Shadowrun Review

Shadowrun Review
Written by Kevin Wild

Since FASA first announced this game was coming, we have been excited and looked forward to a great FPS multiplayer experience. While this game offers new FPS experiences, players will enjoy this game, minus its many flaws.

Shadowrun Gamplay Trailer

I will say it now, before I played this game, I knew nothing about previous Shadowrun games; heck, I didn’t even know there were others. I will try to sum up the story for you. In the not-so-distant future, magic abilities that have long remained dormant in humans begin to return once again. Some humans then become “super-humans,” changing form to become dwarves, trolls and elves. At the same time, a corporation named RNA is doing battle with The Lineage over whether or not anyone should profit from the newly found magic.

After reading about past Shadowrun experiences, it was weird to find out that this game doesn’t have any single player experience at all. Really, all there is besides Xbox Live play, is multiplayer against bots for those players that still haven’t took the dunk to Xbox Live yet. While players will have a fun time playing the games three similar modes: Raid, Extraction and Attrition. Soon enough the players will want more ways to play this crazy and fun shooter.

The game combines magic and guns, how cooler does it get.

Although the gameplay is similar to what you should expect from a FPS, this game adds a few things to the mix. The first is the option to choose on of four races: Dwarves, Elves, Trolls and Humans. Each race has their advantages and disadvantages, creating a fun experience while you learn how to play each race. In a lot of ways, Shadowrun takes some of its changes from games like Counter-strike. During the game, you’ll earn money by getting kills, capturing the Artifact, healing friends, and so on, which you can then go and spend on weapons, magic, or tech(nology). There quite an array of magical spells available, although you’re limited to the number you can have equipped at any given time (3). You will also be limited by the amount of Essence (magic or manna) slots you have, which keeps players from constantly using Magic. None of the magical powers are designed as offensive either, so you’ll still need to be able to hit a moving target with your weapon. Every magical power has its advantages, but you will have to play and find combos that you like. With Tech, it permanently affects your player’s performance, such as accuracy and speed. With Tech equipped, a portion of your essence will be unusable.
Basically, you will need to find combos that you like, by using different Tech and Powers and finding out your strengths and weaknesses.

In the game, the graphics and audio are disappointing. The textures are good, but everything seems bland and every map seems to have the same kind of feel to it. There are a few things in the game that just look weird, and it seems as if FASA cut some corners in creating this game by not paying much attention to detail. Overall, this game creates a similar graphical look to Crackdown. The audio isn’t bad, but it isn’t anything special. The audio is bland, it doesn’t spark any excitement or any suspense, and overall, most of the guns sound small and weak.

There are multiple races to chose from, heck even a midget like creature.

Unfortunately, we aren’t sure how much time players will invest in this game, and how long it will keep them tied up. Overall, there are 12 maps (3 are just smaller versions of bigger ones), only 3 gameplay types, which are all very similar, and not loads of magic to choose from. This game offers great potential, to become a top online shooter, but Microsoft needs to release some FREE content, with maps and gameplay types to inject something into this game.

Ultimately, this game is frustrating. It is close to becoming a great multiplayer shooter, but it just needs more content (more meat on its bones). If Microsoft achieves this and releases more content, the rating we give to this game may get flipped around. The gameplay is great and creates fun times to play with friends. The more you play this game, the better it gets. I guess we can all just hope the downloadable content angels come our way and unleash this games full potential.