This innovative Halo meets Oblivion FPS 's great controls and expansive customization makes up for the lack in content.
Multiplayer matches start off with choosing from any of the four races (human, elves, dwarves, and trolls ), each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities, although they can all use every weapon, magic and tech ability) and getting sided to one of the two teams( RNA or Lineage). Everyone starts off with grenades for 1 of your 3 ability slots and a pistol and a small amount of money. At the beginning of every round you are awarded with new money for weapons, ammo, tech and magic abilities, so usually within 3 or 4 rounds you can have a fully customized character with tons of combinations to create. The game is played in rounds and there is no respawning between rounds, but you can ressurect dead teammates if you assign ressurect to one of your 3 ability slots, but they cannot stay alive unless you do; if you die they begin to bleed out. The can of combos you can create with weapon and abilities is very satisfying. You could have a character with a sniper rifle and the smartlink tech to improve aiming along with the tree of life magic ability so you can camp out far away and pick enemies off from the distant cover of your tree of life, which gives health regeneration to anyone standing underneath it. You might also not be worried about people sneaking up on you because you can just gust them away with your 3rd ability and snipe them. Or maybe you want to sit behind a wall with the wired reflexes tech and a katana watching people walk in front of you with with your enhanced vision to see enemies behind walls so you can teleport behind them as they walk past and get a stealth hit which will cause them to bleed out of a single hit.
There are 3 types of multiplayer modes. The primary 2 are both forms of capture the flag. Extraction places the artifact between the two teams and the idea is two pick it up and take it two your extraction point. This personally is my favorite mode. The second mode is called Raid. In Raid, the Lineage team attempts to steal the artifact from the RNA team and take it two their extraction point while the RNA has to defend it by either destroying the whole team is halting them until time runs out. The 3rd mode Attrition, is basically just team deathmatch. The round ends when the other team is eliminated. The only twist in Attrition is that when you pick up the artifact in the level, you can see exactly where all the opponents are on the map. I'm not completely sure, but every game I have played has had the match end when a team gets 6 or 7(I think 7) points for all gametypes. There are 9 maps total, some are strictly Raid and some Extraction, but I believe all can be played in Attrition.
The game does suffer from a lack of a single player campaign, since there are only 6 training levels to complete, and it only takes about an hour and a half to get through all of them. Also, fans of the classic role playing game will disappointed that the only real story telling is a prologue for each training mission which are dull and you will probably skip over them. You can do single player bot simulations too, which are actually extremely challenging and can really help for multiplayer.
Shadowrun is a great, challenging game that will keep you coming back for more. What it lacks in content, it makes up for in customization and innovative gameplay.