Customer Reviews

Shadowrun

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Rating--92 out of 100--

A niche title in every sense of the word, Shadowrun received mild praise when it was first released for the Super Nintendo years ago. However, as the game is based on a role playing game, much like Dungeons and Dragons, it has built a strong fan base over the years. Those who can remember playing this game, can easily be brought back to its seamless world which some might overlook and just brush off to the side. The idea for the Matrix movies obvioussly extends from this Role Playing series as the game centers around your character, who wakes up after seemingly being dead, to continue his search for vengeance against the ones who killed him.
The gameplay is very straightforward in termsof shooting, as when you press the fire button a crosshair appears on the screen and allows you to shoot anywhere in the range of the screen. As you progress forward into the game your character builds up Karma points that can then be used to raise his strength, health, weapon, or magic skills. While the shooting is a bit harrdto get used to, and the game offers a steep learning curve, as the difficulty in this game is pretty tough, the storyline itself easily makes up for it and drives you toward the end of the game as you search for the awnsers leading to your demise.
As you fight your way through the game you will get new weapons, get new skills that allow you to hack into the matrix better, as well as recruit other shadowrunners as well to help you along your quest. You fight several bosses along the way, and the game never fails to impress with its startling revelations hour after hour. Overall an excellent game, with well done music as well, although some of the songs ae repeated numerous times (this was SNES you know), but this does not take away from this fine gaming experience. But yeah what the hell did happen to part 2 though?

Shadowrun, created in 1993, is mix between The Blade Runner and The Matrix movies (I hate them all) and makes for a unique role-playing game. While fun to play, it is one of the easiest games I've played in my life. It's so easy that the final stages are quite trivial. Even the ending was pretty sucky and anticlimactic at best. I think the reason for the decreased difficulty is due to the numerous bugs of the game. If you stood in a certain position, you are able to off the enemy without being inflicted of damage by guns. You are able to build up karma so quickly in the beginning that you can be nearly invincible for the rest of the game, thus a lot of labor in that process rather than just following a linear type of game play. You can infinitely make lots of nuyen and karma through a couple of simple tricks. One is using a rubber band on the A button on the ghouls with a Uzi while standing behind a coffin in the basement of Dark Blade's mansion for hours. Another is going through Bremerton portal and going to Dark Blade to kill the vampire and get 5,000 nuyen every time in a cycle. Third one is the Gold Naga trick where you can come from behind him and killing it for 6 to 7 karma each time and going back and forth without picking up the Serpent Scales. It may sound boring due to the bugs, but Shadowrun is actually fun to play. Despite the intentions of the game, I hardly used any of the magic spells except for the Heal (which was the biggest reason why I won so easily), and I never hired a Shadowrunner. All in all, Shadowrun has its shortcomings, but it's well worth playing and could have been a bit improved for a much better playing experience.

I think this is one of the top rpg games ever created . it brings you to a new type of rpg games , unlike rpg that are we used to play such as Final Fantasy . THIS GAME COMBINE A GREAT ROLE PLAYING SYSTEM . it puts you in the world of the MATRIX , a world of computres , mega corporations , magic ,strange creatures and information . i recomened it for everybody you will not regret it .

Here we have another great game that was vastly overlooked by the gaming community in the early 90's. The only thing I can think of for it not having the success it should have had is I believe it was ahead of it's time. shooters(with guns) didn't catch on until well when Golden Eye 007 was made then everything shifted in that direction. a great game to play and collect and affordable for around $15 dollars.

Shadowrun is probally one of the most highly overlooked games ever made. I myself picked it up in a junk discount bin 15 years ago for $10 and purchased it thinking it was a medieval RPG, only to find after I got it home that it was on the total opposite spectrum of the human timeline, for the story takes its player into the future, in 2050.

The basic premise of Shadowrun focuses around its hero, Jake, who wakes up on a morgue slab without any memory of who he is. Throughout the game you piece together who Jake is, while at the same time discovering what the world of 2050 looks and feels like. You accomplish this through dialogue with various other characters who feed you small bits of information at a time, as well as key words that act as clues to be used with other characters who in turn divulge more information when prompted. As Jake proceeds in the game, the story unfolds which in turn leads him to investigate new places and both meet and fight new people.

As Jake, you navigate through the city as freely as you like, deciding when and where to go. This freedom to move is both beneficial and detrimental, because while allowing you unlimited movement, it can also bog you down when you are stuck at a certain place, wandering sometimes aimlessly in search of a door you may have missed, or a person unspoken to.

You also will be forced to fight various bad-guys, some of whom are nothing more than street thugs, others big bosses who take some grit to defeat. To achieve this, Jake can be equipped with a myriad of weapons ranging in strengths and firing speeds, protective armor, and eventually, magical spells. As Jake advances in the game, more and better items are made available for use.

Jake also improves with age in the game. As he defeats his enemies, he increases his knowledge (called karma) with which you can choose to improve a number of attributes like hit points, magic, and firing accuracy.

Once you start playing Shadowrun, you'll find yourself immediately drawn into the action and the storyline. The combination of fighting action and thoughtful deduction makes for a nice break from games which focus only on one or the other. The difficulty of the game is offset by the fact that you are allowed to pursue the missions as you see fit (and are ready to fight them) and are given the choice to groom Jake to what needs you are comfortable with. The graphics are really good, and the controls are easy to manage, and although the story is a little sketchy at points, it's altogether pretty clear what you are supposed to do.

Why did it not get a perfect 5 stars then? Because I am picky and Shadowrun has what I see as two downsides. First, it does get slow from time to time. Usually it is because you missed one small piece of evidence or something, and then must spend lots of time roaming around trying to find where you went wrong. Secondly, it's only good for one play. Once you have beaten it, you know pretty well how to do it again, and the story is already told. Even after 10 years had passed, I found I still remembered most verything I needed to do to win.

In all, it's a really great game and worth every penny. I had lots of fun playing it (even after 10 years) and it will spark the imagination unlike most games. What I liked most about it was its dark atmosphere and the huge amount of control given to the player.

A classic no doubt, but the figuring out who to talk to and what to do is hardly worth it. Well it is if you use the internet to figure it out also the game you find yourself constantly shooting the same enemies over and over again to get levels and money for weapons. I would give this game a 4 stars since it can really get you into the game and the environment is strange to say the least. Odds are if you aren't using a walkthrough you will most likely give up before you beat it.

If you are a fan of old school snes rpg games this is a treat. If you have played all the others zelda, metroid, gaia, final fantasy, soul blazer, etc. dont miss this one.

If you're interested in one of the only two console shadowrun games ever made,consider this; the only thing you'll be doin in the SNES version is scratching your head over what the heck the point of the game is, not only does it have its own completly different set of rules from the book version, but they dont make much sense, and after a certain point in the game (provided you can figure out how to get this far) the weapons, cyberware and magic you have access to (all at once) makes the game boringly easy. So again, if you're looking to play the gritty, rough world of shadowrun, by the actual FASA rules, and with a great sense of the game world, turn to the Sega version. They've created a flexible game world with a viable and beliveble story-line, but the freedom to advance your character through other runs, explore different character types (Decker, Shaman, and Samurai), and spend more time having fun, than wondering why you can cast spells, cybered to the teeth, while firing an assualt cannon one handed.