Lo Wang and his rude ‘tude will return next year in Shadow Warrior 3, developer Flying Wild Hog and publisher Devolver Digital announced today. He’s off to recapture an ancient dragon, which is probably fine. The most important detail: this time, the agile FPS has a grappling hook too. Congratulations, Shadow Warrior, on finally becoming a proper real video game. Game director Kuba Opoń says Flying Wild Hog “hope that Shadow Warrior 3 will feel like a homecoming for those fans that have been with us since the beginning.” Read into that as much as you want. For now, come see the trailer.

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The rude, crude Shadow Warrior 2 is free to grab on GOG for the next two days. Flying Wild Hog’s shooter is a big messy slab of old-school FPS’ing infused with painful jokes (which frequently made me giggle), some Borderlands-ish stat juggling, procedural encounter generation and lots of monsters and cyborgs to mulch.

Adam Smith gushed profusely in his review, calling it “anarchic, excessive, ridiculous, occasionally spectacular and almost entirely wonderful”. After winning over Firewatch and Superhot in a vote today, GOG are giving it away for 48 hours, celebrating the store’s 10th anniversary . Get it here and tell your friends – it’s co-op too.

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Hey gang, if you missed Shadow Warrior the last time it was free, another chance is here for a few more hours. This is the 2013 reboot of the demon-stabbing FPS, to be clear, not 3D Realm’s original (which is always free). You’ve got until 6pm today (10am Pacific) to grab this free so chop chop.

The giveaway celebrates the launch of new missions and weapons for Shadow Warrior 2 in a free update last night. And that game’s on sale right now too. So many shadows and wars, so little time. (more…)

Since every other games site is ecstatic to discover this week that the original Shadow Warrior is free, hey, we’ll post it too. I’ll ride that #trending content, blitz the bandwagon, disseminate to the viral limit, and zonk that zeitgeist until the SEO bursts. I know that Shadow Warrior has been free for four years now — a fact other sites seem to have missed — but I also know quite a few folks dig Shadow Warrior so sure, it’s helpful to remind people that it is free. … [visit site to read more]

Shadow Warrior [official site] has never been my favourite of the Build Engine games (it’s Blood all the way for me) but that entire FPS era has a special place in my heart. It’s also worth nothing that Shadow Warrior is kicking Duke’s ass when it comes to remakes and sequels. As of today, you can explore the history of the original 1997 release by playing the alpha and beta versions of the game, which are now available free on Steam. The 1997 original has been free for some time, but now you can choose to play either the final release or either of the pre-release versions through the launcher.

… [visit site to read more]

GOG Connect is a pleasant little scheme from the DRM-free digital distributor, letting people who own certain games on Steam get GOG versions too for free. Now it’s back. GOG today launched another round of GOG Connect, with another seventeen games for Steamers to redeem. Because, y’know, it’s nice to have a DRM-free backup without buying a game twice. The lineup this time includes Hotline Miami, The Last Federation, the Shadow Warrior reboot, X Rebirth, and Teslagrad.

Oh, and GOG has launched another big sale too.

… [visit site to read more]

Shoot and slice ’em up Shadow Warrior 2 [official site] is set to launch October 13. It’s a bloody, over-the-top ninja adventure that doesn’t take itself too seriously. There’s a guy taking a selfie as he decapitates a monster, so there’s stuff in there us millennials can relate to, too. It’s also shaping up to be quite beautiful if you look past all of the gore spraying everywhere. In the trailer below, Flying Wild Hog has recreated the subtle fall foliage of November in Japan contrasted with the white-washed walls of austere Buddhist temples. Lovely!

… [visit site to read more]

Demons, in Shadow Warrior 2 [official site], appear to be made of jelly. I m carving one particularly big bastard open like a Christmas turkey and the segments that slide away are like the gelatinous gloop and gristle sliding from a tin of cheap dogfood. They wibble and wobble, quivering beneath the teeth of my chainsaw. They fold and flop, eventually disintegrating.

The ultraviolence is more over the top than in the game s predecessor, but it s nothing new. That s just about the only place that the sequel takes the more of the same approach though. Almost everything has changed.

… [visit site to read more]

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

But which Shadow Warrior do I mean? Despite my love of the magnificent Build Engine, not the 1997 original which never worked its way into my heart in the way that Blood did. Gotta have some Blood in your heart. But, no, I’m talking about the distant year of 2013, when Hard Reset developers Flying Wild Hog released a game that surprised me by being one of my favourites of the year.

… [visit site to read more]

The Shadow Warrior reboot was one of the most pleasant surprises I’ve had since I started writing about games. It’s a superb action game that does first-person melee combat well, has gorgeous environments, and managed not to feel like a throwback to the skeevier parts of the Build Engine days while capturing so much that I loved about the era. I can’t wait for the sequel [official site], and these twelve minutes of blood, bickering and burning demons make it all the more attractive.

… [visit site to read more]