Shadowrun

I'm standing next to a glowing tree, my health bar steadily trickling back up. I'd made the mistake of going in smoke form against an opponent who had the ability to cast gust. While bullets passed through my insubstantial form, the magical wind messed with my composure in a major way. I had little choice but to throw out a strangle to slow down the pursuit, and then teleport through a wall to give them the slip for good.

Unluckily for me, the opposing team has a dwarf in it. The little sucker drained the magic out of the strangle barrier, and before you know it three mean motorscooters materialise before my eyes. And the bad news is one of them is a troll packing smartlink. Just as his chaingun starts spinning up, backup arrives. After a furious battle, we prevail. But there's still one enemy around...somewhere. My last remaining teammate ducks around the corner to resurrect a fallen comrade and doesn't come back. Leaving the health giving safety of the tree, I look around and see him dying, mortally wounded - blood showering out of him.

I spray a stream of bullets at his elven assassin. In a flurry of steel, the bullets go flying off to parts unknown. My last thought before copping a katana kebab is that maybe I should have thought that through a little better.

And so it goes with Shadowrun, the first game to offer a seamless PC vs Xbox 360 experience online. And despite the name, it could just as easily be "Might and Magic Online" or "Ultima Extreme", or "Wizardry: Modern Combat"... you get the picture. Shadowrun had its origins as a free form RPG where anything goes. Way back on the Super Nintendo, a pretty decent stab was made at a console role playing version.

The path that FASA Studios took here is a little different. Rather than incorporate the full-tilt mythos of the magic-meets-tech Shadowrun universe, they've opted to set things a few decades earlier - allowing them to limit the scope of what powers and actions are available. No harm here. But the Shadowrun vibe - not overwhelmingly represented in the old SNES version granted, has kind of been sapped out of this, somewhat.

Shadowrun in 2007 is akin to a really flashy and imaginative version of Counterstrike crossed with Pokemon. Counterstrike, because (with the odd melee exception) you're in first person trying to kill the enemy. And every round, once you die, you stay dead - unless a teammate resurrects you. The Pokemon part comes in in the thick of action. While your firearms skill gets a workout here, it's actually what powers you have bought that determine the winner in any skilled match, as things become a glossy version of paper-scissors-rock.

The troll's armoured skin too hard to get through? Drain his essence with a Dwarf or tech device and lay waste. Copping serious amounts of fire your way? Cast smoke and gain respite. There's no shortage of equal and opposite reactions to play with, but the price you pay with all this tech and magic is a diminished reliance on weapons. Which in turn means things become a little bit of a lottery online - luck as much as anything tends to play a part.

Let's not go overboard here - Shadowrun is fun, at least in the short term. Single player is limited to a bunch of training missions and attendant botmatches, but playing bots is about as fun as watching paint dry in a game like this - you really rely on human levels of ingenuity.

The game modes on offer don't help. There's a couple of limp capture the flag (sorry - artifact) derivatives, as well as a plain old group slaughter mode, but the amount of story buildup to these, characterisation or any hint of the overarching struggle of punters vs The Corporation beyond giving you a team name is pretty much nil.

Even so Shadowrun could still have been better if some hard decisions had been made on it's identity. But the problem is that there's a reason not more games of this type exist. It probably would make a terrific role playing game - but as a shooter things will unfold a little randomly for many players.

We reviewed the Xbox 360 version. That said Shadowrun incorporates a motion-based system - the faster you move, the more scattered your weapon dispersal. So being able to whip around 180 degrees and fire on PC is likely to not be that much of an advantage over controller wielders. There certainly seems to be no real trend coming through when you play online as to which is superior - as long as you can wait a few minutes to get a game, of course.

Given that an online game lives or dies by its population, Shadowrun is up against it. The skill-based gamers will give it a sniff then brush it, whilst the role playing crowd won't find enough story meat to really care. A real "tweener" of a title.