Why Shadow Warrior wasn't received well critically? (LOCK PLEASE)

OLD THREAD.

Shadow Warrior (2013) is bold remake/re-imagination of classic FPS. The level design is fairly linear and boss battles were epic but followed same pattern... Other than that it was excellent game with fast paced gameplay, no weapon carrying limit, no auto regen health, no cover system, badass protagonist, great sidekick and so on. It also featured one of the best first person melee combat ever seen in a video game. Upgrading your character and weapons makes the game even funner in later parts...

What really surprised me was the story and presentation that are pretty good, and way more than what I expected from a remake of old school 'shoot-em-up' game. Yet, the game wasn't received well by critics overall. It scored 73 on MC. On other hand, gaming community seemed to like it a lot more than critics (81 User MC). I for one think that it was best FPS in recent years and deserves at least 8.5-9/10.

Till this day I've no idea why this game wasn't received well by critics... What this game didn't do better than other campaigns of modern military shooters that we are seeing post 2007. What are your thoughts? For those who haven't played the game yet, I highly recommend it for all gamers (PC, PS4 and Xbox One). Recently the game also got Dx11 and 64 bit version on PC that uses new assets and boosts frame rates dramatically. Flying Wild Hog (game devs) are currently working on 2 new projects, one of these games is "Fantasy FPS" for PC and Current Gen Consoles. I am pretty excited.

Solid game. But the boss battles were horrible and sometimes the fights can get overwhelming.

I don't know, I played the demo and thought it was kinda lame.

Are you saying people can't enjoy a game if it doesn't score well with the critics?

We enjoyed it, that's why I was wondering, why it didn't do well. Review scores aren't everything but good games deserve praise.

boss battle were worst part of game especially final boss fight was terrible other than its best FPS in recent years.

If it was a console exclusive then it would probably be a different story.

That's really a minor issue. Even Deus Ex:HR's boss battles suffered from repetition. Rest of the game was still solid. That issue is not enough for it to not score well. May be the game needed some soldier characters who look like rugby players on steroids.

May be... Or may be most critics are new to video games.

Its a good throwback fps and what it does it does it well but it gets a bit repetitive and boss fights were well s***t . Also level design could have been better

Imo a solid A maybe AA game

looks cool, I'll try it, eating lunch next to a GameStop, maybe I'll go in and grab a copy

I absolutely hated this game

It didn't have a $250 million advertising campaign.

If it wasn't a PC excluisve and had a PS4 exclusive dlc at launch, then it would be 10/10 old-school must have shooter of all time lol.

But seriously, it was too old-school for its own good. I would like a better story and more open levels. By some reason I always felt too enclosed in that game, and the story was too cheesy. It would have worked in 90ties, but not now. Therefore this games was a solid 7/10.

Story was good for an old school title. I didn't even expect story at all. Was surprised to see great characters, solid soundtracks and Voice Acting. Not every game needs to have super dark storyline with protagonist haunted by his inner demons. Sometimes it's nice to have some fun.

I dunno, I think a 7 is pretty fair. I think it had some issues for sure. It was just a little bit too long. There was not enough variety in the encounters to warrant the length. For example sections were you were supposed to shoot the flying enemies happened a few times and they were all pretty pointless. The melee combat was fun, but too shallow. Maxed it out fairly quickly and then it never really evolved. The enviroments were pretty flat and ugly overall.

I don't regret playing it, but it was def a B-game.

Well, it's good in some parts and it sucks in others.

On the good side it's got a surprisingly good story, satisfying combat and kickass easter eggs.

On the bad side, the level design is crap, the boss battles are crap and the game's way too long with nothing to show for it, so gameplay gets stale about halfway through.

I say the score is about right. Yes, the game is very enjoyable for first 4 hours or so, but it runs itself completely into the ground by the end. I stayed with it purely for the story's sake. It's the only saving grace for the game's later portions.

No huge console like marketing campaign.

Contrary to the forum hipsters, fps design has come a very long way, so "throwback" games aren't really gonna get top scores. I've heard bad things about the level design in particular. It was reasonably well received, sounds about right honestly. I'll know more when I play it :p

Lol at the "advertising campaign" crap as well. It has the exact same Metacritic score as Cod Ghosts, Battlefield Hardline and Killzone Shadow fall. But no, go ahead believing fake delusional conspiracies...

Can you name some FPS games where there is variety in encounters?

I got bored of it really quickly, I generally wasn't a fan of the level design. I came in expecting duke nukem 3d/ classsic shadow warrior with lots of hidden secrets and levels that were much more intricate, instead it felt alot more like serious sam.

People saying this game is too old school couldn't be farther from the truth.

I was going to try to go buy a copy today but then GameStop tried selling me a gutted copy at full price, the fuckers.

Original one (97) was better anyway.

Game was awesome, one of the best fps i've played, hopefully we will see a sequel.

Being old school and having no auto generating health does not give a game a free pass who high scores.

For this family of games, that is: Painkiller, Shadow Warrior, Hard-Reset or Serous Sam, unless the player is playing on a difficult setting, it will not be engaging, quickly becoming repetitive.

Reviewers and modern gamers sensibilities are not that of being challenged, which is a core game play principle of what makes these fun; they are mini arenas (barring Sam) in which the player manages weapons and enemies.

In the case of Shadow Warrior, it takes more of a Diablo style RPG approach.

Not horrible but I hate looking for hidden.Shit.to advance the story.

Lack of enemy variety and super tedious boss battles. Also repetitive "just kill everything" gameplay. That was fine in the 90's, but I need more variety now.

That said I had alot of fun with it, but it didn't warrant a second playthrough.

I actually just bought this for Xbox One. It's pretty good, but I wish it had more human-on-human action rather than inserting a bunch of demons. My other few gripes are- The guns have really weak sound effects and the sword tends to trump all. It kinda reminds me of Red Steel with better controls and graphics.

I thought the combat was clumsy at times, and the campaign was a bit long and repetitive. It followed a routine too often, ended battles with the flying creatures for example. Those flying things were no fun to fight. Some of it was good, but it didn't hit the high notes often enough. I played half and basically got bored, then came back later to finish the back half. 7/10 type game for me.

Hard Reset was better I think, flowed better and had a few more surprises. It just worked better as a package without anything unnecessary. I don't think all the jokes worked in SW, which didn't help either.

Actually playing it through for the first time right now. I think it's a fantastically well put together game so far, but I'm rather early. I can see it getting repetitive.

The game was "problematic" because it's "racist."

The protagonist was insufficiently oppressed.

The game's content and subject matter was "culturally appropriated" and (disrespectfully) embellished upon by Eastern European, white, devs, who can not give voice to a truly "authentic" Asian male character; due to the limitations of their own, white, male, European, experiences.

It unabashedly promotes "toxic masculinity."

It lacks strong female characters and other "PoC" representation, etc.

@Dasein808 said:

@Cloud_imperium said:

Till this day I've no idea why this game wasn't received well by critics...

The game was "problematic" because it's "racist."

The protagonist was insufficiently oppressed.

The game's content and subject matter was "culturally appropriated" and (disrespectfully) embellished upon by Eastern European, white, devs, who can not give voice to a truly "authentic" Asian male character; due to the limitations of their own, white, male, European, experiences.

It unabashedly promotes "toxic masculinity."

It lacks strong female characters and other "PoC" representation, etc.

Post of the day.

Great post. Thank you.

Right now I'm replaying Bulletstorm and I think that's one example. Another would be FarCry3. One reason for this is that in those game the level design matters way more. In Bulletstorm you can use the enviroment for various types of kills. FarCry is a stealth/combat mix which means the leveldesign ofc plays a much larger role. FarCry also includes random things like animals.

In SW you are pretty much always in a big arena and when you are not, that doesn't matter much anyway. Therefor all the variety comes from the enemies and your skills. Imo there are too few enemy types which means encounters start to feel repetetive towards the end. This wouldn't have been a problem if the game was a couple of hours less (Bulletstorm for example is much shorter). There are also not really any setpieces to break up the standard route.

I'd agree that variety is an issue - but would still rank it above games like Bulletstorm Far Cry 3 doesn't really fit into the same category.

Serous Sam is much better when it comes to variety, as well as level scale. Sadly the shooting "pew pew" is inferior to Shadow Warrior and other games of it's ilk such as painkiller. melee (SS3) is also inferior. It's repeated since the first encounter, is SS actually listened to feedback, sorted out it's shooter for something more satisfying, it would reign supreme.

I still haven't played it but I'm told it is more in line with being an actual game than the typical fps design regression.

Bring on a twitch(y) style control play with evolved Goldeneye level design......

serious sam 3 was so boring i couldnot even finish. it play like typical console shooter with iron sight and sprint system. didnot find any old school PC elements other than its arcade shooter. enemies only running at you.

Far Cry 3 is open world game. You can't expect animal hunting in Shadow Warrior. On other hand, Far Cry 3's quest design was tedious. It was open world, yet you were forced to stay within mission area which limited a lot of possibilities. As for Bulletstorm, I haven't played it, so can't comment on that.

The main issues iwith Serous Sam 3 involved a pointless iron-sight system that doesn't fit into the gameplay, a reload system and non hit-scan enemies. These modern updates were not welcome and thankfully can be modded out via workshop.

To decry Serous Sam 3 "a console shooter" is fairly ridiculous. In some regards, it is one of a kind, it's difficult to think of any other game that will have such a large enviroment, throwing hundreds of enemies at once with practically no frame-rate slowdown.

Like many old school shooters it wholly ignores plot, allowed unlimited weapons to be carried, has multiple secrets and on higher difficulty, requires resource scavenging as opposed to health/shield regen as well as enemy management.

This is probably a weak point of Shadow Warrior, even on the highest difficulty (which all these games should be played at), the player can spam heal themselfs.

All in all while Serous Sam 3 is the weakest in the serous, it's still very old school in nature, and a decent followup, leagues better than Duke Nukem Forever which betrayed practically every aspect of the original in order to cater to consoles.

but serious sam 3 has terrible shooting mechanics, terrible AI where enemies only running at you, no atmosphere at all. waste of time.

Hard reset was released same year and was better. serious sam 3 was design for consoles.

Actually, Hard-reset is mechanically closer to a console game. It also features a much worse sprint mechanic.

It scored a 73... that's about what you'd expect for a game whose sole appeal is "classic" design and nostalgia. Seems like a decent game but after how bored I was with Hard Reset I'm not touching any more niche PC shooters.

Yeah, basically what he said.

Except that isn't the sole appeal. Nor is it an accurate description. Chances are as well if you weren't playing Hard-Reset on easy it would be engaging. Without difficulty the mob mechanics, mob prioritizing as well as resources do not exist.

but shooting was so good that i ignore it.

Serous Sam 3 had adequate shooting at worst - what separates it is scale and enemy variety, which is both hard-reset and shadow warriors weak points. Selectively ignoring weaknesses and strengths isn't very objective.

Yeah, I don't really care about any of that. The shooting itself is terrible and the character himself felt too floaty from what I remember. No amount of stone age design will make me care about the game if the gunplay sucks.

Also, only two weapons. lol

Hard-reset had excellent gun-play. It was widely lauded for it.

The game had several weapons, the two weapons morphing and alternating via leveling.

Did you play it for 5 minutes? It sure sounds like it.

I think Shadow Warrior is pretty damn good, but I'm not that far in.

That's nice to know that it was praised for its gunplay but what does that have to do with what I said? I said I didn't like it, you mentioning reviews matters 0 to me. Yeah I played about half an hour and got bored because games whose gimmick are "classic design" don't appeal to me. It was like $2 on a Steam sale so no big deal.