First Hours With The Shadowrun Beta.

Shadowrun is a new project from Fasa Studio's and Microsoft Game Studio's, that is about to try and end the debate between keyboard/mouse vs. joystick players. Shadowrun is going to be available on two platforms, Xbox 360 and the PC, and they will able to play with/against each other... A first for Xbox Live, or any gaming platform for that matter. After signing up and then being invited to play in their limited beta, I feel it has been handled much better than Bungie has done with the "options" to play Pimps At Sea the Halo 3 beta...

Anyway, on to my thoughts about Shadowrun:

It's a great game. First off they have a party system a la Halo 2, so you and your buddies can go from game to game with each other, such a novel concept... Every gamer has been screaming for this "feature" and it's great that a developer finally put it in their game. All of the developers have been defending themselves (here's looking at you Epic (Gears)) so far by saying that, "Microsoft doesn't allow a party system on the 360..." Now this misleading statement is only half true, Microsoft has their uber stat tracking system in place on the 360 called "Trueskill" and if a game decides to use Trueskill (which they don't have to do) then they cannot have a party systems... This is MS's big problem and they need to fix this inside of Trueskill, one of the big draws of Xbox Live is that you want to be able to play with your friends, and I shouldn't have to go play a 3 year old game (Halo 2) just to be able to do that.

Ok, no really on to my thoughts of the game...

The game is fast and fun, you've got magic such as: teleport, a Jedi "push" move, a healing tree, and spikes that grow out of the ground to name a few. Alongside the magic you also have "tech": you've got a glider, guns, magic stopping grenades, and enhanced vision mode. Now you would think with all the teleporting and gliding around it would be impossible to ever catch and kill someone, but it's not as hard as you think, especially when you can teleport right after them... All in all I've had blast in the two or three hours I've spent with the game, the menu is a little buggy but hey, that a beta for ya. The game play is good and the graphics remind me of Perfect Dark Zero in a way, kind of cartoony but it still has that "next gen" look to it with bump mapping, and dynamic lighting and all that jazz...

When I first heard about this game and I saw the screen shots I didn't really give it much thought, I definately wasn't thinking about buying it, but after playing it, it's not only on my list but it's up in my top 5. When/if an official demo drops be sure to give this game a try.