Review: Gunplay, randomized levels, crazy enemies make this "retro" game feel fresh.

Shadow Warrior: You either remember it as "another one of those Duke Nukem-y games from the '90s," or you worship at its altar thanks to memories of it being one of your earliest first-person shooter experiences. That memory probably wasn't swayed much by the series' 2013 reboot from Polish game developer Flying Wild Hog—a solid, budget-priced reimagining that neither reinvented the FPS wheel nor proved delightfully faithful to the original. It felt simultaneously too new and too old—a nostalgic rehash, not a nostalgic delight.

What a difference three years makes. Any surprise that the so-so reboot got a sequel will vanish as soon as you lay eyes on Shadow Warrior 2—the kind of game that the 2013 edition should have been in the first place. The baddies are bigger; the guns, swords, and launchers are more plentiful; the customization, loot, and crafting systems are hookier; and the giant battles take place in more colorful, wild levels that shine particularly well in co-op—especially if you help friends play through levels you've already beaten.

Party tricks, blood-and-guts style

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There's a plot in this game, allegedly, but I honestly couldn't tell you what's going on for much of Shadow Warrior 2. Series hero Lo Wang yammers endlessly with a number of the game's constant NPCs, including a wizened quest giver, a mob boss conduit, and a snarky young woman whose spirit is trapped in his brain. If you don't hit "skip" during a cut scene, you'll hear these characters yak for minutes at a time with a mix of confusing plot development details, stiff B-movie acting, and cheesy action-hero dialogue. It's a shame, because the game's cheesiest acting and funniest one-liners would be more of a gas if they weren't so obscured by endless, pointless chatter.

You can safely skip the chit-chat and follow a basic mission structure without worrying about why you, as ass-kicking samurai-for-hire Lo Wang, are so busy killing undead soldiers, hulking robots, and exploding bugs (though the in-mission banter between Wang and his spiritual advisor explains enough, and it's fun, to boot). Each mission takes place in a semi-random level. Certain enemy-wave patterns and physical level structures will appear every time you load a given mission, but many other elements, including how the full level is arranged, are randomly shuffled each time.

It's a nifty party trick, but not enough that Flying Hog Studios deserves high praise for making an "endlessly replayable" game. What you do in a given level doesn't change much just because a shrine has been moved or a path between mountainous crags has changed direction. Combat plays out pretty much the same when you revisit a level. The best trick, then, is how frenetic, fast, and fun Shadow Warrior 2 feels, fight after fight after fight.

Shadow Warrior 2 gets a lot of little things right in its bloody encounters. First off, the weapons. Players can eventually unlock over 60 melee and projectile weapons, and while these can be broken down into about ten distinct categories, they each come to life with wild designs, distinct power-speed-and-spread balances, and unique superpowered twists. For example, there's a few versions of the "two small blades, one for each hand" weapon, but one of them is a pair of blood-stained bones that randomly, magically transforms foes into little rabbits if you're lucky.

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Weapon classes like shotguns, grenade launchers, pistols, and katana swords come by default in quite a few interesting flavors, which you can embolden further with the game's primary loot system of gems. Each weapon accepts up to three gems, and these bolster a number of stats depending on their color and type. The result is essentially a make-your-own-weapon twist on the Borderlands series' wild guns. Want to layer electric damage, increase the clip size, or add an extra barrel to any weapon? If you find the right gems, you can upgrade however you please. This is also the rare weapon-crafting game where players can freely undo their customizations and redo them in different combinations, with no penalty. (There's a whole 'nother upgrade system to emphasize certain mechanics, such as health, magic meters, and weapon-specific boosts, but the gun one is more fun to toy with.)

You never have to get rid of guns, but you're limited to a total of eight during live gameplay, which you can switch to using a weapon-wheel interface. Here's where things get fun: Shadow Warrior 2 doles out just enough ammunition in a given level so that players can expect to run their ammo counts down in normal difficulty or higher. The only way to kill an average mission's foes is to constantly swipe through your weapon-wheel inventory, always swapping through a variety of weapons that all feel powerful and fun in different ways.

Seven games’ enemies in one?

Like in the reboot, melee weapons handle well enough so players can feel pretty badass without burning through ammo in certain scenarios. The game's gore- and guts-rendering systems is even more brutal than last time, and slicing motions for certain weapons (especially the chainsaw) are intentionally and comically slow and drawn-out. (In short, they're naaaasty.) But as missions get tougher, enemy waves start to include specific enemies whose area-of-effect attacks counteract any over-reliance on melee weapons. These do a good job of organically forcing players to keep swiping through the weapon wheel.

Enemies continually feel fresh, even as they stylistically clash with each other. Human mobsters, exploding mushroom-things with feet, laser-emitting drones, hook-throwing medieval knights, cyborg samurai: each enemy looks like something from a completely different game, but since they offset each other's specialties and make each wave of enemies interesting, it's hard to complain. Your foes' attack-and-retreat motions, verticality, melee swipes, projectile blasts, and flanking maneuvers might all feel simple in isolation, but Shadow Warrior 2 sets up good enemy mixes within cleanly structured battle arenas.

All of this content cranks at a blistering refresh rate at very high visual settings on a moderate gaming PC, thanks to Flying Wild Hog's proprietary engine. The game's exploding enemies and constant gibs aren't quite on par with Killing Floor 2 (which I still rank as the industry's most visually grotesque shooter), but it's damn near close, which is worth noting, considering how unabashedly violent this throwback game is. To FWH's credit, the engine doesn't break a sweat rendering SW2's massive, open-aired levels. Every level in the game drips with gorgeous volumetric lighting effects, sprawling draw distances, intense weather effects, and sharp material-based shading.

That's crucial, because combat always feels fast, exciting, and—thanks to how these levels look—exotic. You'll want friends along for the kills whenever possible, and four-player co-op works quite well. Players can easily team up and earn their own boosts and weapons, with individual loot appearing in each player's instance. Sadly, campaign progress in my testing was locked to the session host; I'm not sure if that's how the final game works or if that was an issue with the "beta" multiplayer mode on offer (which also seemed to suffer from voice-chat issues before its retail launch).

Whether you play alone or with friends, you're in for a brutal ride, one that adheres to the old '90s standard of health packs, pickups, and other powers needed to recharge health as opposed to an auto-healing system. There's still a slightly modern compromise in the way death is handled, though: If you die mid-mission, you come back to life immediately. Any enemies you killed before your own death remain dead, and you're penalized some in-game currency.

After my tests, I felt like this was a solid compromise to punish sloppy play while still keeping players locked into the high-speed, high-octane action. It ends up working much better than freezing the action for a progress-halting reload, and I'd love to see other shooters steal this convention.

This? Or Doom?

I was already delighted enough to see one crazy-surprising '90s shooter reboot this year, but now I'm lucky enough to have two of that type of game in 2016. Like May's incredible Doom campaign, Shadow Warrior 2 applies subtle, modern tweaks to a known formula, adds entirely new systems to good effect, and polishes the whole thing to a blinding shine.

I'd feel silly to pick a favorite here. Doom 2016 is so good. Shadow Warrior 2 does win out in at least one obvious way: by doubling down on its campaign content with an explosive, easy-to-replay co-op boost instead of expending energy on a superfluous versus mode. If you're more interested in the most raw, thrilling single-player shooter of the year, Doom wins out narrowly. If you like the sound of that sort of game but really want it in co-op, lean toward Shadow Warrior 2. And if you're a true badass, get 'em both.

The good:

•Dozens of distinct-feeling weapons only get better thanks to a well-thought-out loot and gem system
•Enemies all look like they're from different games, but they come together where it counts: in delivering incredible, frenetic firefights where each enemy complements its gnarly peers
•Beautiful in-house visual engine makes giant levels look exotic and nasty weapons blow up real good
•"Randomly generated" levels are predictable enough, but they still consistently make for amazing battle set pieces
•Multiplayer co-op just screams, man

The bad:

•Forgettable plot and overlong dialogue bury a few awesomely cheesy moments
•Lo Wang dances on the edge of dated Asian stereotypes for a few jokes' sake (but backs off, thankfully)
•Hopefully, a few pre-launch co-op mode snags get patched soon

The ugly:

•People who assume this will be as forgettable as the last Shadow Warrior reboot and miss out on a surprisingly good romp

Bottom line: Don't expect an FPS reinvention by any stretch, but buy it for plenty of big, dumb fun