Shadow Warrior

The Good
Shadow Warrior is the second game by 3D Realms that uses the Duke Nukem 3D Engine. Besides the interface looking good, it basically has the same layout as in Duke Nukem 3D: Health and Armor on the left side, Ammo and Inventory on the right, and a list of weapons in the middle. The only difference is that there is a compass above the information.

In Shadow Warrior, you play Lo Wang, a trained specialist in martial arts. Wang used to work at a corporation known as Zilla Enterprises. Unfortunately, due to crime and corruption, Wang made the mistake of leaving the corporation, and as a result, Zilla Enterprises has built an army of monsters that will take over Japan, with some of them going after Wang. Some of the enemies include ninjas, coolie, coolie ghosts, rippers, and hornets.

This is where “Lo Wang Speak” comes in. When you waste enemies, more often than not, he’ll start to say something like “Oh Look! You coming apart”, “you’re not half the man you used to be”, or “Oh, you little tiny dick”. Other parts of the game you hear “Lo Wang Speak” is where he interacts with NPCs (Non-Playing Characters), and you’ll meet the first batch of them in level three, and look like anime chicks. When Wang attempts to strike up a conversation with them by saying such lines as “Lo Wang soap you good”, “You want to wash Wang, or do you want to watch Wang wash Wang?”, or “Hello? What died down here”, all they do is say “piss off” or “you jerk”, and shoot you. Then there’s the old woman in a later level who tempts Wang to pash her, by saying “Give me a little kiss Lo Wang” and giggling. Another bit of interactivity is where you get to drive tanks or boats equipped with their own machine guns. This way you can shoot a load of enemies at once.

You’ll also have the chance to solve some puzzles in order to get past an obstacle in your way. In level one, for example, you have to play with one of the toy cars carrying a silver key, and you have to get it into an open gap, so that Wang can grab the key off its back. Speaking of keys, in each level, you must collect different keys of different colors (red, bronze, gold, silver, yellow, or green) that correspond to the color on one of the doors in the level.

When he says at the start “You no mess with Lo Wang”, he is not joking. He will start his quest in his own apartment somewhere in downtown Japan, and go on a bloody rampage through subways, construction sites, temples, bathhouses, prisons, boats, and airport terminals. Besides his sword, Wang starts out with a set of shurikens, which he can throw to slice enemies. Other weapons include the fist, riot gun, Uzi, grenade launcher, missile launcher, and heat seeker. When Wang decides to stand and do nothing for a while, a fly will buzz around him, causing Wang to catch him with chopsticks.

The Bad
Shadow Warrior comes with two episodes. The shareware episode “Enter the Wang” only has four levels, while the episode designed for the full version “Code of Honor” contains eighteen levels. I found that some of the levels are difficult to pass, that I had to use the no clipping cheat.

The Bottom Line
This game is good, but Duke Nukem 3D is better. ** ½