A little bit of mixed feelings for this game but here goes:
To give an overall feel for the game (in a nutshell) Shadow Warrior 2013 = PainKiller + Hard Reset. Very old school mob shooter. Kill the mobs, wait for the big boss, look for secrets, repeat. Add a few lines of humor and you have Shadow Warrior. Now I'm really not a fan of that style of shooter but like anything else there are good ones in that genre i.e.: Painkiller. This game is no PK...but it tries....
Graphics: Loved the maps, the environment, gritty and very creepy. Awesome textures, lighting, I thought the game looked great. I felt like I was playing HardReset with a new paint job. So similar were the two (same developer of course) had it not been for the weapons SW could almost pass for a HR mod. Explosions everywhere (like everywhere, anything explodes hence the Hard Reset reference lol)
Weapons: Awesome. Lot's of weapons, lots of upgrades, one of my favorite parts of the game. The sword play is fantastic lol. Lot's of really cool and interesting moves. Despite all the heavy weapons it's the Katana that leaves you with that satisfied feeling.
Gameplay: This gets a bit tricky. Very smooth FPS, good controls and handling. However the specialty moves I found to be a pain in the ass to deal with. On the upside you can build up your skill trees (Weapons, Skills and Powers). The downside is alot of them get activated using key combos. I can't tell you what a giant pain in the ass that is in the heat of battle. For one thing there's like 8 different ones and I found myself fumbling and mashing my keyboard to death and many times just not getting the right combos to work. Also I could'nt figure out any way to customize that part of it. I feel lucky that I use the standard WSAD layout which is really the best one to use in conjunction with the key combos. If you're a guy who uses the arrow keys to move around I promise you will have a very difficult time using the key combos.
Also the game was too old school. Too many boss types that take forever to take down and after awhile it gets old and boring. You have the medium bosses that are a bit of a drag and then the big bosses which will take a good 15+ minutes to take down. Either way there is no weapon or style that takes down the medium bosses right away and absolutely nothing for the big bosses, you have no choice and have to do your time to get through it. Due to the goofy key combos and high resilience of the the bosses I found it to be more of chore than a challenge, especially in hard mode which was how I played the game.
All in all if it was fun and I do recommend it, however I have to say the fact that I paid a very reduced price for this game allowed for a better review. Make sure to warm up your fingers, between the many boss fights and kooky key combos you may walk away with slight case of carpal tunnel syndrome.