Asking for the third time now: You want some Wang?
"All it will take is the mask of a dead god, a dragon's egg, a touch of magic, and enough firepower to hold off the impending cataclysm."
— from the game's sales pitch on Steam
Shadow Warrior 3 is a First-Person Shooter, and the third installment of Flying Wild Hog's reboot of the 1997 first-person shooter, which was released on 1 March 2022 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
After his disastrous odyssey involving an ancient talisman, a lusty goddess, hordes of demons and being eaten by a dragon, the former Corporate Samurai Lo Wang returns, with his former employer turned nemesis turned frenemy Orochi Zilla in tow, as the two try to stop the apocalyptic beast.
The press releases describe the game as a return to more linear, less RPG-like gameplay model of the first reboot
, and the gameplay reveal depicts a more acrobatic navigation not unlike Mirror's Edge, with finishing moves akin to Doom Eternal.
Trailers
- Teaser
- Gameplay: Way to Motoko - Way to Motoko (Full 17 minutes) - Trailer 2
- Sneak peeks: Motoko Thunderdome - Doomsday Device - That Damn Dam
- Showcases: Enemies - Weapons
- Delay 2022
- Release date trailer
This game shows examples of:
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- While the parkour/jumping sections appear fairly intimidating, they are considerably less difficult than, for example, in DoomEternal - Lo Wang sticks to vines automatically, grappling hook rings are easy to target, and the hardest moments have convenient slow-mo turned on.
- Ammo and health are automatically replenished after each battle, and ammo is also provided on the way to shooting obstacles.
- Asian and Nerdy: Lo Wang, starting the gameplay reveal by attempting a Seinfeldian Conversation with Zilla about dragons and spaceships.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Release Date trailer ends with a "Massive F'ing Dragon" that emerges from the cliff of the area Wang, Motoko and Orochi Zilla are fighting in. Sure enough, it's positively massive. In fact, it's one of the largest creatures even seen in FPS games, being bigger than some of the game's LEVELS. It has mountains on its back, and half-digested cities in its stomach.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Most Gore Weapons are not exactly the
Game-Breaker you'd expect them to be, but Penetrator is so lackluster it can count as a Power-Up Letdown. It works only in melee, is useful against only larger enemies and messes up Lo Wang's controls so it's easy enough to fall into a Bottomless Pit if you miss the enemy by an inch. - Bait-and-Switch: The "Way to Motoko" gameplay trailer, as well as the "Motoko Thunderdome" level showcase trailer hinted at Motoko as a place rather than a person. In the Release Date trailer, Motoko turns out to be... a snarky, white facepainted "Overpowered God-Tier Witch".
- Barehanded Blade Block: Performing a finisher on a Hattori has Wang stop it from slicing him in half by grabbing the oncoming blade with his hands, before wrenching the sword from the monster's grasp and beheading it.
- Bittersweet Ending: Despite destroying the dragon once and for all and prevented the world from being completely destroyed, it is far off to say a true happy ending. Hoji is now mortal. Zilla, who at the time of the second game basically the only known authority figure for humanity, lost all his fortune. The worst of all? Around half the planet was destroyed.
- Blatant Item Placement: Played for Laughs in the Release Date trailer, where Wang shoots at a "Questionably placed exploding barrel".
- Boring, but Practical:
- Using a Finisher on a Shokai (the game's weakest enemy) doesn't give you any fancy Gore Weapons but instead instantly replenishes health and boosts it up to 200 (or 225 with an upgrade).
- The Equalizer deals simple melee damage, but is very good at it. Ripping one off an Oni Hanma usually lets you pulverize 2-3 more Oni Hanma with ease.
- By Wall That Is Holey: The gameplay reveal ends with the walls of Kumo Brotherhood's sanctuary falling apart around Lo Wang... but the gate still standing.
- Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: In the gameplay reveal, Zilla bears a resemblance to a white-haired, bearded Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa.
- Cool Mask: Lo Wang wears the mask of his deceased demon best friend Hoji and pulls it off surprisingly well.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Being killed in battle and falling down pits usually won't set you back too far. They'll just restart the encounter or respawn you nearby after a second or two.
- Denser and Wackier: The gameplay reveal features as much gore, enemy-juggling and one-liners as the previous installments, but the enemy designs, compared to the more visceral, Body Horror-addled beasts of the previous game, are much more stylized and offbeat, like a firework-spewing, concertina-bodied Villainous Harlequin called Slinky Jakku. In general, the game is considerably less serious than all previous ones, has truly bizzare monsters and levels, and feels like more of something closer to PostalBrainDamaged equivalent than a part of the franchise.
- Double Entendre: The name of the first boss: Ancient Cock. Taken even further after defeating the boss. After Wang captures one of its eggs and lets it hatch in a hot spring, Hoji is revived with a naked bathing Wang in front of him. What does Hoji do? While not hugging, he shakes Lo Wang's hand and "looks down".
- Double Jump: One of the feats shown in the long version of the "Way to Motoko" trailer is Wang's ability to do an extra jump at the highest point of a previous jump.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Lo Wang has grown his hair back out from the shave that he got in the first game. Apparently if he gets too angry, he loses his hair.
- Enemy Mine: Literally, everyone up until the end. Yes, even the revived Hoji who revealed his true intentions which failed. At nearly the end of the game, Lo Wang, Zilla, Motoko, and the revived Hoji finally worked together.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Played straighter than straight with the Evildoing Dragon. Averted with all regular enemies who have exotic Japanese names, but actually subverted as a Bilingual Bonus (for example, "Kugutsu" means "puppet" and "Mogura" means "mole"). Played straight for laughs with the Ancient Cock who is a giant demonic chicken.
- Fan Disservice: Played with Hoji wearing a mask almost the entire time. The moment he takes off his mask, the main characters look the other way around in disgust.
- Finishing Move: A newly-added mechanic for this game. As Wang kills enemies, segments of a bar will fill. Once full, Wang can consume one segment (or several, depending on the enemy's size) to instantly kill whatever he's looking at, along with getting a unique temporary weapon to use.
- Guns Akimbo: The Gassy Obariyon wields two miniguns. And if a finisher is performed on it, Wang can use them for himself.
- Ground Pound: As shown in the long version of the "Way to Motoko" trailer, the Oni Hanma's Gore Weapon is a huge hammer that allows Wang to unleash a powerful AoE ground attack that destroys low-tier enemies nearby.
- Heel–Face Turn: Orochi Zilla make a full one here after doing it in the end of the previous game.
- Helpful Mook:
- Explosive Shokai always come in large numbers, are very easy to kill and drop huge amounts of Finisher energy. A wave of them is less of a danger or even a nuisance, and more of a full refill of the Finisher meter.
- Chief Oboru Guruma, despite his scary looks, is mostly harmless and only drops landmines that can be shot and used as an equivalent of exploding barrels to damage other enemies.
- Any enemy can qualify when killed with a Finisher to get an instant heal and/or a useful Gore Weapon.
- I Love the Dead: Played for laughs. Lo Wang manages to grab a hanging corpse during one his jumps, pressing face next to its crotch (and being heavily disgusted), at which point romantic music plays. Later, he nearly evades another corpse, and the same music plays again.
- The Klutz: Every time Oni Hanma shows up in the gameplay reveal, they wind up in a pratfall of some kind, either slamming face-first into a gate or slipping off a pagoda roof.
- Last Chance Hit Point: Lo Wang will reach 1 HP when taking enough damage to enemies and slow down time. Once he takes the final hit, he dies.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Lampshaded by Lo Wang when he can't even identify what blood belongs to who.
- Macross Missile Massacre: As shown in the long version of the "Way to Motoko" trailer, one of the Slinky Jakku's attacks involves a shower of missiles disguised as fireworks. Its Gore Weapon involves Wang using its internal mechanisms in order to shoot a barrage of unguided missiles.
- Mook Debut Cutscene: The long version of the "Way to Motoko" trailer showcases cutscenes for the Yoriki, Kugutsu, Slinky Jakku, Hattori, Oni Hanma and Mogura Twins.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Hoji trying to capture the dragon like many years ago. He sought to become the only God around with his siblings dead, but he ended up miscalculating the energy needed. The result? One destroyed Chi Cannon and one majorly pissed-off dragon bent on freezing the entire planet.
- New Weapon Target Range:
- As seen in the long version of the "Way to Motoko" trailer, there's a section where Lo Wang acquires a grappling hook device that allows him to latch onto certain objects and traverse death pits and other obstacles. The path forwards contains lots of these objects, complete with Wang quoting the Spider-Man theme.
- Also from the long version of "Way to Motoko", after defeating the Slinky Jakku and obtaining its Gore Weapon, the arena begins to fill with low-tier enemies which the Jakku's Gore Weapon can dispatch with ease.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Carries on like the last 2 games. Played with because of the amount of times they say for Lo Wang to not fuck it up.
- Like the previous game's beginning where Lo Wang stated that he fucked up the world after rescuing it, the same applies here, with accidentally unleashing a destructive dragon that is causing a lot of ruin in the world.
- Lo Wang stopping the sacrificial ritual of Hoji. Had this succeeded, it might have destroyed the dragon at the cost of a revived Hoji's life. Instead, Lo Wang decides to steal the mask and run away.
- Lo Wang even trusting Hoji when the latter was about to unleash his ultimate weapon against the dragon and secretly capture it on purpose to steal the dragon's power to become the ultimate god. Hoji miscalculated and made the dragon much angrier and causing even more destruction. Lo Wang regrets this and Zilla even warned about not trusting Hoji's mental instability from the start.
- No-Sell:
- The Evildoing Dragon keeps shrugging off everything it is hit with, no matter how destructive. It takes a direct voyage to its heart it kill the monster.
- Bunny Demons are immune to Finishers, making them some of the most annoying enemies.
- Out of Focus: Kamiko, Lo Wang's partner in the previous game. In the previous game, her spirit was sacrificed to seal the realm gates, assumed to take form of the ancient dragon that "swallowed" Lo Wang. In this game, her name was not even mentioned once nor referenced. Then again, neither Lo Wang nor Zilla are the sort to dwell on that sort of thing, and Hoji never even met her, so her not being mentioned at all isn't too unusual.
- Parrying Bullets: The Hattori enemies from the gameplay reveal are able to deflect Lo Wang's shots. Not so much about melee attacks.
- Piñata Enemy: As seen in the gameplay trailers, several enemies, such as the Kugutsu, Slinky Jakku and Oni Hanma have useful items inside them called Gore Weapons, which you can rip out with a Finishing Move and put to good use.
- Punny Name: One of the revealed levels, complete with its own spotlight trailer, is called "That Damn Dam".
- Red Is Heroic: Lo Wang's new design, as revealed in the teaser trailer, includes a red leather jacket, in contrast to his all-black getups from previous installments.
- Scenery Gorn: The Womb Level inside the Evildoing Dragon is as disgusting as the intestines of a miles-long Eldritch Abomination can be.
- Scenery Porn: Previous games already provided some picturesque Japanese landscapes, but the third one takes it up to 11 with its truly breathtaking mountain views. Even Lo Wang is genuinely impressed, dropping his snarky attitude for a moment.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: With Hoji's back and Lo Wang as mouthy as ever, that's a given.
- Straight Man and Wise Guy: As much as the initial gameplay reveal shows, Orochi Zilla is the grounded Straight Man to Lo Wang's loopy Wise Guy.
- Surprisingly Happy Ending: Lo Wang, the revived Hoji, Zilla, and Motoko are left alive at the end. Surprisingly, Hoji pulls Lo Wang off to avoid the latter from falling off a cliff. When Hoji was struggling, Zilla pulls them back up. In the end, they all eat dragon sashimi together. Despite some final bickering between each other, they seem to willingly go past their issues and move forward like a "family", something Hoji finally gets to experience. That said, it's not all happy.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The permanently annoyed, magically talented girl with odango hairstyle is... not Kamiko. That's Motoko.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: While discussing what Hoji wants, he brings up that if he had the chance to be a God again, he'd take it, before detailing that they'd have to capture the dragon rather than kill it to do that. But they aren't doing that. Sure enough, Hoji was using Wang to activate the Chi Cannon to do just that.
- Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Whenever you see two consecutive Finisher orbs, you're about to run into a new miniboss.
- Tragic Keepsake: Lo Wang keeps the mask Hoji wore during their adventure in Shadow Warrior (2013) and even wears it as shown in the promotional material.
