Demo Impressions: Shadowrun

Shadowrun from Fasa studios aims to bring something different to the largely populated FPS genre by combining shooting, magic, and tech gear- while at the same time enraging the classic Shadowrun RTS fans.

For the most part, Fasa is successful with this, giving us a fun, fast paced team shooter with loads of cool magic abilities and tech equipment to make use of. Gamers must choose their race depending on which suits their style of play best. The full game has 4 character classes, Elfs, Dwarfs, Trolls, and Humans, with only the Elfs and the Humans playable in the demo. The Elf is fast and re-generates health when not being damaged, however is weaker than other character classes whereas the human is kind of the all-rounder, you know not really amazing at any particular thing, nor weak at any particular thing.

The game uses a Counter Strike-esq feature at the beginning of each round whereby you can spend your hard earned battle cash on weapons, magic, and tech, or buy one of your team mates a gift. You earn cash as you play each round by killing enemies, securing/defending the artifact, reviving fallen team mates, or basically anything that helps your team.

The weapons themselves are quite the expected selection- there's the Pistol, SMG, Rifle, Shotgun, Sniper- oh and there's a Katana too! Weapons not featured in the game are both the Minigun and the Rocket Launcher. Unfortunately the shooting isn't nearly as satisfying as either magic or tech usage is. This is mainly down to accuracy levels and the aiming mechanic. As you run, turn, jump, or shoot- your target reticule grows larger to a certain point (the size of which depends on which weapon you are using) making you gradually more inaccurate. This is probably necessary in order to balance the PC and Xbox 360 versions, with PC users probably being given an even larger 'reticule bloom' however it just seems to make the weapons feel terribly inaccurate at times. Was a FPS really the best idea for a cross-platform title when having to resort to this sort of thing in order to balance?

Now for Shadowrun's biggest appeal- the magic. Magic is extremely satisfying in Shadowrun, and as you become more skilled with it's usage, you appreciate just how crucial it can be to use wisely and skillfully to secure your team's victory. There are 7 abilities in total. Teleport allows you to move yourself in any direction you want through solid objects, you can use it to quickly accend a floor or teleport through a wall for example. Gust lets you blow enemies back, while Strangle lets you protect and block of a specific area and slow the enemy down. Smoke makes you invunerable to damage and harder to see, Revive enables you to bring team mates back from the dead, and the Tree of Life can be used to plant down a healing tree which can be used both to heal and as cover. Lastly Summon which allows you to summon minions to help destroy the enemy. Sadly you never get to use either Summon or Smoke in the demo.

Tech is equally as important in Shadowrun, and equally as fun to use! The 6 tech abilities are grenades, enhanced vision which lets you see enemies through solid objects, the glider which is awesome and lets you glide around the map. Smartlink gives you enhanced aiming, Wired Reflexes allow you to move and reload faster, and Anti Magic Generators which enable you to destroy magic and essence sources within the device radius. Both Wired Reflexes and Anti Magic Generators are unavailable in the demo.

Shadowrun is basically a Multiplayer only team based game (RNA vs Lineage) and the first to enable both Xbox 360 users and Windows Vista owners to play together. However, in the demo you can only play with your fellow 360 users. My only complaint thus far about the online set up is that the Matchmaking system (as used in Halo 2/3) which does seem to take quite a while. However, also just like Halo 2 and Halo 3, the game supports a party system for you and your online buddies, which is a great feature to have.

The game's singleplayer, if you can call it that, consists of 6 training sessions and bot matches. The bot matches, although no match for online play, do work surprisingly well and the bots seem to have fairly adequate intelligence.

Visually Shadowrun isn't the most impressive looking, mainly down to things such as no customising options, resulting in all elfs/dwarfs/trolls/humans looking exactly the same, and other things such as no animations when say climbing a ladder. That said, on the surface the game does look nice enough not to insult your eyes.

After playing the demo it seems that Shadowrun is a solid title with plenty of appeal, though I would be concerned that there may not be enough content here to warrant a £40 purchase, with only 9 maps in the full game (1 in the demo- 'Power Station') and whether or not the magic and tech abilities would wear thin after a while.

Shadowrun is well worth the download time- download the demo, play through the training, then get online and have a blast!

Demo rating: 3/5