Jade…is that you?

Ubidays, Ubisoft’s conference focusing on upcoming games that it is working on, ended with a big surprise…a teaser for what could only be Beyond Good and Evil 2. The first BG&E was incredibly fun with an exciting story and great characters. After seeing the teaser which can be found everywhere by this point, I’m not sure what to think yet only that I’m glad that Ubisoft finally confirmed what everybody had been hoping for.

The teaser doesn’t show much, we don’t even get a good shot at Jade, but Yves Guillemot (Ubisoft’s CEO) has said that it shows off the kind of graphics quality that they are aiming at and from what was shown off, the next-gen treatment that the game is going to get is already looking good.

One the other hand, he has also said at Next Generation that the game is also going to aimed at more “casual” gamers. Apparently, the first one was too tough. Really? I thought it was a good challenge, but not impossible, and there is such a thing called a difficulty slider/setting/whatever that most every title under the sun has. I’m not sure what he means by “tough”, though. The combat? The puzzles? The puzzles weren’t too bad as far as action games went and the fighting wasn’t that rough.

If it means easier puzzles, or easier combat, that’s not going to satisfy the gamers that have been waiting for the sequel…the core crowd that put up with the challenges of the first and LIKED it for that as much as they did the story. Now, if their changes are to make it easier to access, such as in getting used to the fighting or in tightening up some of the design to make it faster to get into without compromising the basic challenges of the property, then I’m all for it.

But the downside is that I think he really means that they’re going to make this a dumbed down experience. Seeing the success of the Wii may have had a factor in this. The runaway success of Nintendo’s little box has opened the eyes of more than one developer in showing how casual titles can become moneymakers. Where does that put other titles that are revered for their challenge in as much as the experience that they follow up with each fan? Hopefully not out in the cold.

I’m still excited that BG&E is going to be have its long deserved sequel. Casual or not, I’ll be playing it.

City of Ember

I found a trailer on this movie which reminded me a bit of Fallout, the PC game, where Vaults…giant, underground bunkers…kept people safe from the nuclear hell that was unleashed on the world in the last, great war.

City of Ember is far less dramatic and post-apocalyptic than Fallout, but the concept was still pretty cool…an underground city where the power was failing, but where the people had no idea of a world “beyond the dark”. I had no idea who built this city, or why everything looks like it could fall apart, but it seemed like a pretty interesting movie.

It sounded intriguing enough for me to buy the book and read it after watching the trailer on the official site and I was pleasantly surprised, although a few things were hard to swallow. Still, I can’t wait to see how it plays out on the big screen.

Recoil: Retrograd = steampunk goodness

I was doing a search on steampunkish gaming titles and found that ZeitGuyz, a development studio based on Copenhagen, was busy on creating one. Their steampunk inspired website is cagey on any details concerning their project, but it drops a few tantalizing hints in what is there. A more complete workup on the game is found here, courtesy of IGN, which reveals that it is called “Recoil: Retrograd” and will revolve around a third person shooter concept where the main character is able to travel between three different time zones.

Apparently, an order called Gloria Mundi which is controlled by an aging band of Cardinals that have psychic powers and can traverse time to stop wars and basically make everything all nice and cozy in the present. Unfortunately, they’ve become corrupted and are now using their power to reshape the world into their own image.

One of the neat things about what they said about the game was that if you save a scientist in the past, your present might be filled with more mechanical wonders such as walking steam machines that you can use in your fight against Gloria Mundi. If you save a doctor, you might become the charmismatic leader of the present-day resistance and have an army at your command. It sounds cool, almost like a mix between Dark City and Back to the Future, but grittier and more…steampunkish. Can’t wait to see what the final game looks like.

Indiana Jones Gaming Goodness

With the fourth Indy film due out at the end of the month, I took a retrospective look at the games that had come out in the last few decades celebrating the exploits of the Man in the Hat. While the films have taken us to the corners of the world in search of fortune and glory, the games have also tried to do the same thing with varying success.

This is just a light tour of the titles that had come down through the years since his debut in Raiders and while I had fun with most of these, a few of them made me thankful that Indy can take as many punches in gaming as he does on the silver screen.

(1982)
Raiders of the Lost Ark
I remember this gem on the 2600 being crazy hard, in hindsight, probably because it was trying to do a lot of things that we take for granted today using the extremely limited resources on the console. It’s something of a triumph to even think that it actually worked well enough as a game.

It came with an inventory that you had to manage, clues that you needed to find, and a bizarre sequence in which to do it all in. It also used both joysticks, one to control Jones, and the other to control his inventory. There was a store in the game with key items and it didn’t exactly follow the story, but back then, a lot of 2600 games didn’t really have a story to tell. I can remember stumbling around most of the game just trying to figure out what to do, buying stuff, avoiding men in black, and using a parachute to jump off of a cliff and hook myself onto a branch sticking out from the side. Indy’s whip was a tiny dot on the screen, aside from what it looked like in the inventory, and there was no Belloq to steal your thunder or truck chase to get shot in the arm with. Basically, once you found the place where you had to dig, the game was over when you found the Ark and then were rated with an ambiguous score. As a kid, though, I loved this stuff.

(1984) Indiana Jones in the Lost Kingdom
Here’s a game on the C64 that didn’t have anything to do with any of the films but was spun off as a separate adventure. The cover of the package the game came in bore the artwork from Temple of Doom which came out that year and the game apparently left the player with little to actually go on. I barely remember playing this one, only that it really did leave you with nothing more than a puzzle you need to somehow figure out on your own without any clues.

Apparently, Indy is busy tracking down another treasure and discovers the Lost Kingdom where it might be found in. The Lost Kingdom looks like it’s made up of doors, floaty platforms, and staircases making it one of the strangest places around, but it was a game with the name “Indiana Jones” on the cover and a bunch of pixels onscreen that actually could be mistaken for our favorite adventurer.

(1984) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
This game came out when arcades were still king and consoles and the accelerating pace of PC advances hadn’t yet stolen the thunder from their hardware. It would also see a ton of multiple releases which is kind of weird since I thought Temple of Doom is the weakest of the series. Raiders should have gotten some serious arcade love, but I guess it may have been a little too early to start picking on Nazis leaving mysterious, foreign thugs that eat bugs and monkey brains as the next best thing.

The arcade version came out from Atari with Mola Ram mocking the player thanks to a digitized voice, there would be flaming hearts flung at them, and there was even a minecart sequence that was almost unfair to the player since you would often take a track only to end up on a dead end stretch before you knew it. Three doors were available at the start of the game to determine what difficulty level you wanted to begin with, although they were all pretty hard. Indy could only whip his guards, knocking them senseless, which would keep the player running since they’d recover pretty quickly. Still, there were a few things that were fun about the game. You could steal the Sankara stones from the altar while avoiding falling into a pit of hot, molten, lava and you needed to rescue the kids locked up by those evil Thuggee guards. Fortunately, you didn’t have to deal getting stuck in the back via voodoo…which doesn’t make much sense since you’re in India.

Temple of Doom would also see a lot of crazy love as it would be ported over a score of platforms over the next few years. That’s right, YEARS. Today, gamers complain about sequelitis. Back then, it was all about milking the franchise for as much as it could be worth with the same game even if it wasn’t all that great to begin with in the arcade.

From the poorly received NES version from Tengen which I remember was almost as bad as when Pac Man was brought over to the 2600, to it’s final batch of releases five years later, here’s a list of the platforms that Mola Ram and Indy would fight over following the arcade game:

• 1987 – Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64
  These appeared to be faithful reproductions of the arcade game given the limitations of the technology at the time. The Amstrad version simply looks godawful but you have to hand it to someone taking the time in programming it for release.

  Amstrad CPC
  

  Commodore 64
  

  Atari ST
  

• 1987 – MSX, ZX Spectrum
  This version was released on cassette tape for the Spectrum. I couldn’t find any screenshots of this one, but it actually does exist. It was also released for the MSX computer by U.S. Gold with a green Indy.

  MSX screen
  

• 1988 – NES
  This is the infamous release by Tengen which tried its best to emulate the original arcade version even though nearly everything looked like it was formed out of Play Doh. The mining levels were made horizontal as opposed to isometric with pink conveyor belts and the mines were vastly expanded. Whipping Thuggee guards still didn’t kill them, although you could swing on an invisible whip from ledge to ledge while rescuing kids. Points were also awarded by picking up swords and keys and finding stuff on each level. One neat thing was that you could jump out of the minecart and rescue more kids or go through doors to find stuff or more mine levels.

  

  Yes, those are pink conveyor belts. Hello Kitty is waiting somewhere on this level to tear your heart out.
  

• 1989 – Amiga, Apple II, DOS
  The last iteration of Temple of Doom would come out on these three systems thanks to prolific publisher Mindscape with the DOS version coming closest to being almost like the arcade. It’s amazing that it even came out on the Apple. Fortunately by this point, the Temple of Doom udder was finally as dry as a desert. If any franchise tried to do this today, you probably would be able to see the flames and pitchforks via Xbox Live!.
  Amiga
  

  Apple II
  

  DOS
  

(1984 – 1985) Indiana Jones the Roleplaying Game
TSR cashed in on the popularity of the franchise with a licensed game based on his adventures complete with a rule system and plenty of examples in how to run a pulp flavored period piece. Cardboard cutouts, character bios, and an introductory adventure would round out this unexpected game from TSR’s gaming scribes. The module for Raiders would even go so far as to describe what would happen in a PC decided to touch the Ark after helping Indy find it in the Well of Souls (ZAP) or if they decided to keep their eyes open at the end instead of keeping them shut (BLINDNESS!!! AGGGHHH!!!).

Several modules were released over two years based on original adventures that had Indy chase after relics such as the Fourth Nail from the Cross to recovering the gold idol that Belloq had stolen from Indy just before he headed off to his adventure after the Ark. One interesting thing about that adventure, named “The Golden Goddess”, was that it was a solitaire affair that hid the normally DM only material in a colored mask that would only be revealed using a “Magic Viewer”, kind of like the red plastic slip used for the Transformer bios. It even had a fold out seaplane which, thankfully, didn’t have a snake sitting in the pilot’s seat this time around. Several of the other modules that I’ve seen make use of the Magic Viewer gimmick which, unfortunately, didn’t help in making this as popular as it could have been.

(1987) Indiana Jones in Revenge of the Ancients
This was a text-only adventure released by Mindscape for IBM PCs as it cast Indy in another plot by the Nazis to seize an ancient power in order to conquer the world. Even in interactive fiction, Indy comes in swinging his way through a jungle and into an ancient temple to save the world armed with the power of an intelligent parser.

(1989) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Two versions of this were released for IBM PCs and the Amiga: the action version which had you punch and whip your way through Nazis and other dangers, and the adventure version which ran just like your typical adventure game where you would pick commands and search for clues to solve puzzles. In addition to this, the IBM PC adventure version came in two graphical flavors, one catering to 16 color EGA and another for those lucky enough to have a whopping 256 colors with VGA. Thankfully today, we just have to worry about whether our graphics cards will be obsolete or not in six months.

The adventure version also came with a copy of the grail diary filled with clues to help you get past the puzzles in the game. The adventure game followed the movie pretty closely and you could even get the diary signed by der Fuhrer himself and use it to get past a checkpoint as one entertaining liberty taken with the source material. As it came out during the period when Lucasarts was in the adventure game business, the game easily shows off the studio’s storytelling acumen. In 1990, the Macintosh would also get the adventure version of the Last Crusade.

The action version of the franchise would see a much wider release across multiple platforms over the next few years owing to its simple take on the film with a few liberties taken with the basic design depending on the platform it would be found on. It would see release across the following:

• 1991 – Game Gear
• 1992 – Genesis
• 1993 – NES
• 1994 – Game Boy

…before this udder would finally run dry. While the action title’s run wasn’t as bad as the Temple of Doom’s across everything that had an electronic pulse, it was still basically the same game being milked for nearly more than five years. Madden had nothing on Indy once he got his game on.

(1992) Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Undeniably one of the best action adventure games to grace PCs, this adventure would cast Indy in a new adventure as he trotted across the globe with sidekick, Sophia Hapgood, in a search for Atlantis before those dastardly Nazis found it for their own evil ends. It would also be released for the Amiga and for the Macintosh.

This is one of the my favorite adventure games and it was packed with an innovative system that split the narrative along three major paths. Choosing to solve puzzles with your head than with your fists would take you on the “Wits” path. Using your fists instead would take you on the “Action” path, and teaming up with Sophia would orient the game towards the Team path. The main story would stay the same, but certain puzzles and situations would only come up depending on what path you decided to take adding to its replayability.

Puzzles included tricking a U-boat crew to shift positions on the sub to get to where you needed to go, scaring someone into leaving behind a valuable artifact, and visiting far flung places such as Crete and Iceland in your search for clues. A CD “talkie” version was also released with the actors doing a pretty good job in bringing the characters to life. This is probably as close as players have gotten to a new Indy outside of an official film.

There was also a pure action version of the game that was released, although it is not as well known, which took players into an isometric adventure.

DOS version

The action version would see release in the same year on the Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and the ZX Spectrum in addition to the DOS version, but would not be remembered in the same hushed tones and whispers that its adventure oriented sibling would in the years to follow.

Despite the huge push to popularize the game and inspire sales across as many platforms that both versions found themselves on, it would not be followed by another major chapter until Infernal Machine. A sequel was being planned and a comic, Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix, was drawn up around the story. Unfortunately, Lucasarts quietly canceled their plans for it.

(1992) The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
This one was released exclusively for the NES and wouldn’t make as much of a splash as its predecessors, a far cry from the Indy gaming mania of the past few years following the films and books.

With the success of the Last Crusade, a new series was launched on television that would take fans back to Indy’s days as a young adventurer involved in WW1 and globetrotting against the forces of the Kaiser while rubbing elbows with people such as Mata Hari and Teddy Roosevelt. It was probably inevitable that a game would be created around the series but while one did come out on the NES, it apparently wasn’t very good. I haven’t played this one, but I was like a lot of other fans hoping for another epic along the lines of “Fate” or “Last Crusade”.

(1994) Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures
Arriving exclusively on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Factor 5 (Rogue Squadron, Lair) manages to cram all three films into one cartridge with plenty of action as the player uses his whip, trusty fists, jumping ability, and a grenade or two in seeking fortune and glory. Digitized stills from the movies along with a few voices add to the title’s rendition of each adventure which was a lot of fun.

The controls were easy to get used to and the action is reminiscent of the kind found in the Super Star Wars series by Sculptured Software. Plenty of 2D action sees Indy in iconic scenes such as running from the giant boulder before he gets squished. It’s pretty exciting stuff and a joy to play if you still have a soft spot for classic gaming.

(1994) Instruments of Chaos: Starring Young Indiana Jones
Young Indy got one more game on the Genesis/Mega Drive which pits him against the nefarious schemes of the Kaiser around the world as Germany sends agents to procure the latest weapons technology and scientists to build the ultimate war machine. This is a side scroller allowing the player to pick from several locations on the map to start their adventure from and then shoot, grenade, and jump their way through one challenge after another to foil their plans. There are plenty of environmental dangers to fall into and the whip looks more like a pixelized string than something threatening on screen, but hey, it’s Indy!

(1994) Indiana Jones the Roleplaying Game…Redux
This time, it would be West End Games that would revitalize the series and bring the pulp role playing experience out from mothballs although it wouldn’t last very long, either. A few modules and updates came out to support it and you can still find bits and pieces of this series out there on sites such as Ebay and Amazon.

(1996) Indiana Jones’ Desktop Adventures
Indy would find himself shrunk down and made into a desktop game, similar to Pinball or Minesweeper, for gamers on the go who can’t get away from their work. It would randomize objectives and enemies and then send the player into an adventure that could be finished before the end of your lunch break. It took a top down approach and came complete with an inventory and some action with simple puzzles to figure out and areas to explore. It wasn’t “Fate of Atlantis”, but PC gamers had little recourse but to wait a bit more until he would return in another, original, epic adventure.

(1999) Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine
Indy debuts in 3D with this action adventure title that takes place after WW2 and pits him against those dastardly Soviets…wait, SOVIETS? If you’re thinking “Kingdom of he Crystal Skull”, you’d be right as this game also foresaw the need to move beyond the Third Reich and give Indy something more to worry about. This time around, he’s teamed up once again with Sophia Hapgood from “Fate” and is on a search for the pieces to a mysterious machine related to the Tower of Babel. Unfortunately for him, the Soviets are also after the same thing and are determined to seize the secret spread across the world for themselves.

I didn’t much care for this game thanks to the awful PC controls, dated graphics, and the generally bland story with the bizarro ending that accompanied the gameplay, although the controls were supposedly polished for the N64 version. The game was still marketed with the same quality that “Fate of Atlantis” had received with beautiful Indy-styled box art and it still had its moments, but not many of them.

(2003) Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb
When a new Indy title was announced, little was spared in making it a big splash on the Xbox where it would debut as a part of the next-generation at the time. Artist Drew Struzan, no stranger to either Star Wars or Indy, would paint the box art for the game. Even the manual was dressed up as a beaten piece of visual candy written in the language of the time in describing the game mechanics complete with bits and pieces taken from Indy’s notes promoting the atmosphere the developers wanted to create.

Taking place in 1935, just before “Temple of Doom”, Indy heads off to China in search of the tomb of the First Emperor of China before the Nazis can seize the treasure that lies within it. I thought that this was a pretty fun game even with a few rough edges. The ending certainly left a lot to be desired along with the voice acting, although the voice actor for Indy could easily double as Harrison Ford and most of the story leading up to the end wasn’t too bad. Lots of action, and fantastic music, are packed into this one.

Upcoming Adventures?
A new Indiana Jones was announced in anticipation of the film that would be coming out. Lego Indy will be out in June to take advantage of the fans leaving the theaters following the release of “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, although a full adventure epic is still somewhere under the radar.

Lucasarts doesn’t have much to say about it yet other than it will be using the Euphoria animation engine and that Lucas himself will be overseeing the story set in 1939, but you can bet that once more stuff is revealed…such as an official site…the floodgates will open up.

If you really have a need to get back into the swing of things with the world’s greatest adventurer, you might want to check out what the fans are doing in order to keep the adventure flame burning on PCs:

• Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth (in progress)
  A demo is already out for this game to show off some of what these fans have put together as Indy goes off in search of a missing professor while dodging the agents of the Third Reich determined to discover the secret that he was searching for. There’s plenty of original artwork that’s already been created for the game from what I can see in their gallery and it looks like it will continue the same feel for adventure that “Fate of Atlantis” had raised the bar with. If you want to check it out by clicking on the title link above.
• Indiana Jones and the Crown of Solomon (in progress)
  This is another fan project pitting Indiana Jones against the Third Reich in a follow up adventure taking place after the Last Crusade. Racing against time to discover the Temple of Solomon and the secrets within, Indy must contend with another ancient mystery as well as keep its secrets from the hands of the Nazis. There haven’t been too many updates to this project in awhile but I hope that it’s still on track in some form. You can check it out for yourself or lend some support their way by clicking on the link in the title.

If you want even more Indy trivia to chew over other than the games, you can check out the following links for even more adventure as these were very helpful in building this list:

Indiana Jones Wiki (Games list)
The Raider.net
Moby Games’ massive library of info and pics
Lemon Amiga

Until then, let’s hope for more Indy!

shadowrun for the 360

By now, the ‘net is already saturated with the carnage strewn paper trail documenting everyone’s reaction concerning Shadowrun’s ill-fated attempt at being Microsoft’s flagship title for their Vista/Live initiative as well as acting as an action packed ambassador to a demographic more concerned with sights and sniping than with cyberpunk and sorcery. The end result wasn’t pretty.

FASA Interactive was shuttered by MS and PnP fans are now forced to wonder when another title based on more than a decade and a half of material would ever be given another chance to shine. This is a game that split a community apart between those willing to believe in a new vision of a franchise reborn and those who felt betrayed by the apparently casual dismissal and retconning of an established history behind the franchise.

We may never know why Gitelman and his crew at FASA Interactive had decided to diverge from the established history of the PnP series as well as make it a full-on FPS Team Fortress/Counterstrike clone with sorcery. It was a bizarre decision that, while producing a solid multiplayer game with fun mechanics, alienated the demographic towards which the series would have had the most success with and likely would have continued playing the game well after finishing it had it been what they would have wanted to see. KOTOR is still spoken of by players everywhere as a respected title that continues to be replayed, Mass Effect is packed with achievements and enough entertainment to do the same thing without having to ask. Shadowrun could have aspired to the same ranks.

Seeking the path of least resistance is probably what led to the decision to create this version of Shadowrun. After all, FPS and multiplayer have become the staples of any title in which you can pick up a virtual gun and go save the world from whatever villain-of-the-week it happens to be. On the surface, it seems like a good idea, but to the PnP crowd, that made as much sense as in outsourcing the next Doom to Square Enix. This also had the other problem of introducing an apple known to RPG fans to a demographic that favored oranges with bullets. To be honest, unless you happen to be a company like Bioware with established RPG cred on consoles, no one is really going to know what this new IP is aside from those that are already familiar with its history.

Banking on the hope that turning it into a shooter will miraculously bring both Windows Vista and Xbox Live players together in an orgy of multiplayer goodness that might have been aimed to gloss over this little fact, Shadowrun would be developed along these lines.

In some ways, FASA Interactive’s determination to resurrect the franchise in a new and exciting direction is as much a product of creative daring as it was a desperate need to get people in the seats for the potential that it could have sparked. Perhaps an RPG later, a few spinoffs based on materials from the Shadowrun universe, and voila…franchise reborn. If taken into that context, FASA Interactive’s course for Shadowrun in order to get bodies into the genre so as to wow them with further candy coated offerings makes sense. Unfortunately, Shadowrun’s issues would never take those players past the point of where it could have mattered.

Content
I picked Shadowrun up for a bargain basement price since no one aside from the die hard fans of the multiplayer action were playing it anymore. When it debuted at $60, it asked a lot from players to invest in an unfamiliar, multiplayer only IP in the face of other titles such as Ubisoft’s GRAW 2 or Halo 2. At least the mechanics were unique enough to gain some interest, such as teleporting through walls or seeing your foes with a form of x-ray vision.

When the reviews came out with mediocre scores, former studio head Mitch Gitelman would respond to them and take them to task in saying that they have overshadowed innovation with their relatively low scores. Unfortunately, a plethora of titles such as Beyond Good & Evil, Psychonauts, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and, more recently, Portal, disagree. Critics and players often point to these titles as examples of innovative gameplay, even if the market may not vote with their dollars to support them in the same way, but his point was that the game had to be savored well past the initial introduction to see what it had to offer. It was somewhat innovative to use magic in the game along with gliders, lending a new dimension to the gameplay, but Dark Messiah had also used magic within its multiplayer, and Unreal Tournament had the Translocator. Shadowrun put both in the same game, but it’s hard to appreciate that fact when the game comes up short in most everything else.

Gitelman would go further and look to his own experience of having played the game for three years in order to demonstrate that it has legs for the price that it asks for. He might have been willing to put up with the game for three years, but to a lot of other players outside of the cloister, it simply wasn’t enough when compared to the competition. Halo 2, COD4, COD3, GRAW 2, Gears of War…many other titles sported both a story AND multiplayer with a variety of modes that kept players engaged having been developed in nearly or a little over as much time as he had been playing Shadowrun while being sold at the same price. Trumping this even further would be the Orange Box from Valve, released later that year, arguably one of the best deals in gaming to have been offered to players. Granted, even he states that he doesn’t set the price, but his defense of it as if it were the only problem that was facing the game walks on thin ice.

Atmosphere
I know that the game is a multiplayer only title and I’ve heard the argument that it should be looked at only in those terms. Then why pretend to call it Shadowrun? Rather than go over the reasons for why it should have been on everyone’s multiplayer list, let’s take a look at why it should never have used the IP.

Deus Ex, in comparison, has a lot more in common with Shadowrun. Excising the single player means that there are no missions where you use your cybernetics to spy on the enemy or get the drop of a mechanical watchdog the size of a truck. There’s no cyberspace to jack into, no riggers to hire, no fixers to make deals with in the seedy back rooms of bars filled with the rejected dregs of polite society. There’s nothing in the game that you can really consider to be part of the PnP in this regard. Sure, there’s gunfights and katanas, and you’ve got orcs, dwarves, and elves shooting it out. But it’s hardly the shadowy world of oppressive megacorps, mysterious magic, and future dystopia that the series is at its heart.

The worst part about this is that there’s a mod called Dystopia that brings home both the combat and cyberspace elements of the genre on the Source engine. Pitting two teams against each other, with one acting as Punk Mercenaries and the other as Corporate Security, waging war in the shadows of a world inspired by Neuromancer and Blade Runner. It might not have magic going for it, but it does allow for augmentations such as implants allowing for wired reflexes, leg implants, thermal vision…fourteen toys to stick into your flesh to provide its own version of chromed magic.

Dystopia also comes packed with a great number of weapons, but it also comes included with the ability to jack in and attack the enemy by hacking systems and performing as part of a team. One person can’t simply go off alone and capture the flag, everyone has to work together to rip security apart and get the drop on the corporate drones that protect the data. And its all free as a mod for Half Life 2. That’s right…FREE. Cyberpunk fans did this one on their own.

The powers themselves, which were unique enough in an FPS to add a welcome twist to the action, allowed players to do things that would have been incredibly difficult to explain away in a follow-up RPG based on their retcon. Not only was history changed, but so was magic itself. Resurrections, a Tree of Life sprouting up healing everyone, and teleportation? None of that is in Shadowrun because they would have unbalanced the PnP and would have been hell on the rules of the world that were already established. All those key characters that died in the novels or in the PnP modules didn’t have to go out if all they needed was a res and a Tree to help them get back up.

Retconning the history of the franchise was also a low blow since it basically rewrote when certain things had happened in the past. A new corporation was created to exploit this retelling and a group of smart looking uniforms were designed around the concept in order to give it a fresh coat of paint for players to team up against. A major magical nexus was created on top of a mountain sending a shaft of blinding energy into the sky turning the Great Ghost Dance into a bout of bad weather by comparison. If this stuff was already happening as early as 2023 on the scale that this retelling of Shadowrun had wanted, a lot of things would have to be rewritten as a result.

Presentation-wise, though, I thought the game did a pretty good job with the corporate logos, the tutorial voice walking you through each lesson, and the general chaos of the action. But that’s pretty much it.

Games for Windows
MS has attacked the gaming market in their race to be No. 1 by rushing release on a poorly designed console that has created its own RROD meme and now with their “Games of Windows” initiative by banking on this game to make Vista believers out of the last holdouts on the PC. Too bad that it required you to have Vista in order to go head-to-head against 360 players and not a lot of players saw that as a compelling reason to shell out several hundred dollars just to play a game, or replace their existing fix…Halo 2, Half Life 2, F.E.A.R., Red Orchestra, Battlefield 1942…with one that offers far less.

It’s sort of telling when later titles, such as Viva Pinata or Gears of War, bear the Game for Windows initiative emblazoned on their cover but no longer require you to have Vista in order to enjoy the Live! experience with achievements.

Multiplayer
The FPS mechanics are pretty fun and the different races add an additional layer of strategy to the gameplay coupled in with purchasable spells. It can be easy to dismiss many of these features as “cheat codes” made public, but that would be doing the actual game a disservice since that is what the game is built around on. I’m not questioning that it doesn’t have a few things going for it, only its use of Shadowrun in order to promote that vision.

However, when you take a closer look at what the game brings to the table in comparison to its peers, the story becomes a lot harder to support. Clan support was woefully lacking and leaderboards were left out along with ranked play options. A sparse number of gametypes also didn’t help. On PCs, the game would be forced to compete with classics that still get play online such as Counterstrike, Team Fortress, Battlefield, and a slew of others not to mention the countless mods that were out there which some PC players would see Shadowrun as…one expensive mod. It may have an interesting twist to the mechanics as a whole, but the light feel of the game and the high price that it asks for entry were hard to justify.

Gitelman may have a point when he generally states that reviewers may not have spent as much time with the game as he had to see the legs that he’s talking about, but it’s hard to play a game when it fails to drown out the nagging feeling in getting back to something else with your friends…or when there are free alternatives on the PC such as Dystopia.

So…what now?
FASA Interactive has closed but the license to build games off of Shadowrun is now held by Smith & Tinker, a company established by original FASA founder (and Shadowrun alum), Jordan Weisman. In addition to Shadowrun, Weisman’s company has also licensed the electronic rights to Crimson Skies and Mechwarrior. Although these are back in the hands of one of the original people behind the PnP studio and these titles, it still remains to be seen just what is being planned. It could still spectacularly fail, forever dooming the PnP to the tabletops from where it started. Or it could merely do…okay.

I’m not expecting it to be the ultimate incarnation of one of the longest running RPG settings out there, but I can’t help but hope for the best in its new home.