Shadow Warrior 2 - Review

Review by Gianluca “Dottor Killex” Arena

Among the many shooters that focus on multiplayer, offering very short and often silly campaigns, there are products, such as the recent Doom reboot, the two Wolfenstein and Shadow Warrior who have focused their efforts on their respective single player modes, offering the public experiences qualitatively notable and bearers of an “old school” gameplay, with very aggressive enemies and very high game rhythms.
After the good response, both from critics and from the public, obtained on PC a few months ago, here we also arrive on the Shadow Warrior 2 console, which we have reviewed for you in the Xbox One version.

Invading demons

Those who have played the reboot of this historic series, dated 2013, will know very well what to expect from Shadow Warrior 2, between jokes at the limit of decency, assorted vulgarity and continuous references to the male sexual organ: we are talking about a series that completely ignores the meaning of words "politically correct", and does not hesitate to propose a tavern comedy as we have rarely seen in recent videogame seasons.
Between a dirty word and a particularly colorful exclamation, Lo Wang, the protagonist, is forced to take on a rather onerous job: to recover the body of the young Kamiko, daughter of a yakuza boss, who, when the events of the game begin, he is possessed by an out of control demon, summoned during a scientific experiment which, as often happens, did not give the desired results.
The incentive is highly motivating: not having a body, the soul and conscience of the girl take temporary residence in that of Lo Wang, who therefore also hears Kamiko's voice in her head, with whom she stages very tasty curtains. , the result of many laughs at different points of the adventure.
The reasons why, in addition to waves of demons vomited from hell, we must also face humans, mechanized enemies, members of the mafia and genetic alterations of various kinds are laughable, like the tone of the narrative and most of the dialogues: Shadow Warrior 2 never takes itself seriously, and manages to involve the less fussy player in a whirlwind of paradoxical situations, low-grade humor and unrepeatable insults.
Here, then, accepting missions from a naked she-devil soon becomes the norm, like facing demons who make sexual references as much (if not more) than the foul-mouthed protagonist: those who seek narrative depth or a campaign that has a leader and a queue, they probably won't find them here, but we would be hypocrites not to admit that Lo Wang and company's vulgar humor has made us smile on more than one occasion.

Change of register

Depending on whether you have played the first episode or the PC version of this sequel, expectations change radically: compared to the predecessor, which relaunched the franchise, Shadow Warrior 2 is a broader product, which allows extreme freedom both in the level of customization. as in the pace to be imposed on the advancement along the main campaign, which can be interspersed with dozens of secondary missions if not completely set aside.
This is because, unlike the 2013 title, the development team has not limited itself to proposing a linear and concise single player campaign, but has decided to transform the game structure into something more like a Rage or a Borderlands any, with a central hub to return to between missions and in which to accept a series of missions not strictly related to the main narrative arc.
This choice of game design, in addition to diluting the gaming experience and drastically increasing overall longevity, colors the title with first-person role-playing veins, with the variant of hand-to-hand combat, the possibility of inserting up to three modifiers in weapon slots and an abnormal amount of loot to unearth.
Unfortunately, since the team is still independent, this abundance is not cheap, but comes at the price of variety (of the missions themselves, of the enemies, even of the levels, which are also generated randomly) and of the attention to detail, as is evident from the sometimes somewhat approximate hitbox and from an aggressive enemy artificial intelligence but rarely able to implement strategies worthy of the name.
The bow arrows of Shadow Warrior 2, however, are numerous: from the huge variety of weapons of all types to ninja powers, passing through spells that use Chi, or the corresponding mana of our hero, it is possible to approach the violent shootings in many different ways.
Our favorite, when the type of enemy allowed it, was to weaken the groups from afar, using mainly sniper rifles and grenade launchers, and then get to short range, draw the katana (or the chainsaw, or a 'accepts) and finish them in the bloodiest way possible, but this is only one of many options.
To all this is added an online cooperative plagued by various problems in the netcode (even if we tested it in the hours before the launch and in the immediately following ones), a dose of digital violence that would make many horror films of the 80s pale and a excellent mobility of the protagonist, capable of incredible jumps, lightning fast side dodges and running at breakneck speed without limits.
Too bad, as we will see in the next paragraph, that all this frenzy is mortified by the halving of the frame rate compared to the PC counterpart.

Points of view

Shadow Warrior 2 disappoints from a technical point of view when compared with the PC version, but, all in all, it manages to satisfy if taken in itself: the frame rate is halved compared to the version released last year, and passes to thirty fps, and this decrease in pace affects the gameplay.
The Flying Wild Hog title is in fact a product that makes frenzy and frenzied rhythm two essential characteristics, and both of these elements, in this console version, are decidedly less predominant: on Xbox One, the version we tested for this review, we have glimpsed, however, some slowdown more than the PS4 counterpart, as well as a resolution of 900p against the full HD ensured by the Sony machine.
The lack of support for the HDR option, which on Xbox One S would have made the colors more defined and cleaner, and the widespread presence of low-resolution textures, which, in some situations, affect faces and details during movies, complete the circle. with in-game graphics.
If you want to see the glass half full, the fluidity, although halved compared to the PC version, always maintains a level that is far more than acceptable: the aforementioned slowdowns are sporadic and never too invasive, and do not affect the enjoyment of the title, which for the most of the time, thanks to the drop to 30 fps, it manages with ease the large amount of enemies on the screen and the numerous special effects including explosions, dismemberments and special moves.
In short, the work done by the Polish team is two-sided: the Xbox One version is the weakest of the three currently on the market, and does not stand up to the comparison with the PC version, which therefore remains decidedly preferable; on the other hand, the choice of blocking the frame rate at thirty frames per second allows the Microsoft flagship to manage quite easily even passages in which, at 60 fps, it would have suffered enormously.
Whether the glass is half empty or not, our readers will decide: we limit ourselves to saying that, not having the term of comparison, Shadow Warrior 2 on Xbox One defends itself well, but is still reworked (and not a little) compared to it. to the PC counterpart.

Final comment

Although we are faced with a neutered and less rapid version of the one released for PC last fall, Shadow Warrior 2 remains a fast-paced and adrenaline-pumping first-person shooter, suitable for all those who loved the first episode or the recent reboot of Doom.
Nonetheless, sorry that this port for the Microsoft flagship is the worst of the lot, with framerate locked at thirty frames per second and a resolution of only 900p: if you have a way to catch up on the latest work of the guys from Flying Wild Hog on PC, that undoubtedly remains the reference version, otherwise, as long as you do not expect a screaming graphic sector, this could satisfy you, thanks to an in-depth gameplay compared to the prequel and a considerable level of character customization.