What a lot of people do not seem to be realizing is that "Dead Man's Switch" is NOT what "Shadowrun Returns" is.
It is not what the project was about, nor was it what you paid for. Dead Man's Switch was a demo of what Shadowrun Returns is capable of, and intended to be: A game engine and toolkit based on the Shadowrun universe. We aren't even a week into release yet and already there are at least four player-made campaigns in at LEAST the playable-demo stage.
The true beauty and value of this product has yet to be seen. For those of you who gripe about lack of content or time spent to complete, I really do not think you did the research here. I got everything I was looking for so far, and can't wait to see what develops.
And hey, I loved the DMS Campaign, twists, turns, and a good demonstration of what the system can do right out of the box.
If I paid for that, then I am even more disappointed. I would gladly pay 20 bucks for a Shadowrun game engine. Something that just simulated all the rules of the Pen and Paper game, even of an older edition, would be amazing. If they made that and packaged it with a basic campaign, then released the full editor, I'd be ecstatic, and would be using the editor to make my own campaigns.
But that's not what this is at all. They dumbed down the mechanics to the point where it is less deep and interesting than many other video games I have bought recently, let alone the level the PnP demands.
The combat mechanics are weak and clunky. They completely stripped out damage tracks and the concept of wounds, leaving only a simplistic HP system. I barely even had to take cover, I was just standing in the middle of the room murdering people half the time. The Matrix mechanics are just the combat mechanics with a different skin, which is equally unimpressive. They didn't include Astral Space at all.
And the possibilities are also extremely limited, which annoyed me. People are not kidding when they say this game is a linear tunnel. This is Shadowrun. At a bare minimum, I was imagining something like Dishonored, where you have to hit the same set points for any given level, but how you get there is up to you. Do you want to go in guns blazing, or would you prefer sneaking in and killing nobody? But that's not what this game is. Every combat is required. Non-lethal options do not exist. You kill everyone you meet, and then step over their corpses as they conveniently disappear. You have exactly one way to go, and no optional routes to take to get there. I have never seen railroading this extreme in an RPG before. This is the kind of linearity I expect from a platformer.
Maybe the modding community will figure out a way to break the rails, but I doubt they can dramatically change the mechanics or add something like Astral Space, so this game is still a lot weaker than it should have been.
Hopefully Shadowrun Online doesn't put on a similarly disappointing show.
