Re: Shadow Warrior 2 Game
Jemima Torguson
I made this poll to get opinion about which game is superior. And by superior I don't mean thematically (otherwise blood would win). I mean gameplay wise which includes stuff like level design, weapon behavior, monster design/ balance and physics. Also take cost of games, source ports into consideration.
Blood's level design alone is superior to that of most games I've played. Combined with its consistent themes and excellent gameplay it's just one of the best games you could wish for. Shadow Warrior, while fun, is just less memorable.
Blood has what I personally consider the most satisfying weapons in any of the build engine games, also trash mob enemies are fun to fight. The level design is a bit all over the place in both games though shadow warrior does more interesting thing with the build engine.
Bloods better but play both :p
When it comes to which one is harder, I'd say Blood is thougher overall but SW has some very dangerous enemies to need to watch out for, and those can usually kill you instantly if they get a good shot.
For source ports, Blood has a Java based reverse-engineered but incomplete source port called BloodGDX. The only other way to play the game is using DOSBox. Nightdive has managed to make Atari finally get their heads out of their asses and let them do a remaster, I would say you should wait for that.
I have seen some videos of both. Aesthetically, Shadow warrior appeals to me more than blood. But I am a gameplay over graphics guy and if blood has superior gameplay than I will go with that. From the videos, gameplay also looks similar. This is why I created the thread to ask people which is better from a gameplay perspective.
Both Shadow Warrior and Blood are great games but I would absolutely consider Blood to be a better game than Shadow Warrior. It's got the best atmosphere, the best guns, the best art and level design of any of the build engine games.
Blood also has its nasty enemies, particularly the cultists who can kill you pretty quick with their weapons (attacking them head on on higher difficulty is pretty much suicide), and the Hell Hound which can burn you to a crisp if you don't have the fire armor. So, in this case I guess it comes down to your preference, whatever style suits you better.
Blood. Shadow Warrior's gameplay is worse balanced especially on the UV skill of that game. Some maps are a breeze while others are either full of bs enemies (Like the shadow ninjas mentioned in this thread, they can OHKO you not just finish you from low hp) or stupid tanky gorillas that force you to sit back and waste all your ammo, it also has some really annoying areas which hinder the experience. The balance of the weapons is a clusterfuck as well, while Blood's arsenal is all decent ;Be warned though, The monsters in blood might resist some weapons, generally fire damage weapons.
People always hype up the difficulty of Blood, but I have found Shadow Warrior to have much more frustrating gameplay. In Blood your workhorse shotgun can one-shot hitscan grunts, but in Shadow Warrior it takes multiple shots, at which point they've likely torn a few holes into you. And the splash damage / range of your grenades makes them more difficult to use (without harming yourself) than Blood's dynamite. And of course there's the Shadow Ninjas, which should've been relegated to boss / miniboss status, but show up relatively frequently (including in the very first level).
Blood has better gameplay. The weapons are funner to use, the enemies are funner to kill. The level design is pretty damn good for the most part, but does start to suffer in episode 4. It also has a larger enemy variety, Shadow Warrior basically just has a bunch of ninjas.
Shadow Warrior is good, does some neat things with the Build engine, and the level design is definitely good. Probably better than Duke. But I never really liked the weapons, the fact that they fucked the shotgun up so badly is a travesty. And the enemies are just insanely powerful, I have a hard time getting through the game. Possibly because the weapons suck, the UZI has quite a bit of spread so, so you struggle to hit enemies, the shotgun is the same. The only really accurate weapon I can recall is the railgun, and that's a top tier weapon so you don't find that much ammunition for it.
I like both, depends on my mood which one I like better. The shadow ninjas were a bit irritating surprise when first encountered. The shareware version didn't have them? Then playing the shareware episode in the registered version and suddenly, where the hell did that flame bomb come from? The big stone gargoyles in Blood are kinda bugged, no idea what (ranged) weapon to use on them, so I just crouch and fork them until they die without them being able to do anything.
They make you waste ammo because their slap is very fast and hurts a lot so you can't just ignore them like pinkies. Doesn't help that most maps are super stingy with ammo which makes them really annoying. The grenade ninja are also really annoying because their grenades are super high damaging and usually bounce all over the place.
They are immune to fire and tank a lot of explosives. Your best bets (from worst to strongest) are physical damage (Especially the sawed off), the tesla rifle (amazing vs monsters in general) and the voodoo doll (The altfire can oneshot them, so always keep one for them.. especially on higher difficulties during episode 4). They will also resort to melee only if you are close enough -like the revenants in doom- except they won't use range attack if you shoot them close up, unlike revs.
I found it downright close to impossible to kill the two stone gargoyles on the last map of episode one on the 5th difficulty. I can take out the single stone gargoyle on the 4th difficulty using both the shotgun and tommy gun. The tesla cannon is pretty much the most effective weapon on the stone gargoyles.
Speaking about difficulty in Duke3d, I found Come get some (skill-3) to be quite challenging(but not frustrating) when I first played it. I find it pretty easy now, but only because I know how to play Duke3d and I am fully aware of the levels, enemies, weapons etc.
I have heard that both Blood and SW are significantly harder than duke3d. So what difficulty level of Blood and SW would u guys call as the most equivalent/equal in difficulty to the "Come get some" difficulty of Duke3d.
Yeah, that's true because they both feature enemies capable of instakilling the player. For Blood, I'd recommend the third difficulty (whatever it's called) and for SW Who Wants Some Wang or the one below. Anything higher might prove too punishing.
There was also a bug in Blood (no idea if BloodGDX fixed it) which causes the difficulty to ramp up to the next skill level after loading a save (it was supposed to be the other way around), so anything higher than the third (which as far as I know does not suffer from this glitch) is going to be too punishing, especially for the first run.
Also when it comes to Blood, it is worth waiting a while as there is not only an official remaster by Nightdive but there is also another source port being developed called NBlood. It is reverse engineered port based on Eduke32 which means that it would offer QoL improvements of Eduke and it would use native code instead of java. It is also not based on the alpha/leaked code, which kinda makes it (somewhat) legal.
The weapons are overall more fun to use IMO (although, SW's katana is very nice compared to the pitchfork, but that's about it), the level design is complex and atmospheric, and Caleb as a character is infinitely more interesting and memorable than Wang.
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