Shadow Warrior gets a major DX11 64bit update

Hey, anyone remember Shadow Warrior from 2013?

The awesome, fantastic shooter from Flying Wild Hog (that also made Hard Reset in 2011). A pseudo-remake/reboot from the 90's classic (which I admittedly haven't ever played; it was before my time).

The game used DX9 up to now (though still looked gorgeous), which created CPU bottleneck issues, especially with the beautiful but very CPU-demanding 'Mirrors' graphical setting in-game.

http://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791434042326/announcements/detail/168097436220655928

The game will be updated next week via a massive patch which finally enables DX11 support (which the console ports have enjoyed since their launch last year). The developers say to expect significant performance increases. 64 bit support will also be introduced.

Seeing as this game already runs quite well on 980M/i7-4710HQ combo, this is pretty exciting. 1080p/1152p performance is rock solid for the most part but 4K could always use a nice boost!

I'm definitely going to give this one another playthrough once the patch is out! It was right up there with my favourites of 2013, along with BioShock Infinite. Looking forward to it!

 

Awesome. Took them long enough LOL. This game was optimized like crap when it came out.

BTW the original Shadow Warrior is free on Steam. Highly recommended for fans of old-school FPS. They did it better anyway.

 

Huh, I own this game and BioShock Infinite is up there on my list of games I quite enjoy. I will have to add this to my list of games to play once the DX11 update is out.

 

Yes, it deserves to be prioritised to the top of your backlog! It's just really fun to play and has a surprisingly involving storyline.

 

Update is live! 5.7GB download. Downloading now...

EDIT:

Performance is MUCH improved with the new DX11 build

 

The performance increase is impressive, probably over double if you disabled V-Sync. But look at that massive graphical downgrade! Check out the difference in lighting, shadows, and reflections between DX9 and DX11. Holy cow, that's bigger than Ultra vs. Low in many recent games.

Looks like the accusations are definitely true. Now we know where that extra performance comes from. This should be called the Shadow Warrior console parity update.

 

Fired this up for the first time last night, never played the DX9 version so my eyeballs don't have anything to compare it to. Only played 2 Levels, but it is pretty much of a love child of BioShock (controls/upgrades) and Serious Sam(waves of enemies to shoot/slash). Its got my attention, I'll finish it off.

 

Noticed some minor issues.

- It always launches in windowed mode and I have to manually switch it back to fullscreen each time I play.
- Menus run at a very low framerate now compared to before.
- There's noticeable pop-in in reflections when there wasn't before.

Other than that it's great. I mean, it's playable at 2160p now, whereas the old version needs to be run at 1152p for the same kind of performance. It's not everyday that a game gets a patch that more than doubles the performance!

I do hope they patch out the above issues though.

 

I noticed that too the first time I launched the game and was a bit worried my 970 wouldn't be able to handle the game. Once I got into the game the frame rate was flawless.

 

So I finished playing this game over the weekend, and must say that for the most part this was a really enjoyable game that kinda flew under my radar.

The only caveat I have from really giving this high praise is that towards the end of the game they have this arena battle that throws the most annoyingly difficult mobs and tons of them at you. Even the final boss battles are drastically easier than that arena battle. It's like the Dark Souls dev snuck into the studio and designed that part. It really invoked the rage of my 13-year-old self...

 

I may have to give it a go. So it's not too insanely difficult? That's what makes me quit most games. I get to a point where I can't go any further because I get stuck at a point and try twenty times to get past and just get frustrated and give up. Or seek out God Mode cheats, but these days those can be even hard to come by.

 

I costed through the bulk of the game on Normal difficulty. The only insanely difficult part is the arena battle towards the end of the game. Which I think is about 5-6 waves of enemies with a check point between every 2 waves.