Shadow Warrior 3 continues the events of Shadow Warrior 2. Once again, we play the role of the talkative mercenary Lo Wang, who got the whole world into trouble by accidentally releasing a powerful ancient dragon - the consequence of this act may be an apocalypse. The protagonist goes on an expedition in search of a way to defeat the beast alongside his former enemy, Zilla and Hoji and his mouth.
In terms of gameplay mechanics, Shadow Warrior 3 returns to its roots, abandoning the RPG elements introduced in the previous installment of the series. The fun boils down to dynamic and bloody battles with hordes of enemies on hand-designed, linear levels. In between them, we face platform challenges in which we use a grappling hook.
The great strength of Shadow Warrior 3 is also the arsenal that we get into our hands. To choose from, to color. We start with a simple gun and katana, and later - as the story progresses - a whole wide range of new possibilities appear. Lasers, bomb launchers, revolvers, shotguns, and even shuriken-shooting crossbows! Ah, I didn't mention the various elemental powers and the ability to take weapons from enemies after performing a special action on them.
These actions themselves work really brilliantly. They are somewhat reminiscent of fatalities from the Mortal Kombat series (split skulls, extracting organs, ripping out spines and so on), but in Shadow Warrior 3 they always carry something with them. So, if you fill up the bar (which fills up when you kill enemies), it's definitely worth using. You can - as I mentioned - take away weapons or add health, freeze others and the like. There's a lot going on.
Importantly, in all this mess that plays out on our screens in the reviewed Shadow Warrior 3, it's not that easy to get lost. Of course, there are clashes where you get the impression that the best option is to just chop blindly and shoot at will, but in the vast majority, you can control the events. And the hook I mentioned helps a lot. This one is not only a great addition to moving around the map, but it's great in clashes.
We can attract enemies in Shadow Warrior 3 and some surfaces, thanks to which the whole thing gains dynamics and allows us to control the events from the battlefield more. Because when we need to move, it is enough to use the rope and get a better overview of how many heads we have to cut off and how many limbs we need to shoot off. It's the kind of brutality I just love in video games.
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 / Intel Core i5-3470
RAM: 8 GB
GPU: Radeon R7 260X (2048 VRAM) or equivalent. GeForce GTX 760 (2048 VRAM) or equivalent.
OS: Windows 7
HDD: 31 GB
As for the game itself - here the biggest downside is probably the fact that after a few hours of play, some boards start to merge into one. Of course, between successive duels with hosts of demons, we get corridor moments where we enjoy the very pleasant movement as a ninja, but sometimes it's not enough. I know we're talking about a fight-and-shoot design here, but if the movement was done so well, it could have been used more.
When there is not enough of this, subsequent fights simply start to drag on a bit and you get the impression that you are doing the same thing over and over again. The creators obviously wanted to avoid this, hence such a huge selection of weapons and killing possibilities, but after a few hours of the session, even the humor that gets to me ceases to mask the fact that it is similar. Nevertheless - it is enough to take a break for a while and after a few minutes cleaning the world of evil becomes a pleasure again.
