Actually, I suppose I should say quadruple the Wang, because one of the main new features coming to Flying Wild Hog’s Shadow Warrior 2 is co-op for up to four players. Who’s up for a four-player Wang bang?
Then again, rule number seven of The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ten Crack Commandments” does come to mind: Four Wangs and no Wangina could cause some serious shit. Just sayin.
But getting serious here for a minute (and it is extremely hard to be serious when there are Wang jokes to crack), Shadow Warrior 2 is shaping up to be a wholesale upgrade to the original game, taking the classic run-and-gun/slice FPS style and sharp-tongued humor and adding on massive procedurally-generated landscapes that are open to many paths of exploration, more than 70 Weapons of Wang Destruction (sorry, I couldn’t resist tossing in another Wang joke), and a brutal new gore and damage modeling system that brings the sexy back to video game violence.
And then there is the aforementioned four-player co-op mode. Solo play is still the primary focus, but now you can choose to play with others pretty much on the fly. The gameplay video embedded at the top of the page, from Skilled Media, which I believe was recorded from a live Twitch stream that occurred on Monday, shows one player by himself suddenly encountering a second player who is also playing through the campaign. The two players join together for a moment, split up and take their own paths and fight their own battles, and then cross Wangs again to team up for a boss battle.
The other cool thing about the co-op mode, as described in the video, is how each player views the world and follows the story from the perspective of Lo Wang, while to other players they are viewed as a customized ninja avatar. Everyone is playing as Lo Wang even though they all look like different ninjas to each other. This way the campaign experience is preserved for everyone, which is pretty damn cool.
Everything else about the game just looks awesome too. The graphics are gorgeous. The new weapons shown so far are bad ass (claws!). And even just little things like the reload animation flourishes are so effing sweet. This game has definitely jumped high up my list of E3 favorites.
Shadow Warrior 2 will be out for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2016. Is your Wang ready?
Video Source: Shadow Warrior 2 Gameplay E3 2015 / Co-op, Claw Weapons, Archery, Huge Demons [YouTube]