Shadow Warrior

You are the top hit-man for the Zilla Corporation. Demons start invading Earth. It is up to you to retrieve the powerful Nobitsura Kage, a sword. Barely anything happens. There's almost no real plot here. There is backstory, and it is revealed almost entirely in exposition dumps. However, it is actually interesting. It involves half a dozen Ancients, including the ruler of the Shadow Realm where this starts, and the hordes are coming from. You know what happened almost right from the start. As you learn more, you come to understand why everyone did what they specifically did, and what it was like for them. And this has an ending, closure. There are elements that are clearly just setup for the next one. Which is happening, since this did well. Because if not, we wouldn't. But they don't take over here, and everything that matters is gone into. It could be less confusing, more engaging, less self-indulgent and told more fluidly. Cutscenes are in-engine POV and simple yet vivid animation of ancient scrolls. You are Lo Wang(Liebrecht, arrogant) and you're unwillingly partnered with Hoji(Dobrenko, eager). Both speak sarcasm fluently, and refuse to shut up. That gets old almost immediately. The latter was banished, with no memory of why. You need a guide, he can't interact with anything on this world. Not many are named, and you don't really wish there were more.

This took me 12 and a half hours. I experienced essentially all the content in minutes. It's repetitive and shallow. And also incredibly enjoyable. You will, as I did, spend almost all of this time using your katana to chop individual limbs off. They may live, and come at you, even crawling, zombie-style! You can thus take away their dominant hand, and thus their weapon and/or shield. This is tremendously easy and you can sleepwalk through it. Point in the right direction and click Attack a lot. You are hardly ever forced to use anything else. The rest of your arsenal is fine. Akimbo SMGs. Multi-barrel shotgun. Remote detonation sticky charge crossbow. Fire-bombing flamethrower. Laser pointer guided rocket launcher. That these are not as fun as they sound is an area where this fails.

Another reason you stay close-range in this is the Powers. Hold up Defense. Trap a handful of them. Shockwave. Heal at will. Actually, there are a lot of options for that kind of thing. Send out an arc of energy. Got a problem? Take a Stab at it. To unlock and upgrade those requires points, and this hands those out to you like candy. Well, outside of the Money for the weapons. Don't waste those. You might think you can't, going by the other two. It does kill the pace to deal with these, when, really, it could have just given you a quick multiple choice thing at those times. Yes, tapping a direction and then clicking and/or holding and releasing either mouse 1 or 2 can be awkward, and some find it straining on the wrists. I can't say: the damage is done, I've had mild carpal tunnel for years, and so never play for very long in one sitting.

This is visually impressive. While the graphics vary, they're never less than great, and can be excellent. This has beautiful sights, such as the breathtaking vistas. All designs are varied. Yes, the enemies largely use melee against you, and are almost exclusively humanoid. Still, they all look distinctly differently. Some partially glow green. Orange or yellow that burns. Not grey, bland or forgettable. Some can block, teleport, turn invisible, take you on from range, even fly. Rarely are you forced to sheathe your tool. Sometimes at glitches that prevent them from closing in on you. There are a few humans, shooting or fencing.

Tasks are straight-forward, and, as all else interactive in this, lack variety. Key-hunt and press buttons to turn bridges, raise and/or lower cranes, activate elevators, etc. Physics are at times slow to respond, with a fraction of a second of a delay. That's sadly enough to take us out of it. There are a handful of minor jumping puzzles, and nothing else of that type. This is enormously smooth. You can toss infinite Shurikens. They're not that effective. I mean, they do almost nothing to hurt. And they auto-aim, ricochet and the like. So they don't go straight when you want to use them like that, for setting off explosive environment hazards. Anything that looks like it could go off... vehicle, obviously gas tanks, etc. They use up Stamina. Almost nothing else does. Really, only Sprint, or for shorter and not merely Forward, Dash. Those are very useful. Keep away from danger. That includes facing the huge, 100s of metres tall boss fights. Those do get bogged down in tedium and grinding, as mini ones do, as well.

This isn't going to get you to come back. You can get and do almost anything you want on just one playthrough. It does help that there are 4 difficulty settings, with one additional you get upon completion. There's also a New Game + mode where you get to keep all you earned. And what you were just given for participating. You can save anytime, except for maybe right in the thick of it. Just get a few seconds between you and the dozens of them that you will often face down. There are cute nods to its source with textures and audio for the at times ill-hidden secrets. Arcade machines with titles by the developers or publishers. Levels are too open, leading to annoying backtracking, finding lots of dead ends. Good thing the door you need to take will always very clearly glow. You only have an issue whenever you can't see that, or it isn't about finding and going through it.

Constant violence: present. I recommend this to any fan of FPS'. 90's ones as well as modern ones that are throwbacks to those. 6/10