Shadow Warrior 3 Review – Xbox Series X

Those with a taste of the overly dramatic in their first-person shooters will be familiar with the Shadow Warrior series.

This sequel from Flying Hog Studios continues the adventures of Lo Wang, amping up the action, the stakes and the corny quips in equal measure.

Is the third time a charm? Let’s dive in and find out in our Shadow Warrior 3 review, on the Xbox Series X.

 

 

Shadow Warrior 3 is almost refreshing in its clarity of purpose – fight all manner of mangled, arcane and fantastical monsters and win.

You’re quickly thrust into an array of fiendishly designed combat arenas, lavished with a variety of weapons, and set loose.

Meanwhile, the game keeps you entertained with a constant play-by-play verbal commentary from our hero, Lo Wang. His jokes, slang and pithy put-downs certainly set the tone for the anarchic proceedings throughout.

Perhaps not to everyone’s tastes, but this unique brand of humour is a mainstay for the franchise, and is really cranked to 11 in this instalment.

Continuing with the story of Lo Wang’s interdimensional adventures, the game starts with a small (actually, pretty massive) showdown. In an interesting turn of events, Lo Wang is now in cahoots with his former nemesis Orochi Zilla.

Both of them are now fighting for the same cause, defeating the huge world-eating dragon and preventing it from destroying the Earth.

An erroneous teleportation sends Orochi into the demonic world however, with Lo Wang now needing to defeat them by himself in order to secure the portal gate.

Think Doom by way of Big Trouble in Little China, and you’re most of the way there – tongue firmly in cheek, and viscera liberally scattered through its (admittedly brief) playtime.

 

 

Shadow Warrior 3 has a strong visual sense of style from the outset, and the graphics are coupled with an incredible soundtrack to keep the manic momentum going.

With non-stop fast-paced running, combat and item discovery, Shadow Warrior 3 is pretty engrossing for the first few hours, but rinse-and-repeat enemy types are made more fun to dispatch with an ever-expanding arsenal.

The overall gameplay leads with Lo Wang going forward in a (refreshingly) linear fashion, encountering new demons with advanced gadgets. You only get to choose a different lane to find new upgrade orbs that may help in developing new power abilities to kill enemies.

 

 

The game thankfully doesn’t outstay its welcome, ramping up in terms of difficulty and requiring tactical handling of foes in its closing stages to keep things interesting.

Our protagonist has all manner of precise movements including wall-running, sliding double-jump, grappling, and propelling himself with hanging loops to navigate the combat zones – more shades of Doom here too.

If you lean heavily into the intentionally hokey story and dialogue, enjoy a shooter with a bit of bite, and an experience that refines rather than revolutionises the FPS genre, Shadow Warrior 3 is a fine effort with flashes of excellence.