Stick with it and it grows on you. The potential in it outweighs the small bugs.
So I have been playing it online for 3 nights now and my impressions are this. The controls take time to grow used to, the standard FPS controls are there and easy enough to use but it is the fiddling about with the Magic and Tech skills that get trickier. Once you assign them to a shoulder or trigger button they are a fair bit easier to use (although occaisionally pressing the wrong one in the heat of the action is annoying.) My advice if your new is to pick a Class and then pick 2 really good Magic Spells and stick with them for a few nights, so you get used to them and can call on them quickly in the heat of battle rather than having to keep checking the HUD and working out where you assigned a new skill and finding you have been fragged.
The lack of respawning isnt too big a deal, usually i hated Counterstrike (that this was based on) because you would die in the first 30 seconds and sit out of the game for several minutes. Shadowrun isnt as annoying because when you die the first time, there is the opportunity for someone to revive you and you get the proverbial second chance. Even if you do die and have to sit it out, about 80% of games usually end within 1 or 2 mins rather than go all the way to the end of the 4 minute time limit. The graphics are adequate in my eyes. On a game like this with so many people running about and the action so fast and furious it isnt a game where you can sit and look at the pretty visuals or count the tattooes on the Linage faces. They could be slightly more polished maybe but for a Multiplayer battle they are more than suitable and never make any negative impact on the game. The sound is also adequate and the ability to talk to your teamates even when you have died is very valuable as a strategy for having a couple of extra pairs of eyes watching over your shoulder telling you if someone is behind you or pinpointing the enemy for you. The weapons in my eyes are one of the weakest parts of the game. They lack any real punch unlike other games such as Battlefield 2. They are not loud or powerful sounding and chances are that your more likely to kill an enemy with the grenades than you are with the guns. The SMG for example will use up a full clip of 50 rounds and unless your 2 feet away from the target and hit him with the vast majority of those 50 rounds, they are still going to be alive and killing you when your re-loading. A couple of different weapons with more punch would have been good but again, it keeps the action alive if you have to plan your attacks to make sure you kill instead of injure. The different classes are inspirational in the way the Elf can rejuvinate health, the Troll can stand more attacks etc. It really changes how you play the game depending on your class and although subtle does impact on the type of gameplay depending on who you are. The Magic and Tech are what makes this game really stand out tho. The ability to teleport, bring back the dead, fly through the air to higher buildings, turn into smoke and escape a massacre.... all add new dimensions to both attack, defense and surviving. Sometimes you notice an enemy closing in on a flag, so you teleport in and kill them quickly. Sometimes they are making their way with the flag to the extraction point, so you can seal off the exits with the Strangle Spell to slow them down and give your team valuable seconds to re-group. In one situation i witnessed last night, an enemy Linage was cornered inside a room with 3 RNA Elves all rushing into him firing SMG..... any other game he would have a 0% survival rate and game over, but not in Shadowrun..... with a lot of player skill and quick thinking, as he saw them rushing at him shooting him close to death, he dropped a frag grenade at his feet and then when the 3 Elves were within inches of him, he teleported across the other side of the room and left the frag grenade to kill the 3 Elves. 3 against 1 in a small room and he overcome overwhelming odds not by fighting, but by clever use of Magic and Tech. This sort of variety really can change and shape each game. Another part of the changing gameplay is the extra build up of abilities through money. At the start, only a few have chosen a Magic spell or Tech ability, others choose better weaponry which causes most teams to be slower moving and less well armed as a whole. This means the ability to move around freely, picking off single targets is the order of play. A couple of rounds later and with everyone now purchasing several Magic/Tech abilities and all tooled up with the better weapons, it changes the game into a fragfest where teamplay really comes into it. Instead of freely moving about killing at a distance, your are finding you should be pairing up with 1 or 2 other teammates (safety in numbers) and attack with force and speed. Also having to be aware that they enemy will do the same and may use teleport to suprise your team.
Overall, if you get into a team that uses a bit of strategy to their games, a bit of covering each others backs and thinking of their actions, rather than blindly running about at will just trying to kill people, your going to find a richly rewarding experience and a lot of Wins to your name. This game isnt about the honour of getting the most kills..... its the honour of working as a team to stop the enemy and the team wins. So if you feel the need to be the sniper covering your friends movement, or the Troll that stands back at the exit point just in case the enemy gain the flag then it all pays off better than a group of new players that just rush about killing anything that moves. The Connection times to the games were at first VERY slow. It was taking up to 2 or 3 minutes to connect to a game which was slightly painful, but recently these have dropped to about 40 seconds so hopefully as more people buy the game and play the better it will get. Also, when your playing the game, they game will still keep you connected even if the server goes down or similar incident. So it just reloads a new map and carries on. It has only once in 3 nights of play dropped me out and forced me to find a new connection meaning another 2 minute wait. Be patient and once your in the game it is better.
The online play itself when connected seemed for the most part very fast and very little slowdown or jerkiness. And the playing against PC players is unnoticable, with no obvious advantages for either PC or 360 player. The only times that you get slow loading between matches is when a new player joins or it is "syncing" but usually it only adds about 10 seconds to the very short few seconds loading time between each match and is very bearable. Even when these things happen it displays it on screen to let you know why it is slow so you can sympathise a bit for having to wait a few extra seconds.
The number of players in a game ranges from 8 to 16 (4 a side - 8 a side) which compared to a lot of games is very few. But the lack of players on each side is a very good feeling. The maps are not huge (not to the scale of Battlefield 2) and the fact that its not a good idea to die cos of the lack of respawning it makes people think more about their movement and actions. It also makes it a more strategic battle rather than a gung-ho one that nearly always meets with failure! In fact, when you get to the later rounds and everyone is tooled up with Weapons and abilities, sometimes 16 players seems too many and people are dying everywhere with little understanding as to why. Some will love that rush of adrenaline in battle, others will shy away wanting to survive and play a little longer. But overall 16 player max seems to be more than enough on the size of these maps. The Achievements are varied from KILL 100 ELVES, to 360 PLAYER RESSURECTS A VISTA PLAYER, and a few secret ones that wont reveal until you achieve them. This gives you plenty of rewards to enjoy from playing but a downside to it is that there seems to be no leaderboard or statistics page telling you how many games played, kills etc, so no way of knowing how many more Elf kills or Troll Kills you have to do to get to an achievement. There seems an abundance of Stats after each match round (so many you dont get chance to see them, about 6 pages from Kills, to Ressurects, down to number of shots fired, number of hits, damage ratios etc) and this is good, but it only lasts for each game round and there is no permanent PROFILE page to let you see how your doing overall in your Shadowrun Career. This is a HUGE let down that is sadly lacking. One of the reasons I racked up 300+ hours on Battlefield 2 was because I had leaderboards to climb up, Kills to add to overall, etc. But there is no incentive like that with Shadowrun. There are no personal goals to set or be proud off, instead merely waiting for a achievement to suddenly appear telling you that you achieved something. So this brings Shadowrun down to a pick up and play game where you try to achieve results in the match your playing and once its over, you dont care about it or what effect it has had on your Shadowrun Career. If you can get an achievement for killing 100 Trolls, and it is counting these kills to gain the achievement.... then why oh why not just give us a running scoreboard to tell us how we are doing.
Single player is basic to say the least. You get a few training missions that are only good for new players to learn how to use the Magic and what they do (which is useful) but after that you wont return to them. There are the opportunities to play Bot matches if you wish but considering this is a multiplayer game overall then chances are your only buying it to play online and have an online connection to play real people. So this feature will rarely get used because no matter how good the Bots are, they are nowhere near as fun or thrilling to play against as real human players. The chances are you will only play a Bot match if the connection to Online Play isnt working and you just HAVE to have the rush of adrenaline fighting them Trolls!!
Overall the game is very good and much more worthy of a higher score than Gamespot gave. It does feel a little unpolished, and with the weapons and connection times and the lack of personal statistics, it does feel like they rushed it a couple of months too early to be the first cross platform game. It would be good to have a free update making the stats available, speed up connection times (which seem to be happening now) and it will make this game even better.
I can see myself playing this game for several weeks, maybe racking up 100-200 hours. But without those Stats, i dont think it will ever keep me interested long enough to keep wanting to play and achieve more. Just fun to play as a team kicking ass!! And the playing about with Teleports, Strangle spells, Gliders etc all add so much variety to the teamplay that i doubt anyone will get bored with trying new things or seeing new gameplay ideas for many months to come. Certainly until the next big Multiplayer FPS comes along!