Review: Shadowrun (X360)

Shadowrun is a fun, well balanced, team based FPS shooter that suffers from flaws in scope and production quality

For: Well balanced classes, weapons, and skills; fun CTF and deathmatch; Excellent tutorial and bots
Against: No achievements in bot matches; no campaign; limited maps and game modes; poor models and animations

Achievements: Hard - will require endless online play

Shadowrun is a team based shooter that features a number of different character classes, weapons and skills - technologies and magic. Shadowrun is a focused online multiplayer game that does not feature a campaign or story of any kind for solo play, but offers offline bot matches instead. The Shadowrun RPG franchise is not particularly evident in the game, other than the nod to magic and the South American setting.

With its multiplayer focus it is important that the game does not suffer from the balance issues that a lot of FPS games suffer from. Thankfully, Shadowrun proves to be one of the most finely balanced games yet to grace the X360. All of the weapons, classes, and skills are evenly balanced with classic rock-paper-scissors rules: for instance, damage can be avoided with the "smoke" spell -which puts you in a gaseous state- whilst a "gust" spell is weak against most foes but instantly kills someone who is in "smoke". Virtually all skills, weapons and classes are carefully organised so that you never feel one race, spell or tech is superior to another. The net result is fun, fair and exciting gameplay regardless of the class, weapon, of skills that you use.

I have complained previously about weak multiplayer implementations that almost prevent the casual gamer from playing on XBL. Shadowrun features an excellent tutorial that explains all the classes and skills, whilst bot matches (with a decent AI) are provided to help learn the levels.

Shadowrun is not without its problems. The game feels rushed and unpolished. There are no character skins customisations so everyone looks the same, whilst the character animations are poor or non-existent: watching a character float up a ladder is both hilarious and pathetic. Shadowrun also features only two gameplay variants: CTF and Deathmatch. The range and variety of maps is also quite small.

Without doubt, Shadowrun is a lot of fun, especially if you can play with a group of friends, and the well balanced gameplay is to be applauded. However, the unfinished feel and some examples of poor production quality, really hurt the enjoyment of the game. Shadowrun is a good budget/bargain buy but remember it will require a few friends to purchase the game to get the maximum enjoyment out of it.

7/10