Shadow Warrior 3: Definitive Edition

以前是打得爽，一路杀过关，现在玩的却是机制和解谜？甚至还加入跑酷？ 到了某个地方，怪一直刷，无限出，杀了还会变出来很多，也没标识要怎么样才能过关，打了很多波没血死了。到底做的什么玩意？

While I actually enjoyed at first Flying Wild Hog's Shadow Warrior from 2012, when I revisited it a couple of months ago, I profoundly disliked it. It gave a good first impression, as it was a very passionate project, yes. But it was also very janky, with confused level designs and atrocious commands. SW2 was an improvement, with more cohesive combat, but I personally felt it was boring, with spongy enemies, horde combat encounters, large areas that had no reason to be so large and a plenitude of perks worthy of Koei Tecmo games. It was the classic case of a developer that had too many ideas at once, and I didn't bother to see it through. Suffice to say, my experience with FWH's Shadow Warrior games has been less than ideal... until now. I came to SW3 with my hopes on check, given that I heard the main complain beforehand: that it was too short. That it didn't pack enough bang for our buck. Turns out that not only this became my favourite Shadow Warrior game; it may very well be my favourite boomer shooter of this century. It's just great: it feels like the devs finally stopped trying to come up with new things, to toss things at the wall, and instead simply focused in making something similar to what Id Software had been doing with the new Doom games: fast paced combat, focus on movement and dodging, enemies with different strategies and the such. Gone are those unnecessary weights and massive levels: what I had was a no-holds-barred fun time that got me hooked for close to seven hours - and those were good seven hours. For starters: the game is gloriously linear. The team here had no intention in mimicking those level designs that we traditionally associate to boomer shooters. Instead, they present players with corridors that lead to arenas that lead to more corridors. What makes things interesting however is how you move through these corridors: the game now features wall running and a grappling hook - and it's fun as hell to platform with these mechanics. Yes: being an AA Devolver game, there is some jank to be had. But overall, the mechanics were just superb, and leagues ahead of its predecessors. About the combat, I could be cynical and say that the devs just gave up on being creative, that they just stole from Id... but in my opinion, that was the ticket: do what was proven right, tried and true. The combat is pretty much a carbon copy from Doom Eternal, and I wouldn't have any other way. In the game, you have this power that allows you to kill enemies instantly, activated with Q - similarly to the chainsaw in Doom. Smaller enemies only take one bar - and by the way, these enemies don't pose any serious treat to you. They only exist as walking health pick ups, being that the masked ones can even provide you with this very useful cryo grenade. Then you have bigger enemies - these are the ones that must be cleared out to unlock the next corridor. They take two bars of your power, and when you kill them that way, you gain a temporary special weapon - the "gore weapons". For the sword ones, it's their sword, which can lock in at enemies and easily defeat them. For the weird meat grinder one, it's this black hole grenade, and so forth. There's only one enemy in the game that requires your full three bars, which is this massive late-game brute - which surprisingly is not that hard, and has a devastating chain gun gore weapon. Of course - there can be moments when you'll be in a pickle, and you need health fast, so you may end up expending one bar on common enemies to regain some health. The most annoying enemies however are these ones flying over platforms, who constantly target you throughout the fight - like a ranged support. So my advice is to dispose of them first. Also, watch out for suicide bombers: they can pose some serious demage. The arenas are interesting in that they have different quirks. Some of them have these buttons that, when shot, can activate something that can easily defeat multiple enemies. If you see many large enemies at once, chances are that arena has a better way to eliminate them rather than just shooting them, for there may be a trap door or a massive grinder somewhere - just be careful for you not to be their victim. Arenas also have health and ammo pickups, but the thing about them is that once you collect them, they'll take some time before respawning. What that means is that, once again, if you are in a pickle, you may have to resort to other means. And when they respawn, and you need them, the HUD will even point you where to get them. The game also lays incredible importance to your sword: if in SW2, you could straight up unequip it, in here it is defaulted to the M2 button. It's a close combat weapon, and the game incentives you to use it. Your wall running and grappling hook will be at full use in these combats: they're not just for traversing levels. And once an arena is clear, a yellow sprout will appear, meaning you have to shoot it in order to unblock the path forward. In this game, weapons go out of ammo constantly, but this may have been the way of the devs to keep you from relaying too much on a single weapon. This is a major difference between this game and Doom Eternal: whereas that was about picking the right guns to the right enemies (the "violent game of chess"), in here, as a gun goes dry, you have to rely on another. Thus, you may end up perfecting different weapons by cheer necessity. The game gradually provides you with different weapons, and you can upgrade them with orbs. To keep things interesting, the game also feature challenges: if you kill enemies in specific ways, you can claim awards in the menu, which adds replayability. Now, this game is really linear. So linear that this is also one major point of complain with this game. But I suggest that you see it in the same light as other linear shooters out there: it's not about key fetching or small open world areas, but about moving forward and kicking butt. In fact, the game is so linear that hidden upgrades for your character and weapons are barely hidden: many of them are just in your path. Curiously, if you fall while in traversing paths, that counts as a death, but if you fall during combat, it does that thing of respawning you with a health penalty: maybe the devs understood it would be too much of a punishment for players to start a combat over for a misstep. In the end, I understand the frustration of many with this game, specially in the context we understand boomer shooters. But try to embrace it as a beast of its own species: a fun rewarding short romp. Get it on a sale.