The Magic and Mayhem of Shadowrun

We look at FASA's cross-platform, RPG-turned-shooter.

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FASA is no stranger to multiplayer titles, having created MechAssault for the original Xbox. Shadowrun takes things further - it's designed specifically around multiplayer, eschewing a story-based singleplayer mode almost entirely. The modes included in the game so far include Extraction (capture-the-flag); Attrition (deathmatch); and Raid (capture-the-flag punctuated by an emphasis on teamwork). These modes support up to 16 players at a time who can chat with each other using hotkeys or the D-pad to deliver common messages and requests to teammates instantly. Better still, commands entered this way are translated on the fly, bringing true global team play a step closer.

Shadowrun began its development more than three years ago. From the start, the team decided they wanted to make a different sort of shooter, something that would attempt to drag the mostly-stagnant genre forward. So they took a different approach to development, focusing on finishing the main gameplay engine first and building the graphics around it rather than creating art assets and then shoehorning in the gameplay, as many games are made. They readily admit that their E3 showing didn't get the reaction they had hoped for, primarily because the game didn't look up to par. They're hoping that people will see how much the game has changed since then and look past their initial disappointment to see how the game for what it is now.

During our demo session we had the Xbox 360 and Vista versions running side-by-side. Both looked fantastic, with high-quality, hi-resolution graphics running at a consistent framerate. It was a bit weird at first seeing the Xbox Live dashboard on a PC, but we quickly became used to it. Live offers all the functionality players have come to expect, including Gamerscores, Reputation, friends lists and chat options. It's even possible to see what platform your friends are using to play their games. Multiplayer games can be set up with any ratio of PCs to Xbox 360s, and it's nearly impossible to tell a PC player from a console player.

While FASA has made slight adjustments based on platform to accommodate two different control schemes (adjusting accuracy by control scheme and range, for example), they assured us that such differences were negligible in the grand scheme of things. Things weren't always perfectly in our demo, though - at one point the Xbox 360 version crashed hard, giving us the familiar blue screen of death. "There's a reason this isn't on store shelves today," our guide told us laughingly.

Shadowrun has just gone gold, ready for a full roll-out into stores on 1st June.

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