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[Hide] (4.5MB, 1920x1080) Because the other one is dead.
I decided to give Shadow Warrior 3 a shot, skipping over Shadow Warrior 1(which I've dropped at level 4-ish because the gunplay was very poor) and 2(which I haven't touched because I see it's a looter shooter and I could not stand Borderlands.)
I don't hate it, but there's a lot of bullshit to it that masks what (fairly little) I like about it. The only frame of reference to "modern" FPS I have(putting aside the games by New Blood) would be what little I've played of Doom 2016(which I've dropped also by the 4-5th level because I found it was a far less interesting Painkiller) is that I liked what the game was going for, and the combat itself was pretty fun if muddied by bullshit.
<The game is short, incredibly short. It's somewhere around 10 'levels', each level taking 5-15 minutes. I've read somewhere the game could be finished before the steam refund window is up and I fully believe it. There's 0 extra content besides the challenges tab which is pointless and buggy because the weapon upgrades aren't that interesting.
<The game(or at least the version I pirated) is pretty buggy. Challenges not tracking properly. Falling through geometry. Katana elemental attacks not triggering properly. The final boss required four restarts on my end to progress a phase.
>Unlike Doom 2016 I like how the resource management works here. You spawn health by killing enemies with ranged attacks, while spawning ammo by killing them with the katana. The katana is always bound to RMB and it's actually like weighty and fun to use compared to SW1 which solely relied on you spamming the busted katana arts for anything resembling fun or weight. It's a very neat system. Except
<The Last Stand mechanic combined with the arena health drops is something I genuinely fucking hate and wished I could turn off. Basically like Doom2016 you lose health pretty quickly because some attacks can just knock off 60, 70 points without much fanfare. To counteract this the game has this cooldown mechanic where if you go down to 1hp you get to be invincible for a few seconds before going on cooldown. If you go get health and the cooldown expires you can go to 1 hp again and the cycle repeats. This is in a game where you can spawn health at will because the game usually spawns around four or five fodder enemies for quick health/ammo. This is also the game where every arena has a couple of 50 health pickups that spawn on a timer during fights.
>With the exception of the pitiful SMG and the Basilisk which I felt could be a tiny bit more powerful(It always felt like I used one more shot than I should have when killing the larger enemies, even on headshots), the gunplay is very fun. Everything sounds meaty as shit. Everything feels great to use. You have a revolver which is accurate in single shots but also can fire as "quickly as you can click" but I'm pretty sure there was a very strict cap installed. The riot gun without upgrades was neat, but when upgraded turns into a full-auto cylinder shotgun that feels really good to use. The nade launcher was neat and the stagger function of the disc spitter was cool.
>With the exception of one enemy(The guy with the drill head, who are way too tanky and you can't attack them at all times like the ox guys) every enemy in the game is quite fun and fits the arena gameplay really well. You have the two fodder enemies, one's ranged and one's melee. You have the big tanky ox guys who force you to constantly stay on the move because they hit like a truck, chase you and have a shockwave line attack. You have the long range artillery masks, a couple of area denial enemies, a really aggressive, really annoying aerial enemy, a faster melee enemy and the really tanky chaingunner hitscan enemy.
<Unlike Doom 2016 the glory kills take an eternity to execute which I already thought they took too long in that game. They also give a full health refill which I'm not too fond of
>Unlike Doom 2016 glory kills are on a fairly uncommon resource meaning at most you get two or three a fight. They also give you an enemy specific weapon/buff depending on what enemy you killed which is a system I really like and wish to see more of in a different game.
<Physics are utterly shit or broken and I can't tell which. You have a chi blast which is a pushback spell. You can upgrade it to work on larger enemies. There's the occasional spike trap that you can impale enemies on, and there's pits and ledges all around the game's arena. I've never been able to push an enemy off a ledge. Every time I do it the invisible hand of God pushes the enemy back over the ledge.
<Momentum, speed is very unsatisfying. In combat the speed's fine. But the game has these onrails platforming sections where you're sliding on a downward slope and have to jump and wallrun(automatically, on predetermined paths signaled by vines) occasionally. They're far, FAR from anything resembling fun. You move incredibly slow, it's barely challenging. Furthermore the grappling hook is completely on rails, there's no physics to it, there's no speed to it, attempting to grappling hook a point from a 90 degree angle will have wang pull a Worms ninja rope move and somehow abruptly move backwards in the air before swinging forward. There's just nothing exhilarating about it.
<The humor is, and I keep using this word but I can't find anything better, insufferable. Wang is fucking insufferable, he's Deadpool with an asian accent. Hoji is fucking insufferable. He's Wang with a whiny voice and a slight reverb. Mokoto's not even a character and she speaks in all of two cutscenes for no more than I guarantee you two minutes. I liked Zilla but he was barely in the game either. He played off Wang well, except they shove him aside for Hoji's memery really early into the game and he barely shows up afterwards. My recollection of Wang in SW1 is that he sang You've Got the Power somewhere and that's it, I don't remember him being such an annoying fuck to listen to all game but maybe he got worse later in that game.