Shadowrun

"The only running I would do is to the Funcoland to trade in this lame game."

Shadowrun, a famous cyberpunk game poorly depicted on the Sega Genesis. I could type 5 pages about all the kinds of bad this game is, but I'll spare you. Now, on to the actual review.

Story: 3/10
You play as Joshua and you're out to make money while investigating the death of your brother. Not the most original plot, but at least it has a plot unlike most pen-and-paper games when ported to a console or hand held. The writing is nice, but is hindered by the fact that you sometimes have no idea what you're supposed to be doing. You have to run around and talk to random people to advance the plot. The previous statement isn't as bad as it is in Shenmue (I'll write a review for that too this weekend).

Music: 3/10
This isn't the best music I've heard in a cyberpunk video game, but I commend the music for matching the setting and event when applicable. I would've given this category a 5, but at some parts, the music sounds muffled.

Sound Effects: 2/10
The sound effects aren't as bad as they could've been. They could've been much better though. For one, there are pistols, shotguns, and SMGs in this game. All 3 of those types of guns make the same noise when shot. The explosions also sound static like. Not to big a gripe, but enough to bring the sound effects score down to below mediocre.

Gameplay: 4/10
This game is addictive for the first couple of hours you play it. After that, it is probably the most repetitive game you'll ever play. To raise your abilities and earn money, you have to do ''shadowruns''. Shadowruns can be stuff such as delivering a person or package to a place, killing gang members, going on-line to steal info, or breaking in a mega corporation to steal a person or package. These get repetitive and dull after a couple of hours because at the early stages of the game, you're to weak to walk across the street without having to run like a little wuss when attacked by a gang member. The battles are real-time in this game, which is a plus because its realistic.

Replayability: None
This game is worth one go-around. After you beat it once, you'll probably not want to play this again because the game lacks secrets.

To Rent or Buy: Download
This is worth a download. Even if you have your Sega Genesis and see a copy of this game at your local used games shop, I wouldn't waste $10 bucks on this because this will become a paper weight after 3 hours.

This game had potential. What killed it was the repetition of the shadowruns and non-linear walking around until you find that person you're supposed to talk to. At least this game doesn't suck as much as Shenmue.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 05/03/02, Updated 05/03/02