Developer: Cliffhanger Productions
Publisher: Cliffhanger Productions
Platform: PC, Linux, all browsers/tablets
Release date: Q4 2014
Shadowrun Online – Preview
The Shadowrun franchise started out as a science fantasy tabletop role-playing game that is set in a fictional universe around 2050. The interesting thing about it is the strange mixture of genres it uses: cybernetics, crime and urban fantasy. What that breaks down to is strange fantasy creatures using both magic and weapons to fight each other combined with even more fiction elements in urban environments Since its start in 1989, the franchise has kept a place at the top of the role-playing genre, its line-up ranges from tabletop games to novels to videogames. As with a lot of other franchises, Shadowrun stepped onto the MMO bandwagon.
In 2013, Shadowrun Returns was released after a successful kickstarter campaign. It received pretty good reviews although lacking some features. This year, an expansion for that game was released and the game as a whole actually turned out pretty good. The online version is being developed by another developer but is very similar so far and is also crowd funded. For the people that don’t really know how that works: Kickstarter is a website on which people or small businesses which aren’t funded yet, get to make a page to ask people to buy a product that isn’t there yet. There’s a goal the company has to reach, a certain amount of dollars, and once they reach that they keep the money and people who invested get whatever rewards they paid for. With games, paying more would mostly result is getting early acces, a season dlc pass, a character named after you and more. Shadowrun Returns was one of the first big projects to actually reach its goal and even surpassing it by quite a bit. In 2012, Shadowrun Online also ended its campaign while reaching its goal. The game was set to release in 2013 but was then delayed. Right now, its set to release by the end of the year and an alpha version is available.
The basic game mechanics of the 2 latest Shadowrun games are almost identical as are some of the abilities. In its current build you get to play 4 missions and a small online arena-style matchmaking game. You play with 2 characters. One, a male orc-type guy, uses an SMG and you can switch to a machete aswel while the other uses magic and a shotgun. The whole combat system is quite interesting. It takes some getting used to but that’ll happen quickly. The combat system isn’t the problem here. There are always some things to keep in the back of your head while playing such an early build of the game. Though right now with how it stands and with a release later this year, I can’t see how this game is going to get where the developers promised it would go. There’s a lot more features they talked about that aren’t implemented yet. The matchmaking system right now is the only hint at multiplayer and its so limited (2 players playing each other in a very small area) that its hard to see how it could be an MMO.
There are a lot of promises that haven’t been met yet. Also the game has been delayed before and I suspect it will be again. I just can’t see how it will play out in the long haul as none of the MMO features (what sets it apart from Shadowrun Returns) have been implemented yet. I would not recommend getting this one yet. If you’re interested in the Shadowrun-franchise, get Shadowrun Returns and you should get the expansion too (Dragonfall) as it adds some necessary functionality to the overall game.
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