Set five years after the events featured in the Polish PC game Shadow Warrior, Shadow Warrior 2 is a melee-oriented, first-person shooter that lets you once again control modern-day ninja Lo Wang, defending the earthly realm from a horde of demonic abominations. The Flying Wild Hog-developed Shadow Warrior 2 makes heavy use of movement and evasion to expand the scope of the original's combat, creating a FPS that looks and feels like a stylish, spectacle/action game. Shadow Warrior 2 is in development for PC, PlayStation 4£306.98 at Amazon UK, and Xbox One£299.99 at Amazon UK, and is scheduled for release later this year. Its price hasn't been announced yet. I got an early look at the game, and I'll share my thoughts below.
Bringing a Sword to a Gun Fight
Melee skills in first-person shooters are generally relegated to close-range knife attacks or gun-butts; they are effective, but straightforward and highly situational. Shadow Warrior 2 makes melee action a combat pillar, letting you switch between melee and projectile fire on the fly to suit the situation. In Shadow Warrior 2, each melee weapon has a combo that is your bread and butter offense. The demo I played featured dual swords and a pair of hand-claws that you can switch between on the fly. The swords are the better-rounded of the two weapon-types, offering good reach at the cost of speed. The claws have a much faster combo, but they deal less damage per strike and have less range.
View All The melee weapons also have special attacks that give you an advantage in combat. For example, the Iron Sight key, when combined with a directional input, performs one of three special attacks. Holding forward performs a lunging attack, holding back performs a retreating attack, and holding left or right initiates a spin attack. Each special has practical applications in battle, so they're all worth using liberally. The lunge is a great way to get into melee range while also dealing damage. The retreat attack is ideal when backing away from a target, as it deals good damage yet doesn't interrupt your back-stepping. The spin attack has a strong knockdown effect, so you can follow up with an easy combo to capitalize on an enemy's moment of weakness. I thoroughly enjoyed the special attack implementation, but I did have trouble getting the inputs to come out consistently. I suspect that the movement input for special attacks must be performed from a neutral stance, which can be tricky when you're constantly moving around enemies.
Discretion is for Chumps
The dash skill is the most radical ability in your arsenal. Lo Wang can dash in any direction to get in range for a melee barrage or evade an attacking enemy. This skill has no cooldown aside from a slight recovery animation, so you can use it liberally during battle to skip across the battlefield. This adds a tremendous amount of mobility to the already speedy movement in the game, and amps up the aggressiveness of combat considerably. For example, you can charge up a special attack and use the dash to dance around the field to get into range before unleashing the skill.
The game gives you access to a few support techniques to further spice up your attack arsenal. A healing spell lets you regenerate health during battle, making it easier to keep up your strength if you're overwhelmed. A ninja stealth spell renders Lo Wang invisible. The game screen's colors invert, and any enemy in the vicinity loses track of your position for a few seconds. Attacking while in stealth deals double damage to any enemy you strike. Lo Wang can also summon a demonic stalagmite to impale enemies in front of him. The spell deals great damage, and impaled enemies are incapacitated for a few seconds, leaving them vulnerable to gunfire or melee attacks.
