As a direct descendant of Duke 3D, Shadow Warrior inherited all of its predecessor's fantastic strengths...
One of my absolute favorite characteristics of Shadow Warrior is the amount of creativity that 3D Realms put into the hero’s arsenal. Duke had his wonderfully unique Shrinker and Freezer cannons, and although the latter method of destruction appeared in a few other games (like the Ice Mace in Hexen 2 or the awful Carbon Gun in Mysteries of the Sith), hosing down Duke’s reptilian nemeses and then kicking them into a thousand glistening chunks was a task possessed of a certain unmatchable charm. Likewise with Lo Wang’s severed gargoyle head, baboon heart, and thermonuclear bomb: sure, M6s and hand grenades will get the job done, but poking different sections of a demon’s parietal lobe to produce one of three different neat-o flame attacks is much more likely to leave me cackling maniacally and raring for the next bloody encounter.
Once I played through the four-episode Atomic version of Duke 3D, as well as its D.C., Caribbean, and Nuclear Winter expansions, I was overjoyed to find what amounted to a very well-made total conversion in Shadow Warrior. Both games look, feel, and, in many ways, sound just like one another, which is nothing but a positive trait for those who never tired of the brazen antics of the first true brand-name FPS personality (I don’t count Blazkowicz as a distinct character, since he was little more than a twitchy headshot on Wolfenstein’s HUD). I’ll probably play through all of my Build games once more as a warm-up to Duke Forever (if that title ever sees the serene glow of a gold master, that is) before I retire them once and for all, but I certainly got my money’s worth out of Shadow Warrior over the years.