In a world where mega corporations have replaced governments, where corruption and death run rampant through the streets, a few brave souls have decided to walk in the shadows, risking their lives and putting their skills to the test in every job they undertake, their reasons for doing it? Honor and kindness, glory and fame or simply to turn a profit, it does not matter, as long as the job is done at the end of the day.
For those of you who don't know, Shadowrun has its foundations on a tabletop game, much like Dungeons and Dragons the amount of lore supporting this title from Harebrained is truly epic, too big for just one team of creative minds to work on, the developers clearly realized this and because of that, along with the game, included a campaign editor, much like Neverwinter Nights had done back in the good old days of RPG "epicness".
You start the game in your decaying apartment, penniless, without a job and no prospect of a reasonable future, nothing seems to be going your way when suddenly you get a call from your old friend Sam Watts, apparently he's dead and you've just been hired to find his killer, this is where the Dead Man's Switch story begins. Seems simple enough, but as you move through the streets of Seattle in search for answers you will find out that not everything is as it seems and a simple murder investigation might turn into something much bigger.
The story is mainly told through very well written text, there's no spoken dialog here, certainly a throwback to ages past that is most welcomed as the majority of dialogues and descriptions are a joy to read. Leaving a bit of room for the player's imagination to work is an interesting concept, something that recent games have failed to provide.
This cyber-punk inspired tale of conspiracies and death will last you around 10 to 12 hours, unfortunately it's very linear, providing little to no opportunity of exploring the rest of the world through side-quests, this was most likely due to the lack of time on the developer's part, something that we hope to see fixed through user generated content and the promised of a dlc from Harebrained scheduled to be released by the end of the year.
Much like another reboot of an old franchise that came out recently(XCOM), Shadowrun is a turn based rpg with a lot of focus on team combat and cover mechanics, it can surely provide interesting combat decisions, but it lacks a bit of depth, most of the times you can just force your way through, using combat heavy characters, requiring little to no strategy.
Only when hacking (decking) is introduced does the game asks a bit more of the player, making it imperative to take at least one decking specialist on your runs through the shadows.
Personally, taking a heal/buff bot to team up with my rifle specialist dwarf was always my first choice, saving healing kits for later missions was my main goal as I had other places to spend my hard earned Nuyen. One of the other spots was taken in most missions by Coyote, a competent shotgun wielding shadowrunner that had a supporting role in the story.
Thankfully the RPG elements present in Shadowrun are well developed and will provide the player with a nice amount of customization for their character, the skill tree has enough depth and options to make tweaking it a true joy. Outside of the tree you can also improve your shadowrunner through cyberware implants, outfits that give you different boosts in stats and weapons that range from pistols to long range rifles.
Hacking is the other major element of gameplay present in this title from Harebrained, it's actually called Decking and because the campaign is structured in a way where decking is not always an option, characters that focus on it will be handicapped throughout most of the game.
(Edit: The save system is one that gathered much attention on the account of not allowing you to save whenever you want and checkpoints being somewhat scarce, I think it fits well with the spirit of the game where you have to stick with your decisions even if you don't like the final results.)
Even on a visual level Shadowrun is very reminiscent of old school RPG's, the combination of well designed and very detailed pre-rendered backgrounds with 3D character models is a nice touch that lends a lot of personality to the title. Fortunately and unlike the older games, the characters don't stick out like a sore thumb, a lot of work was put into making sure the 3D models blend perfectly with the scenarios.
This sort of visual display when combined with the rich and exhaustive text descriptions of the scenarios and characters really help with the aforementioned concept of stimulating the player's imagination.
Regarding the music there's nothing bad to point out, maybe there should be a little more variety in terms of the number of tunes, aside from that, they're all very well done, so good in fact that the game was featured in a Zia's Corner episode (
Link).
Shadowrun is a breeze of fresh air into the RPG market, while it's definitely light on the tactical side, it more than makes up for it through it's short but engaging storyline. When you realize that this cyber-punk universe has a huge following behind it, you will start to grasp how big this title can get thanks to the editor provided with the game.
Year of Release: 2013
Platform(s): PC
Developer(s): Harebrained Schemes
NRLB would like to thank Harebrained Schemes for providing a review copy
