Shadow Warrior 3

Shadow Warrior 3 is a short but action-packed FPS with some of the most fun combat we've seen in a while. It's got all the action and most of the gore of the Doom games but without the constant looking for switches and doors. It's just a good time from start to end.

In deciding that ambition is the dragon that needs toppling, Shadow Warrior 3 is aggressively average, restricting its own potential with poor level design and underwhelming weapons and enemies. Quite how it manages to fluff its lines, despite having all the ingredients for success – humour, great visuals and Doom-lite gunplay – is frustrating, but if you are able to look past this, it does still provide an opportunity for you to switch off with some mindless entertainment in short spurts.

Shadow Warrior 3 isn’t lacking in bombastic, blood-splattered shooting or giddily puerile humour. It comes up a bit short in gameplay variety and its scattershot approach to jokes produces more than a few misses, but as a fairly relentless and compact first person shooter with its heart beating to the drum of nostalgia, it’s a pretty tasty morsel.

Overall, Shadow Warrior 3 was fun to play through, but I’m glad it ended relatively quickly because the gameplay loop is very repetitive. Flying Wild Hog has some great ideas here, but the lazy arena battle design and some (not all) lackluster level design needed to be more robust and creative. As it plays now, the gameplay is just paper thin like an arcade game — and I love arcades games, but those are short by design because they don’t have enough substance and breadth to hold the player’s interest for very long. All that said, I still enjoyed playing through Shadow Warrior 3 mostly, though I won’t be coming back for seconds. With due caution, I recommend it to anyone that enjoys the franchise or likes a raw run and gun FPS experience, and especially if you can play it on PSNow or GamePass.

Somewhere in Shadow Warrior 3 is a meaty FPS that is trying to move forward with the times but struggles to keep consistent as technical problems and a muddied presentation mar the game’s strengths. The first half of the game is an enjoyable, constantly growing, and expanding experience that runs out of ideas towards the end. Lo Wang is certainly not the most memorable or likable protagonist ever seen, but I appreciate Flying Wild Hog’s intentions.

Shadow Warrior 3 has good combat, but its content is too short to recommend it at launch. It is certainly a title to keep on the radar if you are a fan of this type of FPS.

If you’re spoilt by modern-day graphics and the feature-full world of 21st-century gaming, Shadow Warrior 3 probably isn’t for you. It’s a simple game, not afraid to rely solely on its strong shooting mechanics, but it’s one that any FPS fan should add to their collection if they want to switch off and tear up some bad guys. Short, silly and gory, Shadow Warrior 3 is a fine example of great gaming dialled back.

I’m sure I won’t be thinking about Shadow Warrior 3 in five minutes’ time, but I’m okay with that. It doesn’t do anything to reinvent the wheel or the first-person shooter, but it moves away from the co-op looter-shooter nonsense the second game tried to pull and delivers a short, satisfying campaign that’s fast-paced and close enough to Doom to be considered good. It’s just a shame there’s no “shut the fuck up” filter.

Shadow Warrior 3 feels like an expansion to the second game that was artificially dragged on eight hours of playtime. The monsters are cool and the humor is witty, but arena-style gameplay gets really boring and same goes for parkour sections.

Simple but tight, Shadow Warrior 3 is a solid shooter with some occasional flashes of excitement. It's a shame the game's attempts at comedy squeeze the life out of it — and £40 for an eight-hour campaign is barely good value.

Shadow Warrior 3 offers some competent (albeit mostly borrowed) core shooting mechanics and first-person platforming, but uninspired, repetitive level design, irritating enemies, and a withering onslaught of dad humor may leave you longing for relief before the game’s relatively-brief campaign wraps up. Shadow Warrior 3 isn’t without its moments, and may be worth a shot at a considerable discount, but this franchise is still eclipsed by the FPS big boys.