It's fun and immersive; a few drawbacks keep it from being perfect but the action makes it easy enough to overlook them.

User Rating: 8.5 | Shadowrun X360
By APflopsy | Review Date:
I had high hopes for Shadowrun, having been into the pen and paper RPG in my younger days. If you're looking for a game to capture the feel and attitude of that gritty future envisioned by the old RPG, you won't find that here. This is more a rethinking of the basic concept of combining firepower with sorcery, packed into a high-intensity shooter. The graphics are good, about like you'd expect from a next gen multiplayer shooter, though they will not shatter paradigms and amaze you as effectively as the artfully crafted visuals within Gears of War. This is a different feel, and the most impressive sights (and they are impressive) will be found in the magic use rather than the spraying of carnage. There was one particular time I cringed, and that was floating up ladders rather than animated climbing, but after a few minutes of blasting spells and coasting on gliders the ladder-flying started to blend into the rest of the mystical visuals and became less of an issue. I still question why this wasn't repaired during development. Other visual faults include the lack of skin variety. Though each of the four races has a distinct look, on either team each player of the same race will look identical.

While initially appearing to be a run-of-the-mill multiplayer shooter, Shadowrun's real value is in the numerous fantastic tweaks and touches provided through the "spells" and "tech" enhancements. In the first few rounds you may not be blown away, but as you accumulate new tools as the match progresses, you will begin to feel the game's value. That value becomes evident when you teleport down through the floor to beat the other team to the Artifact (flag), zap through a solid wall to escape pursuit, or summon a big blue demon thing to go smack the living hell out of the guy taking potshots at you with a rifle. Hardwiring your nerves with a tech upgrade, slicing bullets out of the air with a katana and then performing some quick surgery on your opponents is another grin-inducer. These fun things along with the unique attributes of the four races definitely set Shadowrun apart from the rest of the pack. On the downside, once you become accustomed to the cool enhancements, you will almost certainly find yourself wishing that there were more of them to play with. This is good and bad; they're so cool that you want more...but there aren't any more. Not yet anyway. I'm optimistic that added content will fill in some of the blanks here, as well as repair some other seemingly incomplete features. Some blanks which should be filled are: more gametypes (there are basically only 3 variations of capture the flag/deathmatch, and these are fun but added types would be welcome and extend the game's value), more skins to diversify the visuals, and a few added animations such as the ladder climb. It is common for an out-of-the-box multiplayer to need an update patch to realize its full potential, but Shadowrun, while it still is a lot of fun to play, cries out for some fixes. Ultimately, I debated whether to plunk down $64 for a game that was getting mixed reviews. My bottom line question is always this: Is it fun, and will it stay fun? Yes, it's hella fun. And I want to wrap this up so I can go play another marathon session, so I believe it will stay fun for at least a while. A few missing bits of varnish here or there are apparent but can be overlooked, and the creative "spells and tech", while they may wear thin for some over time, are some of the most inventive and enticing features to be worked into a shooter in quite a long time. I recommend this game for anybody looking for a fun multiplayer shooter with twists you've never seen anywhere before, with the caveat that a downloadable update in the near future would be welcome.

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