RGB Classic Games Forum

Feel free to rate and discuss this game.

Never liked this one a lot. It seems like nothing more than Duke Nukem 3D revised. It's as if it was nothing more than a big joke to 3DR when they made this game, I can't take it seriously at all. It seems rushed and unfinished. No fun here. Pass.

Well George Broussard doesn't want to continue the series as the sudden drop of solemnness for 'cliche attitude' really killed the game. The game was also a memory hog (16mb of RAM won't even cut it for this when explosions go off). I wasn't fond of the stereotypes so much, which i found rather offensive (I am Chinese BTW)

I do like the vehicle/turret bits and arsenal though, probably the only redeeming value of the game.

I grew bored of Shadow Warrior pretty quickly, but I've never been a huge FPS fan.

As far as stereotypes and jokes at the expense of Asians and Asian culture, that's probably something we need to be more sensitive about. I still get a great deal of enjoyment out of watching The Muppet Show, and one of my favorite characters is the Swedish Chef. He's this funny looking guy shouting "oingy boingy!" while the food he's preparing tries to escape or attack him. I can only hope that people of Swedish-descent aren't offended (he's called the German Chef in Sweden), but the point is to entertain rather than to suggest that people from other countries are comical or less intelligent than we are.

In the same vein, I like to give Apogee the benefit of the doubt that their purpose was only to entertain, and that it was more of an homage to Asian culture and its influence on America than an attempt to reinforce stereotypes or ridicule Asian people. I think the West gained an enormous appreciation for Asian culture when martial arts movies became popular in the 1960s and 70s, and again when anime started to take off in the 80s. I've long respected China's ancient history and philosophy, and have been a student of the Sun Tzu and Tao Te Ching. I also took kung fu a few years ago. Everything from Confucian wisdom to acupuncture have become part of everyday life in the West, which is part of what makes it fun to play on stereotypes that we all know are fallacious.

I'd say Shadow Warrior is pretty average (or slightly above average), but it has enough pros to make it an enjoyable game. The Build engine got a few neat upgrades compared to Duke Nukem 3D, like voxel models for item pickups, transparent water and more realistic underwater movement (with inertia), air and boss health meters, drivable vehicles and stationary mounted guns that can be used by the player, alternate firing modes for most weapons, gun shells staying on the ground etc. etc. Still, it turned out to be not enough to make a real competition for Quake, although personally, I believe that Duke was right "[not to be] afraid of no quake" The levels are quite large and well designed, and the weapons diverse (even though some of the more exotic weapons are weird). The enemies are a bit more boring, with a noticeable amount of palette swapping, and some feel rather out of place (like the three varieties of the giant gorilla).

As for the story and character design, the developers quite obviously went for exploiting various Asian-related cliché's much like Duke humoured out macho type cliché's. Yet the instances when the devs did not do the research are quite plentiful, and Lo Wang's humour often balances on the verge of vulgarity, if not crosses the line a couple of times.

At the web.archive.org's copy of 3drealms.com from 1996, you can still find the old Shadow Warrior page and the weekly development updates with screenshots:
Shadow Warrior - Coming from 3D Realms
Shadow Warrior Development Update - Mar '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - Apr '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - May '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - June '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - July '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - August '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - September '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - October '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - November '96
Shadow Warrior Development Update - December '96

The storyline was supposed to be quite different, and so were some of the enemies, the main character's appearance, and weapons, which included a wrist blade and a crossbow, while the riot gun's sprite seems to have been used for a Gatling type machine gun.

There are also official pre-release screenshots of Shadow Warrior, some in high resolution:
Hocus Pocus Preview Slideshow (has two early Shadow Warrior screenshots)
Duke Nukem 3D & Shadow Warrior Preview Slideshow
Shadow Warrior Preview Slideshow
Screenshots from the Duke Nukem 3D v1.3D CD
Screenshots from the Duke Nukem 3D v1.5W CD
A modern compilation of screenshots taken from various sources

There's also the leaked beta (v0.90) of the game, which contains quite a few media (tiles, actor graphics, sound effects and even two MIDI music tracks by Lee Jackson) that were cut from the final release of the game. Since I haven't figured out the forum policy regarding the discussion of leaked material here, I don't post the link right now, but there's a site by Hendriks266 who put out all the beta media for preview.

Suddenly I realized how Shadow Warrior map designers seem to have developed a serious liking for bottomless pits compared to Duke Nukem 3D. Sure, Duke3D has deep chasms and high towers and all, but I don't think I can recall a single level with real bottomless pits there (correct me if I'm wrong please!). Conversely, Shadow Warrior has some levels that involve a lot of jumping over and around exactly such obstacles. I remember playing level 3 for the first time and getting so nervous about those pits I switched to the animated map's full top-down view, turned follow mode on and played through the jumping part like that (actually I think the top-down view helped a bit to jump from one narrow platform to another).

I really like Shadow Warrior, a comparision:

• Wolfenstein 3D was great because... well there was nothing else for a while. But all those similar mazes; it gets tedious.
• Doom I & II has nice gameplay (like monster infighting), but most level design is abstract. And when map designers try to depict a human structure, the game does not have sufficient resources to make it convincing.
• Dark Forces was great at first, but the later levels are too maze-like, and too large; it gets tedious.
• Duke Nukem 3D was fun. No real complaints.
• Quake is like a tech demo, great engine for sure. But the level design is abstract again, has a boring palette and the game lacks the fun of Doom.
• System Shock was awesome in its own way. I don't feel like comparing it to the other games mentioned here.
• Shadow Warrior - The weapons are fun and you have to use different ones to spread the ammo usage. The grenade launcher is my favorite, it allows you to use the walls to deflect the grenade around a corner and such. The enemies vary: they can be nice fodder, but can also become a little annoying. Many maps are awesome. I love how they succeeded in depicting different real life locations. Shadow Warrior has room over room support. It works very well and allows for major level design features that were lacking in Doom and Duke 3D. The speech is funny to me, but I suppose it is not for everyone. When I played Duke Nukem 3D again afterwards it felt like a step back.

gerwin wrote:When I played Duke Nukem 3D again afterwards it felt like a step back.[/list]

I don't know, I never had any impression that Shadow Warrior excelled Duke3D in any respect. SW does place a greater emphasis on the use of explosives, and enemies are tougher but somehow Duke3D feels more balanced to me.

Shadow Warrior turned 20 last week. Here's Joe Siegler's blog entry about it:
http://joesiegler.blog/2017/05/shadow-warrior-turns-20/