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SR Gamer Pleased With Playtest of Xbox Game
Like many Shadowrun players, Philip Richardson felt frustrated by the announcement that the SR title for the 360 was essentially Counter-Strike with elves. Mr. Richardson, though, happens to be the Program Manager at Microsoft's CRM team. He was invited by the folks at FASA studios to give the game a try, and GameSetWatch reports that he's actually pretty pleased with the situation after all. From the post: "Yes folks: it's share price increasingly good... Artwork: Feels like Shadowrun. Good Job! The SR universe has a lot of different types of artwork (as Tim pointed out yesterday). From the gritty stuff in the early source books to the more cartoonish work in the more recent editions. Gameplay: Feels like Shadowrun."
As Shadowrun fan, a game developer, and game player who played the SR demo at E3, I call bullshit on this evaluation.
I walked away from the E3 demo shellshocked at how un-Shadowrun-like this game concept turned out to be. While, I'll grant, perhaps, that something has changed in the meantime, the game at E3 captured zero of the spirit of what defined the Shadowrun RPG (you know, the one that was good enough to make this game worth talking about in the first place).
I really have a hard time understanding who they're making this game for:
FPS fans? The gameplay at E3 was pretty standard stuff. The "innovative" new gimmicks include gliding-mode, which allowed you to float from platform to platform (in other words, FPS platform jumping - oh, how we all love that), teleportation through obstacles (but only in certain areas - I found this very confusing in practice), and the ability to resurrect fallen comrades (the opposing team can prevent this by continuously shooting corpses until they disappear).
RPG fans? The dev who demoed that game with me said that the single-player mode was essentially the same as multiplayer. In other words, there is no real story or quests or, god forbid, actual SHADOWRUNS to go on. Instead, singleplayer gameplay is apparently arena-style combat versus bots.
Shadowrun fans? I, for one, am disgusted that they have thrown away everything that made the setting interesting and special to me. The lead designer all but admitted that they've dumbed it down because they were unable to present the world in marketable way. In the end, all they've really kept is the name. That's too shallow for me and, I imagine, too shallow for others who love the SR universe.
Everyone else? Well, everyone else hasn't heard of Shadowrun anyway, so I don't see how they could be interested in tepid offering in an overcrowded genre, with a premise and setting watered-down for the sake of "ease of understanding".
Microsoft Beancounters? Bingo. This game is developed solely to make money. From the lead designer, to the guy who paints the little LEDs on the gun textures, they are all under the thumb of Microsoft's accountants who want this game because they know that it will cost X money to build, and earn them Y dollars back. I know that, by definition, all commercial games have this same burden, but its still possible for them to rise above it and have some spirit.
All this game has is elves with machineguns.