Angel Dust on 27/9/2013 at 22:30
Oh, those are great. It's only those larger demons, like the first boss, but when you pick up the head you can use it to spew hot laser death.
mothra on 27/9/2013 at 23:01
nice, those big demons are the "normal" enemies now from ch7/8 onwards, so no shortage of those, I will get that upgrade next.
sofar I am perfectly fine with the simple "arena" gameplay. It is just done so good I don't care that there is no other stuff to do than "enter arena, kill all the things, move on".
Wang even makes jokes when you have a very, very short and easy "puzzle" section about him rather killin stuff.
Shadowcat on 27/9/2013 at 23:28
How did this happen? Personally I thought "Shadow Warrior" was an embarrassment, and best forgotten, so I found the decision to reboot it absolutely bizarre. Now apparently the end result is the best FPS of the year?
That's a rabbit out of a hat if ever I saw one.
mothra on 28/9/2013 at 00:31
I guess flying wild hog wanted to expand on Hard Reset and thought a "known", even if "not that popular" IP would serve them well.
Shadow Warrior had sword combat (although more of an afterthought) and was known for its goofyness so they can get away with almost anything.
Demonpowers are another addition to firing guns and with the advances in physics they could make a nice, bloody cock-tail of shooting fun. Doom/Heretic are not up for grabs so that was the best decision for them.
Guns have no recoil you have to compensate for, movement is fast and floaty like in the old days, all you have to do is line up those shots in quick succession.
Modern CPU/GPU power enables them to literally fill the screen with enemies. In other "arena" games I usually have fatigue setting in like
"ok, now I will fight some more bad guys before I can move on, jawn" but in this game they added
"holy shit, I wonder how MANY bad guys they will throw at me now, I am READY".
Ch7 or 8 starts at a dock in a wide open space and they had so many enemies run at me, I was getting dizzy from all the running and gunning.
But I am loving it, I get that "I can take MORE, give it to me" feeling. Statistic screens at the end just reinforce that feeling. Something like over 200 in a chapter I think was highest as of yet.
And there are Necromancers, normally I hate such enemies but here I did not want to kill them so they can resurrect all of the enemies AGAIN. Insane.
The enemies have so many nice touches, like the rage mechanic changing their behavior, how/what part you removed or injured change mini-boss behavior,
the way you can hit reload even if your gun is fully loaded and wang will clean his sword of blood or plain admire the gun in a fancy way.
june gloom on 28/9/2013 at 03:10
You know, I always thought Shadow Warrior's better moments, much like Duke Nukem 3D's, were the moodier ones, with dimly lit rooms, enemies around the corner. It made the explosions of action that much better.
Angel Dust on 28/9/2013 at 03:47
Those moody moments still exist in the new game and the pacing is similar to those old games. It's not like Serious Sam or something.
zajazd on 28/9/2013 at 20:19
I will be picking this up during GOG Christmas sale. Thank you for your time.
mothra on 29/9/2013 at 15:31
I just finished it. Complete with cheesy ending but somehow in a good way.
They pile on the cutscenes at the end and try to wrap up the "story" (cough cough) but the last fights were entertaining nonetheless.
Boss highlight for me was much earlier in the campaign, against the flying horse
After introducing most of the enemies midgame they scaled down the amount of enemies and went for more combinations of different enemies in different arenas mixed with minibosses/necros.
So that made it not that repetetive for me. Still, a little fat could have been trimmed in the last third.
I will replay it for sure, I missed alot of the secrets and I wanna see if you can get enough money/karma for all upgrades. Ki Crystals do not max out, I found all of them.
Mr. Tibbs on 29/9/2013 at 21:49
Quote Posted by mothra
So that made it not that repetetive for me. Still, a little fat could have been trimmed in the last third.
I completely agree. That would be my biggest complaint. The environments had been so varied earlier I feel they could've lost a few encounters in the last few chapters. The last big battle (pre-boss fight) you have in the game is absurd on hard. I don't think I have the guts to try it on insane.
I enjoyed Digital Devolver and Flying Wild Hog's goofy origin story. It was a massive improvement over Hard Reset which was interminable. A great buddy-cop dynamic, well assassin/bodyguard-Demon dynamic. I'm definitely going to do an ex-mode playthrough. How weird is it that Lo Wang is back after a 16 year break? I did not see that coming, especially in such an awesome shooter.
mothra on 30/9/2013 at 08:35
I am replaying from scratch but on hard this time.
ex mode is just that you keep upgrades but it does not change the difficulty like hero mode does ?
I don't even wanna think about trying hero mode. I only survived the last big battle on insane because I had full upraded flux and spammed it all over the place.
That gave me enough time to rush the necros with a rocket launcher/full shotgun combo and clear up a few trash mobs before they get resurrected.
At least there were a few saves between waves, otherwise I would have given up. Took me at least 25 repeats in total over the course of 2 gameplay sessions.
I loved the HL1 trainride hommage (which killed me many times though)
