Shadow Warrior 3: Definitive Edition is Still a Mess

I can’t believe I played more of this stupid game

Xbox Series S screenshot taken by the author.

At one point, I was rather excited for 2022’s release of Shadow Warrior 3. I loved both earlier installments from developer Flying Wild Hog, as well as their earlier game Hard Reset, and was hoping that the third Shadow Warrior game would carry on their excellent tradition of fun shooting action. All of my excitement disappeared in a cacophonous explosion of mediocrity when I finally played it a few months back. As you can see in my original review, I didn’t like it. The game is a mess of garish visuals and baffling creative decisions, and it is much shorter than either of its predecessors.

Shadow Warrior 3 also committed the weird sin of launching a year and half after the release of new Xbox and PlayStation consoles without native support for those machines. Gamers looking to flex the muscle of their still-new consoles had to settle for running older-generation code. I ended up checking out the game on my Xbox Series S since I got a deal on that version, and it turned out that performance was the least of its problems.

I knew when I reviewed it that a next gen version was “coming soon,” and that “momentous” day has finally arrived. Shadow Warrior 3: Definitive Edition is now out across all platforms. The game has a new…