Shadowrun Lite.
The Bad: Not enough maps or game types; feels unfinished; complete waste of the Shadowrun license.
This is probably the hardest review I’ve written. I’m a huge fan of the Shadowrun pen and paper game, and have been playing since the early 90’s. Therefore, I was thrilled when it was announced FASA Studios was making a new Shadowrun game. My immediate thought was that it would be an RPG like the old SNES and Genisis games. Then my heart sank when I learned it was going to be an online only FPS.
Not only that, but the devs rewrote the canon of the SR universe to suit the needs of the game. I can’t begin to explain how much this pissed me off. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Shadowrun IP, this probably won’t matter much. But it also means that fans of the IP are going to feel alienated, and that further limits the audience for a game that’s trying to find it’s niche.
Shadowrun takes place in our near future where magic has returned to a high tech world. Picture the high-tech dystopian world of Bladerunner with the magic and creatures of Dungeons & Dragons. That’s basically what the game world is like. I won’t bother to mention any specifics as the rich game world of the PnP game is not present in this title.
In fact, many of the elements that make Shadowrun unique are not present in this game at all. No decking or rigging. No dragons or other creatures beyond the elves, dwarfs, and trolls. Orks are missing altogether. There aren’t even any actual “Shadowruns.” Instead, the game focuses on a conflict between the corporation RNA and the rebel group Lineage. Both of which were made up for this game. Shadowrun is a fun game in it’s own way, but it’s a complete waste of the license. This is like buying the rights to make a Star Wars game, and making a R2D2 puzzle game. It would have been better if the devs made their own IP for this game instead of tarnishing Shadowrun.
GAMEPLAY
Shadowrun does offer some cool elements that make it stand out among the crowded FPS market. The game plays a lot like Counter Strike. Before the match begins, you can choose which team to play for, and what race you want to be. Race has a big impact on how you play the game. Humans get more starting money, and are the most balanced. Elves are the fastest, can regenerate health when not moving, but also have the lowest total health. Trolls are the tanks of Shadowrun. They are the strongest race, and can kill almost anyone in one or two hits with a katana. Their skin hardens to lessen damage taken, but they’re slow. Finally, the dwarfs are designed for close combat. They have the most health, can survive a head shot, and can absorb essence from other players. To offset this, they regenerate essence very slowly when not absorbing.
Before each round there is a small window in which to buy upgrades using money earned from previous rounds. You get more money from killing other players, and from helping your team. You can buy new weapons, magic spells, and tech upgrades. All of which are fun to use, but the catch is that you can only have 3 equipped at any time. For example, you can buy teleport, which lets you teleport through walls, ceilings, and floors. Tree of Life lets you create a tree to heal anyone standing near it. Smoke turns your character into smoke to avoid damage, but makes you vulnerable to another magic spell: gust. Resurrection does exactly that, and allows you to bring dead teammates back to life. The downside is that it ties up some of your essence to do this. And if you die, the people you resurrected will slowly bleed out.
The tech upgrades are also just as fun to use. Enhanced vision lets you see through walls. Smartlink gives you a zoom on any weapon, makes your shots more accurate, and prevents friendly fire. Wired reflexes make everything you do faster, and allow you to block some incoming fire with a katana. The weapons are fairly standard and include your usual pistol, SMG, shotgun, etc. But one new addition is a katana for melee attacks. You can also use the katana to mortally wound another player that hasn’t spotted you. Effectively ensuring their quick death, unless they are resurrected.
There are many more skills beyond the ones I have listed here. By now, you’re probably thinking of all the possibilities of using these skills together. The gameplay is fast paced, and fun despite not sticking to the canon of the IP. But what holds the game back is the lack of gameplay modes and levels.
There are only about 9 levels to choose from, and only 3 game types. The game types are all based around capturing the artifact, which is Shadowrun’s version of a flag. In the Raid game, Lineage must capture the artifact, and take it to the exit point. RNA is on defense in this mode. Extraction is a two-way CTF mode, where the artifact is placed in the center of the map, and each team must get it back to their exit point. Finally, there’s attrition, which is a team death match.
Although the levels are well designed, and fun to play in, they tend to get old after a while. It just makes me wish there were more levels to play in, or game types to keep the fun gameplay going.
GRAPHICS
Visually, Shadowrun is good, but not great. The spell effects, and environments look great. I was really impressed when summoning a minion. The levels also have nice visual touches to them, and help pull you into the game. But on the downside the characters have missing animations. For example, when climbing a ladder, the avatars lock into their standing animation instead of showing movement to climb the ladder. I also encountered a bug when trying to use a magic spell, and firing a weapon right after. The casting animation got stuck, which didn’t allow me to cast any other spells for about 20 seconds. The rag-doll physics are also kind of odd. You’ll frequently see dead players laying in awkward positions that don’t look natural. The textures also have a tendency to get pixilated when up close. In addition the characters all look the same. There’s no avatar customization, so all RNA trolls look the same, all Lineage elves look the same, etc. There are some nice touches to the visuals, but at the same time there are some problems.
SOUND
This is another mixed area. There’s no in-game music, and the only voice-over is the announcer that lets you know when a round has been won. The sound effects sound good, but they’re pretty much your standard gunshots. By far the best sound effect in the game is the screech that comes from when you summon a minion. It’s truly awe inspiring the first time you do it.
VALUE
The lasting value, in fact the only value, for Shadowrun is the multi-player. How long that will last is dependant on the player. If online shooters are your thing, then you’ll likely have a new addiction until Halo 3 comes out. But since there’s no single player other than bot matches, this severely limits the number of players that are going to be interested in this title.
You can play matches with windows vista players, and it’s well balanced so that you can’t tell who’s playing on a 360, and who’s on a PC. However, the match making system on the 360 isn’t that well designed. Windows Vista players also have dedicated servers, where 360 players do not.
The achievements are well balanced, and some of them are actually fun. For example one achievement is to tea-bag a player you killed that already has the achievement. Another one is to get the flag to the exit point while bleeding out.
Shadowrun is fun in it’s own right, but for everything it does well, there’s something else holding it back. SR just feels like a project that was rushed to get it out before Halo 3. Yet, I can’t help but feel how great this game could have been if they had delayed it another year. They could have made changes to make it fit in with the canon, and added all kinds of new game types and features.
Shadowrun is a game without an audience. The devs pretty much guaranteed that long time fans of the Shadowrun IP wont like this game. Plus in an already over-crowded FPS genre, it’s going to be hard for SR to find a place to call home. More than likely it will become a quick fix for FPS junkies until Halo 3 launches in a couple months. After that it will probably be quickly forgotten.