Trance on 18/9/2010 at 00:40

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Great as Duke was, Shadow Warrior was even better. The engine was way more advanced and whoever was in charge of doing up the levels did a terrific job, outdoing Richard Gray's efforts in Duke IMO. It had its own collection of imaginative, never-before-seen weaponry as well as its own list of features with 'Wow!' factor (drivable sectors, room-over-room, whatever the hell feature it was that made the magic carpet ride in map 4 possible, etc.) Same kind of protagonist, different face and voice. Same style of humor, different setting and targets. It was just a perfect continuation and evolution of everything that made Duke great. If Duke sees a proper sequel, Shadow Warrior should too.

EDIT: Can't believe I forgot the THEME. JESUS. I have got to find the CD again -- it had some killer tracks on it.

T-Smith on 18/9/2010 at 00:58

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But it looked so hungry.

And Trance, I'd never actually heard of Shadow Warrior before (somehow). After looking at some videos though, I know what game I need to play next. It basically looks like a slightly more advanced, more serious Duke Nukem. Fine by me.

ZylonBane on 18/9/2010 at 01:21

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WHAT. :weird:

june gloom on 18/9/2010 at 01:50

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Shadow Warrior is actually not that great. Good game, yes, but it's marred by being exceptionally difficult in an unfair way- it's very easy to die a cheap death in Shadow Warrior. The lowest-level enemies are either armed with machine guns or will blow you up, and it just goes downhill from there.

Music was tops, though.

Personally, Blood is my favourite, but Redneck Rampage is a close second.

I just realized that Aja, aka the guy who tries to pretend that Gears of War is some kind of great satire, criticizes Duke 3D for being silly and juvenile and full of machismo.

Shadowcat on 18/9/2010 at 02:11

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Yeah, really.

Shadow Warrior got masses of advertising at release. You couldn't open a game mag without a full page (or two) asking you if you fancied some Wang. Pretty much everyone at the time knew about it, because it was the next big game from the makers of Duke 3D (although given that Duke 3D competed with Quake, I suspect the Build engine was looking less attractive at that point).

Fewer people know about it NOW because unlike Duke 3D (which garnered a huge fan-base to begin with, and continued to grow it over time), I think Shadow Warrior just wasn't very popular to begin with.

I always thought one of its biggest problems was that it appeared to be absurdly racist. Admittedly, all of 3D Realms build engine games were based around stereotypes (and Duke 3D and the Redneck Rampage series both did well), but there definitely seemed to be a difference. Duke is a dick, but the joke is on him rather than anyone else. I don't know the US well enough to know whether many people considered Redneck Rampage offensive (and I never played it myself), but obviously a sufficiently large proportion of people found it funny, and it's usually safer territory making fun of your 'own' (home country) culture. Shadow Warrior was more uncomfortable territory, IMO, and I'm pretty sure that was one of the reasons why I didn't look any further than the demo for that one.