same enemies over and over.
