The Thing about Shadowrun is, when you play a FPS you have situational awareness. You know you have X amount of guys to kill X amount of ways. Its simple and straightforward, but Shadowrun takes that and turns it upside down.
Suddenly, guys you thought we’re down for the count, are resurrected, back into the fight. An area you thought was clear, suddenly has guys teleporting through the floors, ceilings, and walls. Flanking you from all sides. Suddenly the rules of FPS have just been broken.
Elf + Teleport + Glider + Strangle = Gold!
The NDA (Non-disclosure agreement) on Shadowrun was lifted this morning, allowing me and anyone else who was part of the BETA, to talk freely about their impressions and thoughts on the game. I originally played this game back in May 2006 at E3 but wasn’t able to get too much hands on time with it; just a real quick walkthrough really.
I was impressed by the game then, but still wasn’t able to see exactly how they were going to pull it off, so I remained skeptical of how they were going to turn a classic RPG such as Shadowrun into a FPS with RPG elements.
Well, after playing the latest build of Shadowrun as recently as last night, I can tell you that they did an AMAZING job with it. FPS is my genre, its what I love, and the genre I’ll always be the biggest fan of, so when Fasa Studios said they were going to take FPS in a new direction by adding tech and magic, I was a more than just a bit worried.
Summon Minion fighting a Troll
Typically, I want my FPS untouched. Straight up shooting people in the face; but I have to say that I’m having a blast on Shadowrun, and think they way they set up their gameplay, really takes advantage of the magic and doesn’t over complicate things. Which was my biggest fear, was that the inclusion of magic and tech was going to make things way too complicated and suck the fun right out of the game. Gladly; I was wrong.
The Blue beast thing you see above is a Minion and is the result of the Summon spell. Basically a great tool for Defensive tactics as you can assign it to defend a certain area, or attack a certain enemy. Among other spells are my personal favorite and probably the most simplistic in the selection of spells is, Teleport and Strangle.
Strangle: Creates magical crystals that damage and drain essence from players that run into them. The crystals also attract and trap players for a short while, though the individual crystal is destroyed by this. Each cast of Strangle costs you some essence as an investment. When all of the crystals from a particular cast are destroyed, you will regain the invested essence. The crystals are useful for blocking routes and slowing enemy passage.
Teleport: Teleport moves you roughly eight meters in the direction that you are moving, regardless of what is in the way. You can jump up and teleport to move through ceilings or can crouch and teleport to move through floors. Teleport is extremely versatile and finding good teleport routes through the map will allow you to quickly cover large distances, escape from a bad situation, or surprise your enemy.
There is also:
- Tree of Life
- Resurrect
- Smoke
- Gust
- Summon
Basically it boils down to a Counter Strike type buy system at the beginning of each round, where you can purchase Spells and / or magic to assign to the Left bumper, Right bumper, and Left trigger. You can only carry three at a time, and it can be a combination of magic and tech, or all of either. Some of the Tech includes:
Glider: Gilder allows you to glide long distances through the air and will prevent you from taking falling damage while active. You can activate Glider by using its assigned button or, when it is assigned, by hitting the A button while in the air. Glider combined with teleport will make you extremely maneuverable. A small electromagnetic generator causes some initial lift when glide is activated.
Enhanced Vision: When activated, Enhanced Vision sends out a sonar-like pulse that will let you see both enemies and friends through walls, combined with a distance indicator to each contact. If you are close enough to a player, you will see their silhouette; otherwise you will see an icon representing them. Enhanced Vision does not show players that have Smoke assigned.
Players on the receiving end of a vision pulse will feel a distinctive rumble and will see a visual effect, telling them that they’ve been spotted. Be aware that, if an enemy on the receiving end of a vision pulse has Enhanced Vision assigned, you (and only you) will automatically show up to them, just as if they had activated it.
Smartlink: While active, Smartlink confers a number of advantages, but also adds a laser sight that makes you more visible to opponents. Smartlink helps to make firing your weapons more accurate, adds an additional level of zoom to each ranged weapon, and adds smart targeting that prevents you from damaging your teammates. Once activated, Smartlink remains on until you use it again to deactivate it.
AntiMagic Generator: The AntiMagic Generator creates devices that, once thrown into the world, absorb all magic within their area of effect. This will destroy trees of life, minions, and strangle crystals as well as draining all essence from players within that area. When thrown, they will stick to almost anything that they hit and last for quite a while before running out of power. The devices can also be shot and destroyed. You start with four devices and will slowly regain them after using any of your initial four.
Wired Reflexes: While assigned, Wired Reflexes increases your movement speed, makes you jump higher, allows you to reload weapons faster, and gives you the ability to block some or all of most weapon attacks while you are wielding a katana, facing your attacker and not yourself attacking.
When activated, your movement speed increases even further, you jump even higher, and you reload
weapons even faster, but activating Wired Reflexes costs you health, potentially even killing you.
My favorite by far, has got to be the Glider. Again, probably the most basic of all the Techs, but for sure one of the best. I use it with Teleport to quickly get to the enemy or objective in no time.
The big thing is this game is perfect with a good team with great communication and each knowing their strengths and weaknesses. The combination of magic and tech let you specialize your character on the fly to best approach any scenario.
I for one, am a Runner / Fighter. I hate defending, and typically want to be the guy who drops into the heat of battle to fight their way to the Artifact and back out again to score. Due to this; I typically focus on what Race, Magic, Tech, and weapon are going to give me the greatest agility and speed. I typically go with Elf, since he has Health Re-gen and I’ll need it if going into a fire fight, but is also a fast runner, is extremely agile, and is pretty standard in terms of health and magic. I add some Teleport and Glider to quickly get to the objective or to get out of battle quickly, and couple it with some random spell like Strangle or something else to help me when I’m in the fight.
The Troll class on the other hand, is perfect for those who like to defend, or just sheer brute force. They have thick skin, can take a lot of damage, and can handle a mini-gun like no bodies business. I suggest, suiting them up with the Mini-gun, Summon, Strangle, and Tree of Life for the ultimate defense.
Gameplay wise, this game is really fun. This is the first game I’ve had fun playing the training levels on. That says a lot about a game if you have fun training for the actual game. The Training Chapters are pretty quick and basically get you familiar with all the different spells, techs, and other innovative gameplay you’ll encounter.
I totally suggest going through at least the first few before jumping into a game, and if you’ve got the time, play some You vs. Bots before going up against real people, because I can already tell you that once you get up against live people, each with their unique skills and abilities, its going to be like no other game you ever played.
Now, I’ll wait to fully give an impression on this game until the BETA is finished and I’m playing on the final retail copy, but thus far I’m blown away by this games gameplay. Its fun. Plain and simple.
