[MrAdidaKing]

This post is strictly opinion: (take it with a grain of salt)


Well I have been playing through the first few levels for the first time ever and needless to say I am disappointed. I can see now why Shadow Warrior did not sell well.


The game was not as fun or as cool as I thought it would be. The level design is confusing and boring. The game play is tedious and not gratifying.

One thing that has been bothering me the most is the fact that the graphics are not as good as DN3D. Overall imo the game is not as polished or as cool looking as DN3D. I understand the game is NOT DN3D but I STILL to this day marvel at how polished DN3D is... and after playing shadow warrior it seems to me that the game was done half assed.

Now I am sorry to those fans of the game I mean no disrespect. I just think the game is lacking many things . I wish that I did like it. I wanted to like it. I just can't get into it.

[Another Duke Fan]

I love SW.

[supergoofy]

Shadow Warrior and SWP forums will continue here: http://www.jonof.id.....php?board=13.0

[laffer]

I agree Shadow Warrior is nowhere near as good as Duke 3D, but it's still a highly enjoyable game.

It does seem to lack some polish here and there, it's a bit muddy at times and the palette is a bit dull.
Also, I seem to remember the level design can be a bit confusing and sometimes it's hard to figure out what to do next.

But overall, it's a great game with lots of personality, cool weapons, great (CD audio) music... I enjoyed it a lot.

[Jimmy]

supergoofy, on May 9 2009, 03:30 PM, said:

Shadow Warrior and SWP forums will continue here: http://www.jonof.id.....php?board=13.0

Why?
I think it makes more sense to keep the Duke and SW communities in the same spot, since there are a lot of the same players.

I love Shadow Warrior too. My only qualm with it was that it's very weak modding capabilities held it back from being a huge hit.

[Master Fibbles]

SW had the same quality of modding abilities. Just people were still busy playing Duke 3D to bother with SW. They both came on a whole CD!! That is freaking huge man!

[Sangman]

Perhaps he's referring to the absence of CONs. (I guess they're in the GRP file or there's a different kind of coding mechanism behind SW, not sure, never bothered to check)

[Master Fibbles]

hmm, I haven't checked in a while either. I assumed there are CONS in SW since it is the same engine etc. That would be kind of a bad move if it was lacking CON coding.

[Parkar]

It is lacking con coding. All game play code is in the source and compiled into the exe file. But since the source is now released it's just as moddable as Duke is. Some would probably even consider it easier to work with then having to mess with con code.

[supergoofy]

there is the SWCUSTOM.TXT

but I don't know how much code can you change with it

normally SWCUSTOM.TXT works fine for changing the episodes/maps. but can you do more with it?

[Jimmy]

You cant do much more than change a few names, like episodes, maps, items, weapons, and some variables like ammo.

[Hendricks266]

From what ProAsm has said, messing with the SW source is a bitch.

BTW, Hendricks266's SW Beta Analysis

[Geoffrey]

Not as polished? I'd say SW is more polished than Duke (the same way Blood was) - which makes it less mod-able since every movement, screenshake and ambience sound screams 'this is SW'. If you've played some random Half Life mod for Doom2 then you'll know the feeling - you can change what you want but it's still Doom. The same with Prey. This usually makes games great as a whole but kills (or at least has a strong impact on) mod support.

Uh long story short Shadow Warrior is awesome - especially in Deathmatch.

[Mikko]

I have played the game (from start to finish) maybe only two times after the phase of initial enthusiasm in 1998. I have always been impressed at how fun the game is and how many kick-ass levels it has.

But maybe it's because I got my hands on it only after Quake and Quake 2 that I never approached the game as something I'd like to play often. Or maybe I got frustrated when you couldn't even make doors the way they were done in Duke Build..

[spongefreddie]

Geoffrey, on May 17 2009, 08:08 AM, said:

Not as polished? I'd say SW is more polished than Duke (the same way Blood was) - which makes it less mod-able since every movement, screenshake and ambience sound screams 'this is SW'. If you've played some random Half Life mod for Doom2 then you'll know the feeling - you can change what you want but it's still Doom. The same with Prey. This usually makes games great as a whole but kills (or at least has a strong impact on) mod support.

Uh long story short Shadow Warrior is awesome - especially in Deathmatch.

Ooh, Blood... now THAT was a game!

Nicolas
7162.com

[Hellbound]

For me:

Blood > Shadow Warrior > Duke Nukem 3d

[NNC]

Shadow Warrior is a wonderful game, but it never got the attention and respect that Duke got. Actually, it is more polished and had more features than Duke. The level design is also twenty miles better than in original Duke, where many stages, especially in E3 look rushed and unfinished. Unfortunately there was only one notable mod for SW (Wanton Destruction, which was mostly great).

What Geoffrey said was right however. Since it's very polished, has the "perfect" levels (including the WD), has the central theme (asian stuff), what else the game can offer? It's not moddable, because everything in it is anchored by the central theme.

Shadow Warrior should be considered as the best TC for Duke Nukem 3D I guess.

[Jimmy]

I feel everything in SW was well polished except the visual style. It was very mishmash.

[Jinroh]

I recently played through SW and beat it again, and I enjoyed it a lot of cool stuff. Sector Tricks and vehicles were nice. Not as good as Blood, but still up there.

The art was meh IMO the enemies were blah...didn't really care for any of them. The "Anime Girls" and Lo Wang were funny so I guess that made up for it. No reference to "867-5309" though. ^o^

Fighting that Snake Boss guy too many times got a little old too cuz he'd pop up just like randomly. >_> The level design was nice and the expansions have some great levels too. I like one I played with a crashed plane that looked nice.

[Evil Ash]

My favourite thing about Shadow Warrior was making custom maps with custom vehicles. I'd make giant race levels, or robot battle levels. I once made a map that was a massive dungeon the player had to navigate to escape, full of traps. But I duplicated it and used that 'SE' feature in Shadow Warrior that duplicated the player sprite in another sector. Essential the dungeon MASTER would play in a version of the Dungeon full of extra rooms and windows with switches to activate traps - while the player played in the version without - but they could both see eachother (unless the DM was in the hidden zones) but not shoot eachother.

At the end I made a 'boss' as a remote controlled vehicle for the DM to control...

Anyways my point is mapping in SW was freaking fun and awesome and my most creative maps come from it... but I agree DN3D played as a better single player experience.

[Jinroh]

Any awesome maps you can give to us? Love to play some new SW maps.

Just in case there are no people on the outside reading this thread who know of Yves Bresson's maps check here for some great maps. Park and When I Was Young are ace.
http://freexbresse.f...adow/index.html

[Stabs]

I made some maps for shadow warrior ages ago that you mite find entertaining

this pack contains

50 Shells in Hell 1 & 2
Tribute to Action 1
You a whose army

probably recommend them in that order

 DANMMAPS.rar (343.08K)
Number of downloads: 226

[Jinroh]

Thanks DanM I'll check them out.

[Evil Ash]

I never delete anything. I'll see if I can dig up my old maps. Don't know why I never uploaded them or anything...

I was never active in any online gaming communities until recently, haha.

[Jinroh]

Sounds good EA Can't wait to try them out, thanks.

[Mark]

I loaded the TTA map. Looks cool. Lots of detail to light and shadow. Plus I got to see how some of my HRP textures look in a user made map. I really like the way you used a curved front face for the soda machine. Little things like that set it apart from the others. Unfinished map but definately cool.

[Zaxtor]

Maybe SW was underrated but it has nice graphics, special effects.
That boat getting sucked into a water tornado was very awsome.

I liked it da game.

[Micky C]

I think they should have made more use of the turrets and vehicles in shadow warrior. Imagine having a usable turret which fired exploding bullets in the bunker in "going postal"

I liked Duke a lot better than shadow warrior, probably because of the general tone: alien/sci-fi vs asian/random evil things, yeah I go with the first one.

[TerminX]

By all accounts, Shadow Warrior should have been a better game than Duke 3D... but it wasn't. It has higher res art, it's using arguably much better written code, it was developed for a year after Duke, it had much more advanced effects, et cetera. Maybe it's flaw is just how hard it tried to be Duke 3D, combined with the subject matter not being as interesting or as coherent... who knows.

[blackharted]

TX, on Jul 6 2010, 03:26 AM, said:

By all accounts, Shadow Warrior should have been a better game than Duke 3D... but it wasn't. It has higher res art, it's using arguably much better written code, it was developed for a year after Duke, it had much more advanced effects, et cetera. Maybe it's flaw is just how hard it tried to be Duke 3D, combined with the subject matter not being as interesting or as coherent... who knows.

You know i agree with every word of that.