Game of the week: Shadow Warrior 2

Welcome to a new featured piece - “Game of the week”. We are going to introduce you to a new or old game on a weekly basis, I guess you got it from the name of the article. Each "Game of the week" is a high-quality title that sells at a discount. This week Shadow Warrior 2 sells 60% off the regular price.

Developer: Flying Wild Hog
Year of Release: 2016
Regular Price: $10,31 ($13,25 for Deluxe Edition)
Current Price: $4,12 ($5,30 for Deluxe Edition)
Store link (GoG)

Shadow Warrior 2 is a perfect game to have a blast in a single-player mode or with friends. It’s a shooter/slasher game a with co-op mode and brings roughly 15 hours of the main campaign plus many more hours across 3 DLCs.

You can call this game a Borderlands 2 but bloodier and with a lot of dick jokes. It also might appeal to the fans of Dying Light with its own elements of parkour and a wide selection of weapon types, including swords and bows.

Developers of Shadow Warrior 2 took a really good care of the combat system which rewards melee attacks and forces you to jump into the thick of things, instead of kiting the enemies to the edge of the map.

Dashing forward and drawing a sword triggers an instant attack animation, so you don’t feel penalized for switching to melee. Swords and chainsaws allow you to quickly cut chunks from your enemy which is both effective and extremely satisfying. In some instances, you can even slice off enemies’ weapon holding arm, rendering it harmless.

RPG system allows players to specialize in certain types of tactics, which can lead to interesting setups in Co-op play.

The game has many difficulty levels that pose a challenge even to experienced FPS and RPG players. The difficulty system in combination with Co-op and slightly randomized spawns offer a lot of replayability. Even if you don’t plan to play the game more than once, Shadow Warrior 2 will make a good weekend for a very low price.

Loot and “socket” system

Shadow Warrior 2 contains about a hundred weapons, that drop from enemies, are rewarded for finishing quests and can be bought from vendors.

Most often dead enemies drop upgrades which can be inserted in the weapon sockets. Those upgrades may add elemental effects, improve critical strike rate, give life leech or completely change the nature of the weapon. For example, there is a way to turn a gun into a turret that if dropped automatically attacks enemies.

History of Shadow Warrior game series

The original Shadow Warrior FPS was produced for PC by 3D Realms back in 1997. The developers used an improved version of the Duke Nukem 3D engine. In 2005 3D Realms released the source code of the game and later made it FTP. In 2013 Flying Wild Hog announced that they would reboot the franchise and released the first title of the new series.

About the Developer: Flying Wild Hog is a Polish game studio founded in 2009 by a trio of enthusiasts. The Shadow Warrior is the most famous franchise of the studio, although they also produced a positively received shooter called Hard Reset and a platformer called JUJU. The company developed its own Road Hog Engine, designed to support advanced physics on modern platforms.