Shadow Warrior (1997)

Shadow Warrior is a first-person shooter video game developed by 3D Realms and published by GT Interactive initially for MS-DOS and Mac OS. The game was developed using Ken Silverman's Build engine and improved on 3D Realms' previous Build engine game, Duke Nukem 3D.

Plot
Lo Wang, the eponymous Shadow Warrior, a former employee/bodyguard of Zilla Enterprises... until he found out that Master Zilla was summoning monsters from the netherworld and plotting to take over the world. Being a man of honor, Lo Wang quit the corp, but Zilla decided that if Wang will not be on his side, then he has to die. Now, of course, Lo Wang sets out to reach Zilla and thoroughly kick his gluteus maximus - partly to save the world, but primarily out of revenge for the death of his former teacher, Master Leep.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The game makes fun of "bad kung-fu movies" with Lo Wang saying a bunch of cliché movie quotes and being a perverted old man.
 * 2) Just like Duke Nukem 3D there's a lot of pop-culture references many of them ninja and anime related. This includes Speed Racer, Tenchi Muyo!, War Games, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and more.
 * 3) The arsenal of weaponry includes Japanese-themed weapons as well as certain weapons having an alternate firing modes, which is a pretty unique idea at the time, and allows more variety for combat encounters.
 * 4) *Katana: Best to use for short range attacks and when conserving ammo. Can take out spawning Coolie ghosts.
 * 5) *Shurikens: They're thrown in volleys of 3, and good at dispatching ninjas from both close to medium range.
 * 6) *Riot Gun: A quad barrel shotgun with two firing modes: semi-auto and full-auto.
 * 7) *Uzis: The primary weapon of the game that can be dual-wielded. Dual-wielding gives the Uzi more power but it comes at a cost, as the guns will eat up ammo at a much faster rate.
 * 8) *Grenade Launcher: Launches an explosive shell that bounces 3 times and then explodes. It is ideal for dealing death in hard to reach places like ledges, or around corners. It has a very large radius area of damage, so don't be too close when it detonates.
 * 9) *Sticky Mine: Marks the first appearance of a sticky bomb in an FPS, an idea popularized later by Halo. These can stick to nearly any surface. Once attached to a floor, wall, ceiling, or even an enemy, there is a 3 second priming timer. Once this timer is set, the bomb will detonate when its motion detectors sense something near.
 * 10) *Rocket Launcher: A normal rocket launcher, but with three different firing modes. The first is the normal firing mode, the second being a heat-seeker functionality (note: the rockets will dive for any heat source, even open flames), and the last being a nuclear warhead which is the most devastating weapon in the game, as it does massive damage to everything caught in its blast radius, blinding everyone in nearby surroundings, as well as letting off gas as fallout at the place of its explosion.
 * 11) *Rail Gun: Its shots can go through multiple enemies at once, perfect when trying to take out groups and is a hitscan weapon, meaning that it hits its targets instantly. The downside is that ammunition is really scarce.
 * 12) *Head: The literal head from one of the Guardians, either found as a weapon or found after killing a Guardian. It has 3 fire modes. The first fire mode uses 1 charge per shot but at a fast rate. This default mode fires accurate and highly damaging fireballs in rapid succession. They can set enemies on fire if aimed at either the ground or at flesh; in the second mode, a circle of fireballs surround Wang. Any enemy that touches fireballs instantly get sets on fire or dies. The fireballs can go through walls but only last for a few seconds using 10 charges in the process; in the third mode, Wang shoots out 3 fireballs that cause explosions along the ground until the fireballs hit something. The explosions travel along the ground even as the fireballs tower above them, so its great for laying waste to enemies below you.
 * 13) Good level design, and it's more creative than Duke 3D.
 * 14) * There is a lot more verticality to the levels this time around, and some levels will require the player to climb up or down parts of the map rather than going for the most part on a solid plane.
 * 15) * The level design also highly encourages looking for secret areas, as each level has a lot of them and finding these areas will help the player out dramatically, such as including new weapons or more ammo and fortune cookies (See below).
 * 16) * There are a few sections in the game that require some platforming skills to progress through, and are surprisingly fluid to get through despite the first-person perspective.
 * 17) The game features turrets and various vehicles (such as tanks) that the player can drive around freely in, climbable ladders, and multiple firing modes for various weapons, which was ambitious for FPS games at the time.
 * 18) Amazing graphics that was pushing the capabilities of the Build engine at the time.
 * 19) Amazing soundtrack that reflects the East Asian theme very well with lots of ambient tracks.
 * 20) The original game is free-to-play on Steam after the release of the reboot, which is a great deal considering that it is the full game.
 * 21) Throughout the game you can find Fortune Cookies. Once picked, the cookie gives +50 health boost (With the ability to go beyond the 100 health point limit) and a satirical sentence or a nod to pop culture will appear on the screen.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The textures and voxel-y world looks ugly, especially in the levels that have objects that try to be 3D, but instead look incredibly blocky. To be fair, this was one of the first games to use voxels.
 * 2) While it was mostly played for laughs, the amount of Asian stereotyping in this game can come across as cringeworthy and offensive by today's standards.
 * 3) In Wanton Destruction, the last level "Skyfall" has a game-breaking bug when playing on one of the lower two difficulties. That being that the final boss fails to spawn in making the level impossible to beat even with cheats.

Reception
Shadow Warrior received mostly positive from critics and ratings vary from average to positive. Thierry Nguyen of Computer Gaming World commented: "Shadow Warrior is an average action game. While there are some good enhancements to the BUILD engine and some good level design and enemy AI, the rest of the game is mediocre." By contrast, GamePro said that "Shadow Warrior scores high in both style and level design. It's enhanced by a high difficulty level, a great audio soundtrack, and ambient music and environments you can can really believe exist..." Tim Soete of GameSpot called it "a late entry into the realm of sprite-based action games that's pretty fun despite its dated qualities." GamingOnLinux reviewer Hamish Paul Wilson decided in a later retrospective that Shadow Warrior was the weakest of the three major Build engine games, stating that its gunplay was the "least balanced and its levels the most likely to descend into tedium or frustration".

Videos
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