ADRENALINE
REVIEW
by
Rod White
Sponsored by...
Date:
September
14, 1997
Product:
Shadow
Warrior
Developer/Publisher:
3D
Realms
Sponsored by...
MSRP:
$59.95
Street:
$46 at C&B
Sponsored by...
FEEDBACK
to:
Rod
White
(author)
Michael
Bendner
(editor/webmaster)
Back
to..
Adrenaline
Zone
©1997 PCM&E Magazine
|
Ready to Nukem all over again?
This time around, it's not the cocky Duke Nukem whom you portray through
level after level of killin' bad guys. Your character's name is Lo Wang,
and he's who you'll use to blast your way through 3D
Realms' latest implementation of the Build engine, Shadow
Warrior.
Lo Wang has recently received a lot of attention apart from the game.
Many Asians are pissed about the character's stereotype-laden nature.  Brian
Hook (of id Software) recently
did a big looong .plan update on the matter, and some Asian game
reviewers are raising a stink about Mr. Wang, alleging that 3D
Realms is depicting Asians and Asian-Americans in an inappropriate
fashion -- that they are insulting an entire race with Shadow
Warrior. I'm not a racist. I certainly have never been known discriminate
against any specific minority or race, but I personally find it pretty
damn funny when, for example, a black comedian makes fun of a stereotypical
white guy like me.
Every one of us is unique, and we all have our own set of social and
cultural idiosyncrasies. Most comedians feed on the goofy-ass things we
all do in everyday life. Good comedians make a decent living by exploiting
different groups of people, regardless of the color of their respective
skins. Is Shadow Warrior just a choice on the part of 3D
Realms to poke fun at Asians with the same mentality as early B/W Charlie
Chan films? Is it really offensive? Is it just another of the many games
that can't possibly appeal to everyone? I'll leave that up to you to decide.
Once again, 3D Realms has built
a game around the dated (now enhanced) Build engine.  There's
no way not to compare Shadow Warrior to Duke Nukem
3D. At first glance, it is very much like the Duke,
just as Blood is much like DOOM II and Duke3D.
The atmosphere is thick with Duke3D vibes. Lo Wang spouts
off his controversial one-liners just as the Duke before him. This time
around, our protagonist has a mock stereotypical Asian accent thick enough
to make Charlie Chan sound really authentic. That's what makes this game
so amusing. This guy speaks broken english as well as a martial arts master
breaks boards. He's not a true master of the martial arts... he's more
like Hong Kong Phooey, with more blood, guts and perverted one liners.
We all nearly feel off our chairs when he unexpectedly exclaimed
"Agggh!! I think my Dingy fell out!".
Wang is a clown with some serious firepower. He reminds me more of a
second-rate Kung Fu Theatre reject, than a bad-ass martial artist.
Anyone remember a movie called "They call me Bruce"? Shadow
Warrior's humor is very similar.
 That
said, there's lots of gameplay in this box. It's Duke Nukem 3D,
with all of the visual enhancements of Blood, and then some.
Shadow Warrior pulls off some awesome transparent water and
some nifty lighting effects. There's no denying the Build engine
is at the end of its life, but it's gonna go out with a bang -- this could
very well be the best use of the venerable old beast yet.
Resolutions up to 800x600 SVGA are supported. Both 640x480 and 800x600
modes run great on anything better than an Intel
P166. We've been running it on a P133 without any problems in SVGA. This
is not an intense system cruncher -- we're talking about the Build
engine here people!  It's
still a 2.5D game, so all of the bad guys and objects are sprites. Some
of them look REAL UGLY up close. The Ripper is probably the best
example of how to make a big brown hulking ape look like a mess of blurry
out-of-focus sprites. Starting with Rise of the Triad and
moving on to Duke Nukem 3D, the 3D Realms games never
did offer sharp looking bad guys up-close, and this holds true
for all of the goons in Shadow Warrior.
Maybe I've been playing too much GL Quake (and the GL
Hexen II demo) lately, but Shadow Warrior looks really
dated next to today's competition. Just days ago, 3D
Realms announced that a 3Dfx update
patch will be available in another two weeks. This has the potential of
dramatically improving SW's visuals. When we last checked,
George Broussard claimed it was 90% done.
 Level
design is a mixed bag. Some levels are really intriguing, while others
are bland, and the progression between levels is a little disorienting.
There's not enough continuity. This may be because Shadow Warrior
has been in development for a very long time now. The very first
downloadable issue of PCM&E (August
of 1995) featured screen shots from this game. Bear in mind, that's before
even Duke3D was close to being released. Lots of work has
gone into Shadow Warrior, and it shows, but level design
is not one of its strong points. Some are really cool, but as a whole...
"I feel like I've done this before."
 On
the other hand, this game does sound great! Explosions are very bass-heavy,
and the ambient sound effects make some of the levels really cool. Wang
never seems to run out of things to say at the right moment. Sounds of
water, killer bees, birds chirping, wind, dirty remarks from Wang... it's
all there, blended together with a decent interactive atmosphere. Although
some of the levels are disappointing, the sound effects you'll hear in
certain levels make them feel like you're right there. It's almost a love/hate
relationship for me.
I don't like solving puzzles, a sentiment enthusiastically shared by
Lo Wang. After solving one, I heard him mutter something along the lines
of... "Don't like puzzles anyway, rather be killing something."
Shadow Warrior is not a puzzle game by any means, but you
are expected to solve a few. It's no harder than Duke Nukem 3D
or Blood.
The shareware gave us a few levels to play through. The final features
twenty-eight. Instead of breaking the game up into three or four different
episodes, we get two. Code of Honor is exclusive to the full retail
version. In it, you'll find the same type of poking-fun-at-
everything that made  Duke
Nukem 3D a riot to play. Aside from the transparent water, you'll
see a very slick visual reflection effect when staring down at the marble
tile. As you chuck shurikens at walls and objects, they'll stick in the
wall just where you threw them. Run into them, and they'll inflict some
damage to Lo Wang. Want to pick them up and re-use? You can. I also noticed
you can climb certain vines and brush hanging on walls, just like you can
in Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. Of all the new weapons, I have
a particular fondness for the grenade launcher. It works very much like
the one in Quake, but it looks much more like what I'd expect
a grenade launcher to look like.
The riot shotgun is also an enjoyable piece of hardware. Other weapons
include the expected assortment of rocket launchers, uzis, etc. At times,
you'll come across an assault raft with mounted fire-
power, or other pieces of machinery that you can use to maim the goons,
like a stationary gun. The railgun was ripped right out of Eraser, with
Lo Wang doing his best audible Arnold impression when picking it
up. If you see a big green head lying around, don't try to kick it. You can
pick it up and use it as a weapon. The Guardian head will put some heat on
the competition, literally! That's not the only part of the body you can
pick up and use against baddies. Finding the bleeding heart will give you
another Lo Wang who'll fight right alongside you for a limited period of
time. Shurikens, sticky bombs, your katana sword, smoke bombs, caltrops,
gas bombs, flash bombs... Lo Wang has all the goodies you'll need to play
Ninja.
At one point I felt as though I were playing through a cheap
sequel to Congo. Those damn apes are so annoying. I really
wish they'd come up with some more impressive and imaginative adversaries.
The bigger apes are nothing but a cheap ripoff of Quake's
hopping mad Fiend. There are about three different types
of Ninjas which all look alike, aside from the color of their pants.
Nastier ones  shoot
rockets at your ass, but having three guys looking the same is still pretty
lame. In fact, it sucks. I'll admit the big sumo guys are tough, but they're
one of the few goons that looks right in this game. That dude with the
explosives over his head looks cool, the sumo guys look cool, and the
Xena wanna-bees are nice enimies, but the freaky Planet of the Apes
rejects just don't fit in. The only thing that's cool about them is how they move and
cling to the walls. Of course, the Ninjas should have been doing that, and if Lo
Wang is a Ninja, why can't he kick and cling to surfaces?? In Wang's defense, I must
admit it's very cool that they gave him the ability to climb on some vines
and brush, but since he's supposed to be a big bad-ass Ninja warrior, he
would have been well served with some special Ninja abilities.
The bad guys can be pretty smart in Shadow Warrior. I've
found the AI in Shadow Warrior to be almost on par with the
bad guys in Blood. That's pretty cool, because just as they
do in Blood, the goons in Shadow Warrior will
duck and crouch to avoid your fire. There are many cool features in Shadow
Warrior, but I feel the engine keeps it from truly being a "whole
new game". It's fun to play, but it just feels more like a Duke
Nukem 3D add-on than a game title in its own right. If this game
were powered by Quake or Prey technology, it
would really be a blast. I can just imagine how well the Quake
grappling hook would fit into a Ninjitsu-based environment. How much you
wanna bet we'll see a sequel, using a Prey or Quake
technology-driven engine, in no time?
Multiplayer options include two Capture the Flag levels and four
specific DeathMatch levels.  They call deathmatch
"Wang Bang" (Duke Nukem 3D's DM was called "Dukematch"). There
are 28 levels of action in total, 22 of them specifically designed for
solo and co-op play. Shadow Warrior, unlike the
Duke Nukem Plutonium Pack, doesn't require the CD, so you
could run an eight-player LAN game with only one copy, and you wouldn't need
to hunt around for the CD when you want to play. However, we were kindly
reminded by 3D
Realms that this is not legal, so I wouldn't even suggest doing
such a thing, nor would PCM&E ever promote the act of software
piracy. I didn't realize it would be illegal to play a LAN game with a few
friends, but like most people, I hit the "OK" button instead of reading the
license agreement at the time of installation. The licence agreement states
that you can only use the software "LIKE A BOOK", meaning
three to eight people can't be reading it at the same time. If they did, it
would be illegal.
So, even though multiplayer gaming without the CD is possible, don't do it,
it's not legal! Unlike other games that allow you to legally play multiplayer
games with a friend or two, 3D Realms
requires you, by law, to pay for a copy of Shadow Warrior for
every player that participates in Wang Bang and co-operative games.
On a lighter note, we didn't experience screwy out-of-sync errors every
time we played, as we did when playing co-op and competitive games of
Redneck Rampage and Blood over a LAN.
Also, a number of customization tools, like the Build level editor, are
included on the CD-ROM.
The Bottom Line
What I like best about Shadow Warrior, Duke Nukem
3D and Blood is the fact that the environments are
all completely interactive. Light switches work,  everything
blows up when punched, kicked, or shot at... including statues, wall coverings,
etc. The absence of this level of interactivity is what hurt Redneck Rampage
more than anything else. There are lots of things to like about
this game. My only complaint is that we've done this too many times already,
and even though this is the best use of an advanced or tweaked Build
engine, it had better be the last.
The visuals are too damn blocky at 800x600. It looks as if nothing at
all has changed since Duke3D in the visual quality dept. I'm seriously
hoping and PREYing that this 3Dfx update
they're working on makes a noticeable difference. I have enjoyed my time
with Shadow Warrior. There's certainly no lack of action.
3D Realms has gained a lot of experience
placing bad guys over the years, and this pays off in their latest game.
The placement of goons is as good as it was in Monolith's
Blood... just right to inject a decent level of challenge
and keep the game enjoyable.
As a solo experience, I like it. I don't think it's as awesome as Duke
Nukem 3D or Blood, but if you enjoyed either of those
titles in solo mode, you should find this title enjoyable. Co-operative or WangBang (DeathMatch)
play is a real blast, easily  on
par with the two standards. SW is like a combination of a
Johnny Woo movie, Duke Nukem 3D, and really dumb (but funny)
humor on a Beavis and Butthead or Dumb & Dumber
level to which, of course, some will take offense to. It's the same old
thing.. only a little more fun because it's newer than the last Build
game. Once I see that 3Dfx update I may
feel more enthused, but until then it's just another Duke3D
knock-off and quality 3D Realms
fragfest title. If you can't get enough of Duke Nukem add-on packs
and Blood, look forward to many hours of Shadow Warrior entertainment.
Rating: 86% |
