Shadowrun
Off-topic => General Gaming => Topic started by: Jadehellbringer on <09-04-10/0126:29>
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I'm sure I'm dangling a steak in the shark tank here, but it's worth asking. ;)
Came across a copy of this thing (used) recently, almost picked it up, but hadn't heard much good about it. So I figure, who better to ask than the Shadowrun community at large? If they approve, it can't be bad. And if they don't, then let's find out why.
Is it worth spending money and time on? Or am I better off finding a better waste of time?
I do ask that responses like 'the game sucks' or something to that effect are expanded out to give me reasons- that's what I'm looking for.
Thanks in advance!
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I'm pretty sure the multiplayer servers were taken down recently, which was sad news because it wasn't a bad multiplayer shooter.
It just wasn't that swell. I liked the setting and the graphics were okay, a tad bright and poofy for what I'd envision a SR game to look like but that's all relative.
The maps were usable, but nothing really unique and the combat system where you picked a bit of magic and guns wasn't special but workable.
Over all if you find it for like 4 bucks pick it up just to have a console FPS to prank with from time to time, but if what I hear about the multiplayer servers being shut down it'd probably not be worth picking up. Maybe the PC version with a heavy mod crowd and some user support play would've been worth it.
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They problem I had with it was that it was totally a FPS. There's no story (and it's not even set in the Shadowrun timeline) and forget if you wanted to play anything besides a Combat Mage or Razorboy.
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Wasn't it ONLY a multiplayer game? How can folks even still play it, with the servers taken down?
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No, you could play single player, but you were basically doing 'missions'. There was no Campaign mode.
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Was playing this online about a week ago the game will run server on someone 360 in the group, not really shadowrun but not a terrible game.
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No, you could play single player, but you were basically doing 'missions'. There was no Campaign mode.
What do you mean?
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What do you mean?
There are 6 single player Tutorials, basically where you're told to get X ability and use it a few times to complete the mission. But, for all intents and purposes, it was Counterstrike.
It wasn't a bad FPS. The magic and cyberware added an interesting twist to the standard FPS style game. But... Yeah, it wasn't Shadowrun. It only barely tried to be Shadowrun (What little backstory they were was basically a complete reboot of the Shadowrun world, going back to "Magic returning" and then making up some new stuff).
Bull
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Oddly enough, the best Shadowrun videogame (strictly saying) is still the Sega Genesis Shadowrun. True, it has its own broken points, but it's still an enjoyable game which pre-dates some of the open world settings like GTA or GTA clones. I had fun with it back in the day, although the biggest break, at least early on, is the old walk in a circle trick to stay ahead of melee combatants while popping off a few shots at them. Still, great fun and an almost classic RPG story involving avenging a family member who ended up a catspaw in some megacorp-connected scheme. The storyline proper lends itself easily to being copied or adapted to an SR4 campaign with only a few minor name changes and rules updates.
Don
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Oddly enough, the best Shadowrun videogame (strictly saying) is still the Sega Genesis Shadowrun. True, it has its own broken points, but it's still an enjoyable game which pre-dates some of the open world settings like GTA or GTA clones. I had fun with it back in the day, although the biggest break, at least early on, is the old walk in a circle trick to stay ahead of melee combatants while popping off a few shots at them. Still, great fun and an almost classic RPG story involving avenging a family member who ended up a catspaw in some megacorp-connected scheme. The storyline proper lends itself easily to being copied or adapted to an SR4 campaign with only a few minor name changes and rules updates.
Don
Was that the same one that came out for Super Nintendo? I always meant to hunt down a copy of that for my old SNES and never did get around to it.
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Nope. The SNES one and the Sega one were quite different.
The Sega one was more faithful to the old SR rules, but I always thought the SNES was more faithful to the feel and style of SR, and had a more interesting storyline.
Both were good, and worth playing.
Bull
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Bull's right, I enjoyed both the SNES and Genesis versions of the game, with the Genesis version getting a nice edge.
As for the 360 Shadowrun game. Those Tutorial "Missions" were a joke, and playing against bots when you can't get online is not a Single player mode.
The Game took Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Humans, and Trolls and gave them a Cartoonish look, some Chrome, and some really cheesy magic (a healing tree... seriously?) and called it Shadowrun, when it should have been Counterstrike CyberFantasy. I was pissed off when I paid 60 bucks on it when it first came out, and I still have a small bit of rage against it somewhere in my soul.
That said, The Xbox Live servers for the game are still up, what servers got taken down are the PC servers, the ones that allowed PC users to crossover with Xbox Live players. So If you buy it it is still playable on Live. If you do not have Xbox Live Gold, DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY.
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Yeah, the PC version of the game was gimped in those crossover matches. those Xbox controlers were no match for a good mouse and keyboard!
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+1 on the love for the old SNES/Genesis games. I'd kill a man to see a Fallout 3-style Shadowrun game.
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+1 on the love for the old SNES/Genesis games. I'd kill a man to see a Fallout 3-style Shadowrun game.
Grand Theft T-Bird? ;D
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*sigh* As long as MicroDrek has the license for Shadowrun video games, we're going to be stuck with things like the 360 game.
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As of 10/15/07 Smith and Tinker licensed Shadowrun, Mechwarrior, and Crimson Skies from Microsoft, so if a future Shadowrun game is released it should be improved, considering Jordan Weisman's previous involvement with FASA and those Intellectual Properties.
-Saint
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Oh, I knew they got the MechWarrior license, didn't realize they picked up the other two as well.
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Glad to be of service.
-Saint
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Was playing this online about a week ago the game will run server on someone 360 in the group, not really shadowrun but not a terrible game.
Not a 360 user now so what bit of second hand info I heard may be false. Wikipedia isn't very clear on this saying they were pending a closure in 08?
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As of 10/15/07 Smith and Tinker licensed Shadowrun, Mechwarrior, and Crimson Skies from Microsoft, so if a future Shadowrun game is released it should be improved, considering Jordan Weisman's previous involvement with FASA and those Intellectual Properties.
I don't have a lot of faith that S&T will get the BattleTech game developed past the teaser stage. Sadly, I have less that they'll get an unannounced Shadowrun game going.
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I'd kill for a good SR game.
Not anyone we know, of course. And definately not a puppy.
I'm not that heartless and desperate.
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First off I'll say this I didn't read this thread.
However my thought is after seeing people play it (I never did) it's a first person shooter not an role-playing game.
I am a Demo Team Agent this game is playable at my firebase (local comic/game store) I asked some of the players what they thought the answer was the same it's an ok/good shooter but it's not Shadowrun.
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Was playing this online about a week ago the game will run server on someone 360 in the group, not really shadowrun but not a terrible game.
Not a 360 user now so what bit of second hand info I heard may be false. Wikipedia isn't very clear on this saying they were pending a closure in 08?
Well I cant speak for the pc users but on the 360 all the matches are handled with the server being someone playing (means if they drop out or leave the game ends and you have to find a new one).
If the game had been supported it might have been more then just a passable fps but hey ho.
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I'd kill a man to see a Fallout 3-style Shadowrun game.
I would love to see a Bethesda-made SR game.
or, (puts on flame suit) a "World of Shadowrun" type game. I'm just dreaming of a MMORPG.
On topic: I still play the 360 SR game with friends online. I like it for what it is, rather than hating it for what it isn't.
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Nope. The SNES one and the Sega one were quite different.
The Sega one was more faithful to the old SR rules, but I always thought the SNES was more faithful to the feel and style of SR, and had a more interesting storyline.
Both were good, and worth playing.
Bull
I had no idea that the Sega one was different that the SNES. I might have to try and acquire a copy of this game...
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Though I had a LOT of fun with the SNES version, they went a bit over the top. By the end of the game you were a street samurai decker mage.
Though I have to admit, it DID appeal to my inner munchkin at the time. :)
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It's kind of sad that ShadowRun's been so hosed on games. The world is perfect grounds for amazing games. Oh well, that's when you get when you combine laziness, greed, and ignorance about the source material.
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I would say the reason why its been let down in the computer game department is mostly due to the complexity of the game world. When you have multiple roles that can be completed by a range of people and builds the variation can be a nightmare.
Hell in a normal face to face game it can be a tricky balancing out the matrix with the real world, in a computer game the seperation would be even greater.
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Try running a single encounter with Matrix, meat world, and Astral all running at the same time. My head almost exploded.
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Theoretically a computer is ideally suited to handle the mind-blowing details of running multi-dimensional operations simultaneously, but in reality the computer is programmed by very-fallible human programmers who have as much a handle on these things as you and I do. Especially when coders are brought to a project on short notice and they've never even played the game before. SR the vidyagame was designed by people who didn't play SR the tabletop and it shows.
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In defense of the game (which I still jump onto every now and then) I think they were making something other then shadowrun but with similar ideas of magic then got told they were using shadowrun and it all got confused.
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Some of the artwork for the game I feel was pretty damn good....I mean the favelas setting was shadowrun to the core. I feel they also drew elves a lot better than a lot people tend to draw them in SR.....made them actually look pretty tough and diabolical....not that super good-looking sexy, giant ears look that so many elf-fetish people are rendering. Then the street sammy native american black dude with the corn rows totally embodied the feel of SR....they got that right on! The graphics for some of the magic also looked pretty damn cool, even if the spells are totally impossible by the rules of thaumaturgy in 2072....like teleportation. I even feel the troll was pretty cool looking, but looked much more like the description Runners Companion gives for Minotaur troll metavariants....but they did a good job depicting the +1 armor bonus trolls get for having calcification deposits......so many drawings of trolls I see make them just look like giant orks with horns....and that's just lame.
There's just not too many good 3d renderings of many purely SR concepts.....most of the ones I have found could be either cyberpunk or SR...i.e. human's and tech....so I feel the Xbox game does contribute in the art department quite well....they found a good esthetic that fuses machine and magic in a way that feels right...not forced like a lot of Shadowrun art i've seen.
That being said....it's basically the same as most mainstream attempts to market a complex fictional world....there's always some project manager who feels like they have their finger on the pulse of what's cool and what's not....so they feel like they have to "fix" the world so that it sells. It's like Michael Bay with Transformers. They really think that the public is too dumb to really handle too many things at once....which is totally false...the public is only dumb in that they flock to anything that is marketed well and will let things which aren't marketed well fly under the radar. The Sega Genesis and the SNES games prove how cool a faithful SR game would be and the amount of money it made would only depend on how much it was marketed assuming that the story telling was good quality.
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That game was abhorrent to the long time shadowrun fan. I rented it and took it back an hour later. Like jack said, it's not even in the shadowrun timeline.
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Ok, I just watched the Deus Ex Human Revolution trailer....and it makes me take back everything I said about the artwork for Shadowrun Xbox 360..... Shadowrun needs the same treatment....same type of photo-realist artwork...same ambiance...not the lame cartoony shit. I suck at drawing....otherwise i'd get right on it....but I feel that one of the reason's that shadowrun hasn't gotten a decent chance yet is because there's not enough good photo-realist art of shadowrun themes out there.
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Too.. Much... Rage... Over...
Horrible... Game.. ...Must Destroy... Microsoft....
..Explosives ...Plausible