Being a huge fan of Dungeons and Dragons and Blade Runner, Shadowrun the RPG is a mixture of man, magic, and machine enough to get any geeks blood pumping. But does Shadowrun Returns do the tabletop game justice? Find out in our review.
In Shadowrun you play as a runner, a hired gun for whoever has enough money to make it worth your time. Often employers are huge corrupt corporations intent on stealing from or sabotaging competing corporations. You can handle your missions in a variety of ways ranging from augmenting yourself with cybernetics to be stronger and faster than the competition, to using magic to sling spells or summon spirits, to hacking into the omnipresent Matrix or controlling armed drones. In my playthrough I chose to play as a Rigger, a runner who uses drones in combat so he can stay out of danger.
After character creation you get your first job, find out who killed an old friend of yours. He had an implant that sent you a pre-recorded message telling you he had set aside a 100,000 dollar reward for you once found the person who killed him. By looking around your apartment it is obvious you needed the money and he was an old friend so you don’t really have a choice. What follows is a story of mystery and murder that kept me interested until about the final third. I was totally hooked on the story for the first 10 hours as it felt like a twisted sci-fi murder mystery, however nearing the end, without spoiling anything, the story turns into your average gotta save the world video game plot. It was about here that all the problems with Shadowrun Return’s gameplay became painfully obvious.
