Shadowrun

Shadowrun

Shadowrun is an interesting case study in why the "Holy Grail" of PC vs Console gaming is a fraud. As one of a few titles that supports cross-platform play (and incidentally, one of the same few titles that allows online play using an XBL silver account), Shadowrun steps into almost every pitfall of the experiment, and is worse for it.

The idea is solid - take PC darling Counterstrike, add in the mythos of a popular cyberpunk RPG/franchise, and make something unique. It certainly is. The game looks great, even by today's standards, and has all the quirks that blending a "trolls and machineguns" RPG with everyone's favorite vent blocking simulator should have. The "powers" you can get in your loadout are awesome and several are really unique and haven't been done since. It has a (rather ingenious) way of getting around Counterstrike's "Welp, you're dead, wait 6 minutes doing nothing until next round" issue.

The problem, as with most things, is the players. Shadowrun as a gameplay experience has a learning curve like a brick wall, and it appeals in conceit to a very small subset of very hardcore players, who have in the two years since this game's release, become very, very good at it. Combine this with an unforgiving damage system and the fact that half of the players effectively have aimbots on due to the increased accuracy of KB+M versus a gamepad, and it quickly becomes apparent why this game was unsuccessful.

Which isn't to say it's an unfun game, far from it. It's a lot of fun, you just have to set yourself up for it - which means not joining pubbie games or trying to play in "the community." This game is inexpensive enough that all your friends either have or can easily acquire a copy, at which point playing 5v5 or more with all humans vs all AI bots on "Very Hard" is great fun. You can even contribute to a team without a headset, thanks to another bit of subtle brilliance in using the D-Pad to issue status updates and requests.

Graphics: Very good. Stylized character models and a great eye for interesting level design. 4.
Sound: The weapons and spells all sound great, but the characters could have more personality. 3.
Controls: Intuitive, with tons of nice touches. 4.
Tilt: Impossible to play with the public at large, but a fun distraction or "time-killer" game with friends. 2.
Overall (not an average): 2.