It’s likely many who enjoy first-person action video games remember Shadow Warrior: an over the top, colorful shooter game which released on PC in 2013. A console version followed and also became a hit, letting console gamers enjoy the adventures of larger than life action hero Lo Wang.
It’s 2016 sequel Shadow Warrior 2 was also popular but did not quite reach the heights of the original due to its increased focus on role-playing elements, so-so story and disappointing randomly generated levels.
But now the people behind the series (Polish developer Flying Wild Hog) will have a chance to make up for the pitfalls of the sequel and also get new players on board with Shadow Warrior 3, the recently announced third entry in the series. A self-conscious, humorous teaser trailer gave us a glimpse of the next Shadow Warrior game this week.
Yes, wisecracking action hero Lo Wang is returning in another game, the plot of which appears to be as outlandish as that of the earlier games. This is because in this third Shadow Warrior game Wang will be teaming up with former boss Orochi Zilla to take down a dragon and hunt for several mystical items in the game’s “neo feudal” Japanese setting, in order to prevent the apocalypse…
Of course, given that this is a Shadow Warrior game it is expected to feature fast-paced, gory action, something which appears to be the case judging by the gameplay trailer below.
This gameplay trailer also highlights the game’s free-running movement, with Lo Wang being able to “wall run” like in a Prince of Persia game, while he also has a grappling hook which lets him move around quickly in the game world.
Wang can also slice and dice monsters with his blades (and things get bloody enough here when he does), and he also gets to blast monsters to kingdom come with a bad-ass shotgun which could have come straight out of Doom Eternal. Actually, like in Bethesda’s top first-person shooter, Wang can also execute gory finishing moves akin to that game’s “Glory Kills”.
It all looks very good too, thanks to the latest version of Flying Wild Hog’s proprietary 3D engine, with the game boasting very detailed, colorful environments and characters as seen in the trailer. Hopefully, the final game will look just as good, while not being overly demanding when it comes to hardware when it launches for PC sometime in 2021. And taking into account both the original game and the sequel were released for consoles, it’s almost a certainty this Shadow Warrior game will come to PlayStation and Xbox in the future too, so this is a game fans of first-person shooters will definitely want to keep on their radar.