Dread Templar
(Don’t Fear) The Templar
It took playing the recent Quake remaster, but now I get it.
It’s good. Nay, ace. No doubt about it. If it wasn’t up against the stiff competition that is the years upon years of high quality ‘boomer’ shooters, this would be a completely unqualified early access recommendation.
Ultrakill, Ion Fury, Post Void, Project Warlock 1 + II, Amid Evil, DUSK, HROT, Maximum Action, GTTOD, Prodeus, Cultic, etc - be they full games, early access, or just demos, the retro, ‘boomer’ shooter genre really is booming. I also cannot wait for the likes of Into the Pit, Fortune’s Run, and Forgive Me Father. In fact, there are so many that even when I say that I’d place this firmly mid-list it’s not even that damning.
– Real player with 10.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Ninja Bullet Time Games.
TLDR; If you like retro shooter gameplay, and would like to have fun, buy it now!
I will just start listing what comes to mind, that makes me love this game, then write some experiences from my first 8 hours of playing on the hardest difficulty so far. Smooth movement with air controll using the mouse, running feels similar to classic doom (taking a short time to reach full speed), satisfying meaty gun sounds and very good feedback with lots of gore, build variety that actually changes gameplay, bullet time, stylish awesome visuals, amazing soundtrack, atmosphere, very good enemy and level design, exploration with rewarding secrets to find, weapon swapping combos combined with positioning during combat.
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
Shadow Warrior Classic Redux
Shadow warrior came out in 1997 and this is a remake-ish game with improved graphics and is easier to run on modern systems. You play as wang which is either a homage to old kung-fu movies or a walking stereo-type. The story isn’t too important but the gameplay is an FPS and a really good one. You can also interact with the enviorment (a.k.a Duke Nukem) to find hidden refrences and one-liners. I love the weapons, the(very corny) jokes, the set pieces, this game is a blast. All your weapons are varied and have alternate fire modes giving you plenty of ideas to approach combat with enemies. Just simply put, this is a polished, well made game.
– Real player with 42.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Ninja Classic Games.
VERDICT: Shadow Warrior Classic Redux is the complete old-skool first-person shooter. Forget the story. Forget the graphics. These were the sorts of games where it was all about the gameplay. Theres lots of short fast-paced levels to explore. Discover obvious and not so obvious secrets. Massive amounts of relentless combat to enjoy. Including a large arsenal of weapons with which to gib an assortment of enemies with. Periodically tough bosses stand in your way to be defeated.
Its clunky graphics may be outdated and the game speed a little too fast unless you’re too young not to have played this the first time around but, the un-PC nature of the voiceover is hilarious and will make you laugh-out-loud. Those of you who dont enjoy single-player need to push aside their PvP addiction and just try it. If you feel the need for some old-skool Lo-Wan style kickassery then you cant do worse than start with this. Sure there is a modern day version but this game still reeks of fun.
– Real player with 35.6 hrs in game
Shadow Warrior 2
After 3 years since the remake of Shadow Warrior the developers released a second title that continues the story. Though it is not a large span of time, it is big enough to fix the problems of the original and improve its weak points to create a true full-fledged sequel. However, instead of this obvious option, the developers decided to totally change the games mechanics and gameplay, going away from classical single player shooter to some multiplayer-ish looter shooter aka progression for the sake of progression. Did they succeed? Well, sort of.
– Real player with 62.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Ninja Co-op Games.
“Who… wants… some… WAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNG?!” – Lo wang
Doom slayer with katana be like.
Pros
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Gameplay
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Graphics
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Coop
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Upgrades
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Weapons
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Weapon animations
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Cutscenes
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Lo Wang quotes and oneliners
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Soundtrack
Not great, not terrible
+- Story
Cons
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Grind
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Repetitiveness
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Too many upgrades/weapons
Summary
Shadow Warrior 2 is a classic FPS quake/doom style shooter, with a twist.
The gameplay overall is great, but most of the time it feels like you are just dashing all over the map.
– Real player with 59.4 hrs in game
Shadow Warrior Classic (1997)
if youre new into this click F5 and thank me later..
now this game if getting used to it aged really well.
like the graphics actually doesnt hurt your eyes…
shooting is on point, and the weapon choise is just awesome.
Ive played it twice on I have no fear I think and who want some wang..
which is bearly easy and medium I think… and no pain no gain is hard?… I have no idea, the only thing Im sure of ive finished the game on the second hardest difficulty WHO WANTS SOME WANG
and its a really, really good challenge… I wont say its really hard especially if you put auto aim..
– Real player with 21.4 hrs in game
Shadow Warrior Classic is the original game which drew people into the crazy world of Lo Wang, the protaganist and comedic mass-murdering machine of this series.
Pros:
-Gameplay is fun and exciting. Plays a lot like Duke Nukem 3D, which is not a bad thing. You have access to a reasonable variety of weapons to slice and murder your way through the game.
-Graphics is exactly what you’d expect from a 1997 game, but is great to experience if you enjoy retrogaming.
-It’s hard, like really hard. And will definitely keep you on your toes throughout your play of it.
– Real player with 9.6 hrs in game
Escape Ninja
Let’s proceed from the 60th floor to the first!
There are monsters lurking on each floor, and if you are caught, you will be stunned.
Find your way through the maze of rooms to the lower floors.
The main character, a ninja, can hide himself from the monsters by using the art of hiding, so he needs to use it well as he moves forward.
Japanese style maze game
A simple action game where you aim for the goal while being chased by enemies!
Use the map and hiding techniques to get to the goal!
Sword With Sauce
Sword With Sauce is a great game with enjoyable mechanics and vast amount of fun. If you like being stealthy, you’ll like it. If you like being badass, you’ll like it. And if you like action single-player games with ninjas, you’ll definetly like it. While I was consumed in this world, I felt like a real ninja. Wallruns, roof-hooking, stealthiness, tactical usage of a vast majority of available gadgets - that is all waiting for you in this amazing game. This game doesn’t even need a story or a big amount of levels to be interesting. You just enjoy creating different tactics or performing astonishing kill tricks. Here are some pros and cons:
– Real player with 22.5 hrs in game
Wow… Sword with Sauce is crazy fun. Yes, it’s only 3 levels and yes it’s only in, well, not even beta. But what is there is awesome!
I played through and beat both the mansion and habor using the default setup. The mansion was a mostly stealth run. Habor, I just went wild with the sword since the layout is a little more difficult to map out. When I started up city, I finally decided to check out gadgets. Don’t make the same mistake I did! Check out gadets ASAP!
Sure, you can go with a bow as your starter weapon, ala Far Cry. You can go with the default sword. You can go with… honestly, I forgot what the fourth thing was because THE SHIELD, the freaking glorious shield! Have you ever want to play a FPS Captain America? The game may not have Marvel branding, but the shield made me feel like I was in the Avengers. It’s got the multi enemy bounce. It’s got the bullet ricochet. It’s got the boomerang return.
– Real player with 17.9 hrs in game
Shadow Warrior
Story of a demonic incestuous affair that is uncovered by her older brothers and you can kinda guess the rest.
🔸Shadow Warrior’s story is well-written for a AA game. You are in control of Lo Wang, an assassin who is hired by a powerful Japanese magnate to buy an ancient katana -Nobitsura Kage- from a collector for 2 million dollars. However as you may expect, things don’t go as planned and Wang tries to take the katana by force, then he finds out Mr. Mizayaki -The collector- is in contact with a demon named Hoji.
– Real player with 50.2 hrs in game
For some reason I decided to go for all achievements in this game, so I had to complete it both on insane and heroic difficulties. Was it worth it? No. Was it fun? No. Was it entertaining? Sort of. But let’s take one thing at a time.
Shadow Warrior 2013 is a remake of a semi-popular old school shooter of the same title. Though I cannot really call this game a remake, because remake usually means a piece that is largely refined to fit modern standards and audience but keeps its original nature. I cannot say that this game doesn’t have anything in common with the original but it also stepped quite far from it. First things first, the gameplay was changed to fit modern shooter standards: most of creative things like using enemy’s head as a major weapon, nuclear rockets, demon heart that creates a copy of you, etc were discarded. They were changed with mainstream pistol, uzi, shotgun, crossbow, and demon heart now just acts as instant-kill bomb, enemy head became an optional thing, which is mostly useless. The shooting itself is very odd: you do not really feel any impact, there is a regular lack of ammo and some weapons are too OP over the others. However, the developers tried to expand the gameplay by adding magic and sword fights. I cannot say that these are bad but they are also far from perfect. Sword acts more like a bat that you have to punch enemies with rather than a blade that slices through them, on earlier levels you tend to run out of ammo and have to poke foes for ages with it, sword techniques are interesting but there is too few of them for the whole game. As for the magic spells, it adds some variety to the gameplay but, just like with sword skills, there are too few of them. Only 2 combat spells, which basically do the same thing – stun enemies – healing, and protection, which you will unlikely use at all if you play casually. The game is also very overloaded with upgrades. Instead of a tree or gradually opening skills you are instantly given 9 different progression screens for the character + 1 for each acquired weapon. Should I say that nobody’s gonna spend 20 min of just reading each and every description? Because of this, I personally missed a useful skill of resurrection just because I skipped reading another bunch of text. If those screens were introduced in the first 3-4 levels instead of the very first one it wouldn’t hurt the gameplay at all but made the introduction to the upgrades much smoother.
– Real player with 44.4 hrs in game
Sky Sanctuary
When to buy and when not to buy?
If you don’t like reading, check out our video of this review:
Sky Sanctuary is a beautiful archipelago where you can play all kinds of different Samurai mini games. As the game is in early access, there are only a few things to do at the moment.
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Japanese wood cutting (Tameshigiri)
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Bow and arrow skill training (Kyudo with 3 modes)
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and there is a sandbox zone where you can use/try out several Samuari weapons like Shurikens and smoke screen balls.
– Real player with 44.6 hrs in game
When I first saw this game I couldn’t help thinking of similar sword slicing VR titles like Fruit Ninja or Katana X, and wondering what would make this game stand out from its competitors. But actually, Sky Sanctuary is probably the more padded out game of the three by presenting itself as a tongue-in-cheek samurai and ninja training game. So whereas chopping things with a katana is an element of all three games, that’s just one component of Sky Sanctuary’s full experience, also offering the ability to walk around the small floating island, shoot a bow, and mess with ninja type goodies like smoke bombs, shurikens and fire staffs. Both the sword and bow experiences are essentially ranked mini-games, with the option to also just mess around the island with them.
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
Boomerang X
Boomerang X is an insanely fast paced fling and zing game.
I see a lot of people leaving reviews saying that they are upset with the fact the base game takes only 2 hours to beat.
What they always fail to mention is that those 2 hours are packed to the brim with just about all the content you need. The arguably short playtime required means the game will never feel dull and every 10 minutes or so you will be introduce with a new environment, possibly new ability, and more knowledge on how to beat the next level. It’s addicting to go through the motions of progressing in this game which is why I think it’s so appealing to speedrunning.
– Real player with 48.2 hrs in game
$20 for such a short game is fairly steep (1-3 hours with New Game+), so I can only recommend this game to anyone interested in speed running and gyro. I’d honestly put this game at $5 - $10 max regardless of it being a speed run game. The only reason I paid the full $20 was because of Flick Stick.
An issue I’ve seen brought up is that Flux (slow motion) is too strong. You can use it every time you throw the boomerang. This feels like it was balanced for New Game+ as enemy density basically forces you to constantly use it. Since there is a super meter in the game (Comet Mode), I think there is an obvious solution. Make it so taking out enemies not only fills Comet Mode but using Flux will also drain it. Since the game was made for speed running though, I don’t think any changes will be made to Flux.
– Real player with 21.8 hrs in game
Shadow Warrior 3
Fallen corporate shogun Lo Wang and his former employer turned nemesis turned sidekick Orochi Zilla embark on an improbable mission to recapture an ancient dragon they unwillingly unleashed from its eternal prison. Armed with a punishing mix of blades and bullets, Lo Wang must traverse uncharted parts of the world to track down the dark beast and push the apocalypse back yet again. All it will take is the mask of a dead god, a dragon’s egg, a touch of magic, and enough firepower to hold off the impending cataclysm.
Bring a Katana to a Gunfight
Conduct a symphony of death with each encounter by mixing overwhelming firepower with devastatingly precise katana strikes as you dash in and around the demonic hordes.
Fancy Footwork
Flow between nimble movement techniques including air dashes, wall running, double jumps, and the fancy new grappling hook busts your combat and movement options wide open in every battle.
Execute Then Annihilate
Execute spectacular finishing moves to claim a piece of your conquered foe and unleash its powers back on the horde in a burst of unstoppable fury and powerful magic.
Dynamic Combat Arenas
Each environment is lined with hazardous structures and devices that can be activated to add another layer of creative choice to the offensive strategy.
Neo Feudal Japan
Trek across a mythic Asian land infused with the magic and technology of ancient samurai, now overrun by the demonic yokai from Japanese folklore.
Funny Business
Brace for expertly delivered one-liners from Lo Wang, pointed banter with Zilla, and an intense thrillride of absurd predicaments on the way to turning doomsday into a new day.