If you don’t remember how villain number one was a different kind of bad guy from villain number two in the reboot, you’re going to spend a good portion of the sequel trying to figure out the surprisingly convoluted relationships between characters. The story makes no effort to explain every “familiar” face you meet or what role they have to play in the grand scheme of things. As someone who played through that reboot last year, I was constantly frustrated by the sequel’s expectation that I remember each and every archetypal character I met previously. One of Shadow Warrior 2’s biggest problems is it tries to create an epic adventure story that rests chiefly upon callbacks to the reboot. While that sounds promising on paper, Shadow Warrior 2 is a prime example of how bigger is not always better. Flying Wild Hog’s sequel tries to expand on that solid foundation, introducing RPG-like elements and a quest system in a semi-open world that emulates the likes of Borderlands and Destiny. Flying Wild Hog’s 2013 reboot channeled the irreverent humor of the original game into a modern first-person slasher/shooter that was smart enough to bank on its own arcadey action rather than mine nostalgia.

The original Shadow Warrior probably ranks among the more forgettable Doom clones, arriving in 1997 shortly before the likes of Half-Life, Quake, and Unreal made first-person shooters one of gaming’s most popular genres.

Shadow warrior 2 xbox one download free