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Shadowrun: Games
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Shadowrun, for those not familiar with its pencil-and-paper RPG origins, is a cyberpunk/fantasy hybrid world. A Troll with an Uzi eats soy burgers at fast food restaurants, Elves are armed with an arsenal of magical spells, and Humans are wired to the teeth with cybernetic body enhancements. All those examples are pretty run of the mill for Shadowrun. Keeping that in mind, the video game, which is barely related to the source material (for a number of reasons that won’t be covered in this review), is a completely original team-based shooter.
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Shadowrun is a team-based first-person shooter that supports up to 16 players or bots in a given match. It focuses primarily on online play, though system link, offline bot battles and training sessions ... are available. It's also designed to support cross-platform play via Xbox Live/Windows Live; players can join the same online games whether they're playing on an Xbox 360 or a Windows Vista PC. Xbox 360 players are required to have an Xbox Live Gold subscription to play online, but Vista players have the option to play with a free Silver account - just with fewer bells-and-whistles associated with the online service if they go that route.
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The Shadowrun role-playing game, various expansions, and a Shadowrun collectible card game have won Origins Awards. The fourth edition ... won the prestigious independent Ennie Awards for Best Rules as well as for Best Product in 2006.
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The Shadowrun game that FASA Interactive had under development was, by necessity of the companies limited resources, a very narrowly focused view of the Shadowrun universe. With the greater resources and longer view accorded by the acquisition, both FASA and Microsoft felt it was better to step back and explore a more robust implementation of this important intellectual property.
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The rock-paper-scissors gameplay of Shadowrun hinges on its perfect (yet ultimately dull) balance of race, weapons, techs and magic. There are four playable races each with their own obligatory weaknesses and strengths; the humans have more starting and suffer no Essence penalties for using techs while the Elves have lower health bars but can use this same Essence (Mana is your will) to regenerate health. The Elves are ... faster but large weapons, surprise, slow them down. On the other hand, Trolls (is this starting to sound Tolkienesque to anyone else?) are slower than Elves but can easily wield the heavier weapons, absorb tons of damage (which is quite an impressive sight actually) but all at the cost of Essence. Finally, Dwarves (yep, definitely Tolkienesque) have Essence to spare. Sure they regenerate it slowly, but they can literally suck it out of almost anything magical (items or players).
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Shadowrun brilliantly rewards players for logical strategies and tactical thinking. It's unfortunate that the game is not so perfect outside of the online multiplayer. Well, ok, there isn't really a game outside the multiplayer, which is the real problem. Beyond the 6 tutorial missions there's not much of a stand-alone experience. When not connected to Xbox Live, the only thing you can do is play a customized match against the computer. The AI works well as a team and can pull out some interesting strategies, but it gets old fast.
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