Disappointment of the year. Who makes a shooter without leader boards? Please don't pay full price for this game.
The game play in Shadowrun revolves essentially around running and gunning. The thing that makes this an interesting game is that magic and tech can be purchased. These two items take up your ‘essence’, the power source in the game. These highly useful items can range from glide to the tree of life, where you are able to create a huge tree anywhere on the map which heals you when you stand next to it, and these items spice up the game play somewhat. Nearly all of the game is in its multiplayer component, although there are several extensive training missions which teach you how to equip, use and apply your new magical techniques, as well as get you accustomed to each of the four races characteristics. Shadowrun uses a very good balancing mechanic to make sure that the four races: Human, Elf, Dwarf and Troll are all equal through their strengths and weaknesses. For example, Elves are the only race which have the ability to regenerate their own health but they have the shortest health bar of the four races. Trolls are the slowest of the four, but their health bar is the largest of the four so they take longer to kill than any of the other races. As well as this, they also have the ability to harden when they take a lot of damage, meaning that spikes come out of their backs and these protect them from some of the bullets, so they take longer to die. Most of the game isn’t in the tutorial though (thankfully), it’s in its fast paced hit and run style multi player. In the multiplayer there are three modes: Raid, Extraction and attrition in which you do basically the same thing. Raid and extraction involve one team of eight fighting for the artifact, the games equivalent to a flag, and things of that kind, where as attrition is a basic team death match where the two teams of eight battle it out on any of the game’s nine maps. The maps on this game are excellent. They are all large in size and they’ll take some getting used to at first because as well as being large, they are also deep, in that there are usually about five vertical planes on each map that really make use of two of the most popular and useful techniques in the game: teleport and glide.
When a spell is cast the people at Fasa have given us some fantastic effects to go with them and these are great indicators as to if you’ve just cast the correct spell or if you did it at the right time and so on. The graphics on the whole, in fact, are excellent. The textures are spot on and the draw distance is long so sniper experts should be set to go on this game. Maybe the greatest technical achievement on this game is the steady frame rate. With so much going on in the game you’d expect it to dip somewhat but even when in full out eight on eight explosive-magical-tree of life-fantasticnes the game keeps it at a solid 60 frames per second. Probably the best thing about the game is the cross networking between Xbox 360 and PC users. This is the first game to use Microsoft’s Live anywhere functionality where PC and Xbox users can play together on their preferred platform. Gamers thought that this would be the time for them to show who really the best really is: Mouse and keyboard or game pad. Unfortunately, this won’t be the case, with balanced controls for both Xbox and PC user, so that question won’t be answered today. The controls on the game are pretty simple. The right trigger is always shoot (or slice, as is possible with the Katana), and the analogue sticks are used like in most shooters, with the left to strafe and the right to look around. The other shoulder buttons can be customized by the player. After buying magic and tech, it can be assigned to and of the other shoulder buttons, so that’s really up to the player and what they feel comfortable with.
Over all, Shadowrun provides a shallow multi player experience which is definitely not worth full price. There are only three game modes which all seem very similar and with no leader boards, there’ll be nothing to hold you on the game. If I were you, I wouldn’t buy this game until it goes down in price and they’ve brought out more content including damn leader boards. Come on Fasa, get your finger out.