I think I'm in love
User Rating: 9.2 | Shadowrun X360
Shadowrun is a multiplayer only FPS based off of the tabletop RPG. The game has been in development for a while at FASA studios, and I can tell that the development time was well used. When you first start up the game, you will be presented with the option to jump right in or to go through a few tutorials first. The tutorials take a while, but are recommended. Plus, you get an achievement for each tutorial you successfully pass through. These tutorials will teach you how to fight, use magic, use technologies, and how to exploit the intricacies of each race. After every tutorial, players are thrust into a bot match in which they can test their skills. While bot matches are harrowing at higher difficulties, they still can't compare to the beautiful chaos that is multiplayer. This is where the polish put into the game becomes evident. Every single race, weapon, tech and magic ability is balanced. The shotgun and katana are powerful, but only at close range. The minigun has the fastest rate of fire, but must be charged up first. The strangle spell will block off an area with health-depleting crystals, but for every strangle patch that you summon you must give up two pips of essence. From my experience, the maps are well designed and encourage tactical play. But don't worry- just because it's somewhat tactical doesn't mean that it isn't one of the most chaotic games on Xbox Live. The one flaw with Shadowrun is actually a very minor, very humorous one. When in the third person view (used while weilding a katana or using the smoke magic. Third person really highlights the excellent character models.) and climbing a ladder, the character deosn't actually climb the ladder; he just sort of levitates up it. It's actually pretty funny looking. Other than that, the graphics are absolutely fantastic. While the environments don't show a huge amount of detail, the magic effects and character models do. The game has a very cool look to it that sort of reminds me of Timesplitters. There is not music in the game, so the only sound effects come from the announcer and the weapon bursts, along with occasional character yells. It's a good thing, then, that everything generally sounds quite good. Weapons have the right amount of kick to them and the announcer sounds pretty good usually. The best part of the sound is how the characters shout out information about their status and location. For example, if a character puts up a tree of life, he will shout "Tree up in.." whatever location it has been erected. If a character is bleeding out, he will yell for help. Every online game should have that feature. Here's to hoping that Shadowrun develops a large community- it has the best online play of any 360 game so far imo...probably even the Halo 3 beta! 
