Leveling Down

Shadowrun, one of the most underrated FPS titles of 2007?

Even though I picked up GTAIV, I’ve been spending more of my time lately playing Lost Odyssey and Shadowrun. I’ve put several hours into Shadowrun now, and with it being multiplayer only, I figured I’ve given it enough time to warrant a review. My quick thoughts on it include:

Good:
- Party Matchmaking makes it easy to find games and stick with friends
- Interesting blend of races, magic, tech, and contemporary weaponry
- Addictive Counter-Strike-like gameplay (earn money from round to round, no respawning, etc.)
- Bots for offline play

Bad:
- Multiplayer only (no campaign mode)
- Lack of splitscreen modes for either offline or online play
- Lack of stat tracking of any sort
- Lack of persistent rank system

Intro
Shadowrun may very well be the most underrated title of 2007. Originally a table top pen and paper game like Dungeons and Dragons, the Shadowrun universe had its fair share of fans that also accepted the few RPG video games that were released based on the franchise. However, with the 360/PC version of Shadowrun going FPS and only loosely based on lore from the Shadowrun universe and more in line with Counter-Strike, it had its fair share of detractors.

Not only that, but the game was pretty much one of the first shooters to be released on the 360 with no single player campaign of any sort. The reception to the game was quite negative, as many thought $60 was too much for a multiplayer only game. The game did not sell too well, as its blend of magic and tech in a FPS did not prove to draw in the contemporary shooter crowd playing Rainbow Six: Vegas or GRAW 1 and 2. At the same time, the game wasn’t really Shadowrun at all, so fans of the Shadowrun franchise were turned off. This led to the game pretty much bombing and the developers behind the game closing up shop earlier this year.

The game can be bought now for around $20 new, so I went ahead and decided to give it a spin. I’m a consumer that never heard of Shadowrun prior to this game and loves both contemporary shooters and fantasy RPG games. The idea of a fantasy FPS game presented Counter-Strike style with party matchmaking made me decide to give it a chance. And I can say it works.

The flag (or artifact, as referred to in this game), is the most important aspect of the game, being the objective in two of the three modes and the only way to destroy corpses in Team Deathmatch.

Storyline and Premise
Since there’s no single player option to the game, there’s no real storyline exactly. But the premise of the game is an online shooter where you pick your race prior to the start of the match and earn money to buy weapons, magic abilities, and tech throughout the best 6 out of 11 round match. When one team reaches 6 points, the match ends and not only is a new map loaded, but the teams are rebalanced based on the previous match.

You earn a certain amount of money each round and you earn more money by performing tasks such as killing opponents or reviving your teammates in the round. On average, you make about $1400 a round, but several hundreds more depending on how many enemies you kill, teammates you resurrect, etc.

Shadowrun supports up to 16 players and there are a total of nine maps, with two of three different modes playable on each map. Matchmaking means it’s impossible to choose which server you play on, but you can specify in your search settings which maps you are willing to play as well as how big of a game you prefer.

A troll with a chaingun takes on a summoned minion

Gameplay Mechanics
The first thing to understand about Shadowrun is how it differs from a typical FPS game. In Shadowrun, you have a life bar, as well as an essence bar and three of the four shoulder buttons are where you assign your magic and/or tech skills. The fourth shoulder button, the right trigger, is always your weapon button. Therefore, the entire match you can only have 3 magic/tech skills equipped at the same time. Each race tends to play its own way, but again, players can experiment with any magic or tech combination they feel best rounds out their play style.

Your magic bar consists of circles of essence that regenerate. Each magic spell used depletes a certain number of essence circles, but then the bar begins to refill again right after the magic is cast. Tech is different – when you buy a tech skill and equip it to one of your shoulder buttons (thus making it active) it has a certain number of essence circles it closes off. So for example, if your total essence circle bar was 8 and you equipped a tech skill with a 5 essence circle cost, you would only have 3 essence circles left that you could use to cast magic and regenerate. The remaining five circles that are being used by the tech will be returned to you when you unequip the tech.

There are also persistent spells that summon creatures or revive players that when cast, lock up your essence bar by a certain number of circles until the creature or player dies.

Races
The first unique thing about Shadowrun is the concept of races. They’re akin to classes in other games, but are more interesting in Shadowrun because it’s still possible to play any role with any race if you want to. The races are as follows:

1. Humans
The biggest advantage the humans have is their ability to use both magic and tech together. Humans are the only race that can equip tech skills without taking up essence bars. This makes the class the best choice to utilize both magic and essence at the same time. They are in a sense, the most well rounded class, second most in health after trolls and second fastest after the elves. However, they don’t really excel in anything and can pretty much fill any role.

2. Dwarves
The shortest of the four classes, dwarves have the largest essence bar but for the most part the dwarf’s essence bar regenerates very slowly. The only way he can regenerate his essence bar is to drain it from his surroundings. This means he can drain it from opponents nearby, his own teammates (who have to be right next to him for him to drain from them), or objects created with magic spells. Thus, his style is to play more up close, so that he can get his own essence back by draining it from his opponents.

3. Trolls
Trolls are the strongest class in the game, but the slowest. They suffer no speed penalty from equipping the heaviest weapon in the game, the chaingun. Trolls seem to play better at defense, as their essence bar actually allows their hides to strengthen when they take damage. As long as the troll has essence, he is the most difficult of the four races to kill. Of course, he also has the smallest essence bar to balance that out.

4. Elves
Elves are the fastest race in the game and seem to be the most popular race. They have the least life in the game, and rely mostly on magic since they have the second largest essence bar of the four races. To compensate, their essence allows them to regenerate health when they are not taking damage, so the elf race is best suited for hit and run tactics where they attack, run off to regenerate health, and return.

Weapons
The weapons in the game consist of:

1. Pistol – default weapon
The default starting weapon, it is most often used in the first round of a match when most players decide to spend their $2000 starting cash on a magic or tech since those last the whole match and are not dropped when you die.

2. SMG – $500
Ideal at short to medium range, the SMG has a high rate of fire that quickly becomes inaccurate at longer distances.

3. Rifle – $500
Ideal at medium to long range, the scope on the rifle allows you to attack enemies at a distance.

4. Shotgun – $750
Ideal at close range, the shotgun is popular with dwarves because of their close range “magic-leeching” fighting style. It’s considered a heavier weapon, so it slows down elves if they equip it.

5. Katana – $1000
The katana is the only melee weapon in the game, and preferred by elves for its hit and run style. When attacking an unaware enemy from behind with a katana (a question mark will be over the enemy’s head if you are behind him and he is unaware), he will bleed to death from that one hit unless he gets help. Elves will often buy katanas, attack you and run off. While you bleed to death, the elf player will be regenerating his health before he comes back to try to take out your teammates.

6. Minigun – $1250
The heaviest weapon in the game, the minigun is the preferred weapon of the trolls because they are the only race in the game that don’t get a movement speed penalty by equipping it. The Troll with a minigun is basically the heavy weapons guy in Team Fortress.

7. Sniper Rifle – $2500
Quite the costly weapon, a sniper rifle is obviously ideal at the furthest range and it is possible to kill a target instantly with a headshot. Unfortunately, very few maps in Shadowrun are large open maps like Valhalla from Halo 3 that would encourage sniping.

8. Rocket Launcher – $5000
At $5000 and $1000 per rocket, the Rocket Launcher should only be bought if you’re sure you have nowhere else to spend the money. This is because if you are killed you lose the weapon, but at the same time, the enemy can pick it up and cause great damage to your team.

The Tree of Life is the only way non-Elf races can regain health.

Magic
Unlike the weapons that get dropped when you die, magic and tech stay with you the whole match the instant any of them are bought. So as soon as you buy Resurrect, you will have it for every round of the entire match, and thus magic and tech are often more preferred to weapons when you have the money since the pistol isn’t bad and you can often find weapons on the level from downed opponents. The spells available are:

1. Tree of Life – $2000
One of the most useful spells in the entire game, the tree of life takes 3 essence blocks to cast, and sprouts a full grown tree healing anyone standing around it. It lasts for several minutes and can provide cover as well. This spell does not have to be assigned to one of the 3 shoulder buttons to be used.

2. Resurrect – $2000
The Resurrect spell allows the player to revive any fallen teammate as long as his corpse is still there. When a teammate falls in a match, the corpse remains until the opposing team clears it by attacking it several more times again until the corpse disappears. This spell does not have to be assigned to one of the 3 shoulder buttons to be used.

Resurrect is interesting for this game; when you resurrect someone it will cost you 4 essence blocks, and it will keep those blocks locked as long as that person is still alive. What’s neat is that the resurrect spell is a circular radius around you and the casting animation takes a couple seconds – so if there are several corpses near each other, you can resurrect them all at the same time with the same 4 essence blocks. To balance resurrection out, if the player who resurrects anyone else is killed, the resurrectee will proceed to bleed out (like a katana cut) unless someone else on his team casts resurrect on him.

3. Strangle – $2000
Strangle is an area effect spell where you basically target any area you wish when you cast the spell, huge blocks of rocks grow out. This causes anyone in the area to get caught in the spikes for several seconds, bouncing around allowing you to kill them if needed. It can be cast in hallways as well, completely sealing them off to prevent someone else from getting through without a little effort.

The effort needed to taking out a Strangle growth is to shoot the rocks to slowly clear your way through it, or to get a dwarf to get close to the patch and the dwarf will automatically cause all of the patch to disappear with his magic draining passive ability.

Each use of Strangle will lock down 2 essence blocks of magic for you, and the 2 blocks will only be returned once all patches of Strangle associated with the spell cast are cleared out.

4. Smoke – $2000
The spell smoke allows you to turn your body into smoke, thus making you invulnerable to any type of weapon attack. When you’ve turned it on, your essence bar depletes based on how long you have it on for, and you cannot attack when in this mode. It is useful for escaping enemies or jumping off of tall areas (you take no damage from falling when in smoke mode). Also, when you come out of smoke mode, you can’t attack for a few seconds, so really, it’s only good for being stealthy or running away, and not to kill someone.

Players in Smoke mode can be damaged though by the spell Gust.

5. Gust – $2000
The spell gust costs 2 essence blocks per use, and it’s basically a “force push” where you push the air in front of you. The spell has pretty limited use, but its main use is in defense – keeping enemies from ascending a certain area. When you and the enemy are on a tall building and you use gust, you can push him off to his death. The spell gust is also useful for pushing back grenades thrown by the enemy. Finally, it’s the only ability that can damage an enemy in Smoke mode.

6. Teleport – $2250
Probably one of the coolest spells in the game, Teleport does exactly that. It costs 3 essence blocks and teleports you 8-10 meters in the direction your body is currently moving. So you could be looking one way and firing while running a different way and hitting the teleport spell instantly moves you another 8-10 meters. What’s neat is that you can teleport in any direction and through walls/objects, provided you can land on the other side. Ducking will allow you to teleport down, while jumping will teleport you in any direction your body is moving as you hit the spell. Trolls often use it to help in their slow movement.

7. Summon – $3000
The most costly spell in the game in both money and magic bars (it locks down 5 essence blocks for as long as your minion is alive), Summon allows you to summon a shadow minion about the size of a troll. You can summon it on the ground and it will patrol a certain area around it, or you can summon it on an enemy target and the minion will pursue the target until either the target or the minion is killed. The minion actually doesn’t have that much life – if you are aware of a minion chasing you, constantly firing at it while backpedaling will allow you to kill it and escape. Minions die just about instantly when they get close enough to a dwarf due to the dwarf’s magic draining ability.

The Glider tech makes it quite fun to fly.

Tech
Tech is like magic in the game – they can only be used (even passive tech abilities) if they are assigned to one of your three shoulder buttons. And unlike magic that consists of each cast depleting the regenerating essence bar, equipping any of the techs simply locks down a certain number of essence blocks, preventing the blocks to be used in casting magic. The tech abilities are as follows:

1. Grenade – default tech
Every race starts with two grenades. If you die you drop grenades as well as weapons, so anyone can pick up your unused grenades. I don’t think grenades take any essence blocks.

2. Enhanced vision – $2000
Equipping this tech allows you to hit it and scan the area, detecting any enemies or teammates in a 50 meter radius, even through walls. The scan runs for about three seconds, coupled with a 2-3 second cooldown so you can basically use it every few seconds to chase after any hidden enemies. It’s like the radar from Call of Duty 4, but instead of the red dots showing up on a radar, the red dots are larger and actually show up on the screen so you know exactly where the enemy is.

3. Glider – $2000
The glider gives you a set of wings that allow you to float in the air for a good amount of time. It has no cooldown and if you hit it when you are in the air, it will have you glide in the direction you want to go, but if you use it when you are standing directly on the ground, it will shoot you up into the air several meters. Useful for reaching hard to reach high areas.

4. Wired Reflexes – $2000
When equipped, this tech enhances the players running speed and allow the deflection of bullets when wielding a katana. Basically, if you are standing still with this skill and an enemy is shooting you with bullets from the front, you will deflect some of them. If the bullets are coming slowly, you should be able to deflect them all (like a sniper rifle) but if there’s too many, you won’t be able to deflect everything.

You can also “use” the Wired Reflexes tech as well, granting you an even faster speed boost at the cost of a chunk of life. Not really useful for any class except the elf, since the elf can automatically regenerate health.

5. Anti-magic generators – $1500
This tech locks up five magic bars, but allows you to throw grenade like objects that have an aura that immediately reduce the magic of anyone in its area to 0. This is quite useful when going up against a troll, because the troll’s hardened armor only appears when it has magic. Get rid of its magic bar, and it dies as quickly as any other race.

6. Smartlink – $2000
When equipped this tech is basically like a light autoaim skill, allowing you to lock onto a target quicker for more accurate shooting. It also adds a level of zoom to each weapon, allowing you to zoom in even with a pistol. It is highly preferred for troll players with chainguns, because another one of its unique abilities is that it can differentiate between teammates and opponents, halting fire when you move your crosshair over any friendlies.

Multiplayer Modes
There are a total of nine maps in the game, with each map either playing the Raid or Extraction type. Raid and Extraction are similar – Extraction revolves around there being a flag and both teams trying to bring the flag to their extraction point (or kill everyone on the opposing team first). Raid has just the red team going for the flag to bring to an extraction point, while the blue team tries to prevent red from “capturing” the flag.

Attrition is basically Team Deathmatch, so it is an additional gametype for each of the nine maps. However, unlike in Raid or Extraction, when someone is killed, you can’t clear their corpse which means they can always be resurrected. The only way to clear a body for good is to pick up the flag on the map. Attacking a corpse with the flag is the only way to clear a body in Attrition.

Bringing it all together
So that was a mouthful explaining all the different aspects of this game. Basically, it’s about picking a race you feel comfortable with, and then buying magic/tech to form a combination that fits your playstyle. The human race, for example, is a good starting race that should make use of both tech and magic because by equipping tech, they are not penalized from using magic at all. The elf should focus primarily on magic, because of his high essence bar while the dwarf should focus on magic/tech that allow him to get close to the enemy to make use of his essence leech ability. The troll has high defense, so he should make use of the ability to stay alive and do damage. With such a small essence bar and the reliance on essence to keep its skin defense high, trolls are the only race in the game that are not expected to have Resurrect but Tree of Life instead since Resurrect locks down four of his five essence bars.

But then again, it’s up to the player. If the player wants to make a shotgun toting, glider flying troll, he can go ahead. If he wants to make a chaingun wielding, teleporting dwarf, he’s able to do that as well. The player can only choose his race at the beginning of a match, and is unable to make changes to his race until the beginning of the next match. However, he can change whatever tech/magic abilities on his shoulder buttons at any time throughout the match provided he’s bought them. At the beginning of each round on the Buy menu you can see what each of your teammates has, and you can even give money to any of them.

A human casts the Gust spell on an encroaching Elf.

Achievement System
The Achievements in this game are decent, with only a couple frustrating ones. There’s pretty much Achievements for using each Race, Magic, and Tech 100 times in the game, as well as killing 100 of each race type. These are all pretty normal stuff and there are more skillful Achievements as well such as performing a resurrection on three players at once or killing three players with one grenade. I like some of these imaginative ones such as capturing the flag to win the game while bleeding out, or blocking 10 sniper rifle shots with the tech ability Wired Reflexes. The combination between the general progressive ones and skill related ones work well.

The only annoying part of these Achievements is the incorporation of Vista players. Because Shadowrun was the first game to allow for cross-platform play between Vista and 360 players, some of the Achievements reflect that. There are Achievements for playing in a party match with both Vista and 360 players, resurrecting a Vista player, or killing 100 Vista players. The problem, of course, is that Vista tanked and not many Shadowrun Vista players play these days. Another reason for the paucity of Vista players is that these PC gamers actually have to subscribe to Xbox Live Gold to be able to play. Crazy stuff and those Vista related Achievements are really the only annoying ones.

New players are expected to buy resurrect with the $2000 they have in the starting round, since they probably won’t be good enough to do anything else.

Final Thoughts
I’m glad I gave Shadowrun a shot – it’s quite charming in its own way. I certainly wouldn’t recommend this game for $60, but for $20, it’s well worth it. The matchmaking means I don’t have to think too hard when I want to play the game – simply just hit Play Game and I join the best server. I’ve never played another FPS game that incorporated magic and tech in this fashion and the party system allows me to easily play with friends I’ve made in the game already.

Of course, it’s not without its problems. I give the game a B. It’s a fun online shooter, but the lack of any sort of single player mode is disappointing. There’s also no stat tracking of any sort or a persistent rank system, reducing the length of the game. What’s unfortunate is how many stats are tracked during each match itself (several pages of stats) but they are not utilized at all in some database. If the game had stat tracking and/or a persistent ranking system, the game came closer to the B+ range  in my book. Either of these would have lengthened this multiplayer game more.

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