Shadowrun Gamer Review
Fasa Offers Up a Great Multi-Player Experience, but Little Else
The First-Person Shooter based on the science-fiction/fantasy series Shadowrun makes its debut on the Xbox 360 and PCs. Does it live up to its hype?
Purely Multi-Player Experience Rating: 87 out of 100
Overall package: 75 out of 100
The Xbox 360 library is well-known for its first-person shooters, but Fasa’s new Shadowrun FPS takes a few steps away from conventional FPS’s and adds its own twists. Shadowrun is based on the book and role-playing game series of the same name. It is a world of revived magical potential, new races, and advanced technologies. While the basic premise for the game seems to be an evil corporation, which is bent on using the “artifacts” for evil purposes, and a counter-revolutionary group trying to prevent the RNA Corporation from completing their goals. Shadowrun is very innovative and its multi-player action is impressive, but lack of single player story mode, local co-op, long periods of downtime while waiting for a match to start, and no player scoring system severely hurts the title.
When judged merely on what the game actually does offer, it shines. Unlike most first-person shooters, Shadowrun isn’t all about bigger and better weapons. What makes the game really stand out is the collection of magic spells and technology gadgets you can equip. In addition, there are two opposing factions, who are essentially the same thing, and four races that are drastically different in their playing style. From the fragile, but fast, elf to the slow but durable troll, the differing races offer even more customizing options. At the start of each round, players are awarded money based on how they did the previous round and this money is used to purchase weapons, spells, or tech. Each player can have only three abilities mapped at any one time, but they can be changed on the fly.
These spells and gadgets are fantastic. These spells and tech grant the player an amazing variety of abilities for a first-person shooter. Some of these abilities are fairly standard across the genre: gliding on air currents, seeing through walls, and pushing opponents back with bursts of air. But it’s the abilities that aren’t so commonplace that make Shadowrun unique. The ability to teleport through walls, floors, and ceilings has awesome tactical advantages, and it’s hard to imagine enjoying future FPSs without being able to run around a corner blasting my enemy and teleporting through the roof to escape return fire. Summoning a tree from nothing to heal yourself and those nearby, resurrecting a recently killed ally, and using cybernetics to boost your speed for short bursts are only a few of the abilities the game offers.
Shadowrun’s graphics look pretty good overall, but it does seem like corners were cut during production. The lack of any animation while climbing a ladder is a bit confusing, as climbing ladders is a fairly common occurrence and ladder animations are not hard to make. Pushing past all of these minor complaints ordinarily would be easy, but there are enough of these little problems to make them hard to ignore outright.
Where the game really falls short, however, is in its lack of game modes. Aside from a few training chapters and bot arenas, there isn’t much for the solo player. The game has no single-player mode at all, and while the multi-player aspects of the game more than make the game worthwhile, it would have been nice to have some sort of story to play through at your own pace. Another common complaint from Live players is the excessive load times and waiting times between rounds.
So, in the end, Shadowrun offers a great, innovative, and fun multi-player game. Unusual abilities, 4 different races, and awesome customization options are available in spades, but lack of any sort of solo-player experience drastically hurts the games appeal to non-Xbox live members.
