Shadowrun

"Letting my Inner Geek Show."

Shadowrun for the SNES was hardly a success in it's heyday. The game had little or no marketing and was trying to muscle it's way into a genre that was dominated by a single monolithic name. Anyone who did play this game back in the mid-90s either heard about it from a friend, or stumbled across it by accident. This is made all the more curious by the fact that Shadowrun is quite highly respected in the world of "pen and paper" RPGs. Perhaps FASA thought that the name itself would have a bit more prestige in the video game world than it did. In the end, the why doesn't really matter. What does is that we're left with a game that can still be enjoyed for what it is.

The general story is set in a cyberpunk style future, in and around Seattle. it's a bleak time where large corporations control weak and corrupt governments. In a strange twist, the mythical creatures of the past, like elves and trolls and such, have come back, along with the ability to use magic. The streets are ruled by the shadowrunners, a cross between a street mercenary and hired thug. Runners (as they're often called) perform the dirty work of anyone who can afford their services. Be it the drug dealer who wants the competition removed, or the corporate CEO who wants to know inside scoop on his rival's dealings. This is where you fit in.

The world of Shadowrun is deep and complex, as one would expect from a role playing franchise, but it goes further than that. The mixture of politics with crime, magic with technology, the many back alleys and street dialects. The SNES game really only scratches the surface of what's really going on. The game starts out in a morgue, where we're told that you've just been killed. You then wake up with a splitting headache and your memory scrambled. As you retrace your steps back to your apartment, you discover that before being killed, you were a runner who was about to land a pretty big score. The closer you get to fitting the pieces together, the higher the price on your head.

The graphics are decent, hardly the best on the console, but they do a pretty good job of accenting the kind of story that unfolds around you. A fairly dark palette and isometric angle help to create the kind of claustrophobic feeling that the game demands. The music has a Manchester dance feel, but much darker. While the game isn't likely to win any awards, it holds up, and maintains the necessary mood. The only time things liven up is when entering the more economically advantaged parts of the city, making the disparity between the rich and the poor all the more apparent.

As the visuals keep the streets and alleys from feeling too open, the game does away with any kind of overworld, making it necessary to wander about from one place to the next, while public transit takes you between various districts, each with their own feel. This is where developers chose to put in the game's details, to fantastic results. The architecture of the buildings, the names of the clubs, even the placement of things like stores are all thought out in terms of the cultural life in that region of the city. The gun shop, for instance, is in the poorer district, while the doctor can be found on the rich end. The characters who inhabit each district also contribute to this feel. Some places have more street gangs and homeless people while other places have vendors and businessmen. Different social groups speak in different dialects.

All of this is possible because the game draws from such a deep well of material, and aspires to honour that well in it's gameplay. As is fairly common in pen and paper RPGs, Shadowrun is completely open-ended, depending entirely on your ability to roll sixes. As such, the SNES game, while not quite a sandbox experience per-say, does make great strides in allowing you to roam freely wherever you want to go, talk to whoever you want, and pick fights with whoever you want. See the orc in the club? Want to get into a fight with him? He'll wipe the floor with you, but you're free to it nonetheless. What about that guy reading his newspaper? He'll put up no resistance at all. Go for it! The game does prevent you from killing people integral to the plot, and it is sometimes unwise wander into certain places too early, but the game still does nothing to actually stop you.

This is something of a mixed blessing in the end, as there is, in fact a fairly specific story that's supposed to take place. Roaming freely around the city, it's entirely possible to cause events to occur out of sequence. At several points along the way, I couldn't help but feel like my progress from one point to another was purely incidental. Maybe this was meant to add realism to the game, things rarely happen along a convenient chain of events, but it could also have been that I was unwittingly skipping portions of the story. This might explain the sudden jumps between very easy and very tough parts of the game. It's also possible that event's can occur in different sequences, so long as they all do take place by the end.

Needless to say, for much of the game you'll be wandering around Seattle, talking to people and getting into random fights. There's no battle screen, you just push the A button and out comes your gun, you point the cross-hair at whatever you want to kill then mash the A button like a madman. Hence being able to shoot at anyone you please. Enemies can pop up just about anywhere, but usually show up in the same places over and over again. My guess is that this is to promote stat grinding. Most enemies leave behind a wad of cash after you kill them, and you receive Karma after killing either a certain number of grunts, or a key character.

After you've collected a fair number of Karma, you have the option of using them to upgrade whatever stats you wish. This is done while you sleep, though you also heal up and have the option to save at the same time. Whatever the current level of a particular stat, that's how many Karma you need to level up. Level 3 strength, for instance, needs 3 Karma to become level 4, which in turn, will need 4 Karma to reach level 5. This allows you to grind your stats strategically. Early in the game, you'll want to push your firearms skill, body and strength. Later on, you'll need your charisma and computer, for negotiating with other runners and hacking into computers, respectively. Further in the game, you'll get more stats to grind, like leadership, or magic spells.

Talking to people is equally strategic. When you start a conversation with someone, the game switches to a blue screen, where your face is shown opposite to that of who you're talking to. You have the option to just hear what he has to say, or you can ask him questions based on different key words you learn along the way. Ask the wrong question, and you get a form response, ask the right question, and they tell you what they know, and maybe reveal a new key word that you can use when talking to someone else. Some characters spill all kinds of useful information, others need to be coaxed. Early in the game, for instance, there's a man in a bar who refuses to talk to you at all until you buy him a drink.

This is actually one of the more tedious aspects of the game, as you'll be getting form responses 90% of the time. It's unfortunate, really. This kind of back and forth communication does give the characters a lot of depth, especially when you have a face on screen to go with what's being said. Even when compared with current RPGs, it's quite unique for incidental characters to have this much depth and personality. In fact, you'll find this game rather difficult to endure if you don't learn some of the local slang. It's hardly difficult to do so, but it's another level of detail that helps to maintain the self-contained game world.

At certain points, it will become necessary to hack into different computer networks. This is done by jacking your brain directly into the network (called the matrix) through a device called a cyberdeck. Hence, the practice is given the term decking. If you succeed, you can make all kinds of cash by stealing valuable info, or you can disable security systems that would otherwise halt your progress. You will also need to hire some other runners to watch your back when things start getting hairy. You negotiate a price, then they tag along with you until they feel they've earned what you paid them. Different runners come with different personalities and different skills, so choose wisely, depending on what you need from them. Negotiation and leadership skills are a must when dealing with these people.

I'm told that the game is quite short, for an RPG anyway. I wouldn't know. First of all, I am not, nor will I ever be a speed runner. Second, I tend to reach a certain point in the game where I find it far more fun to just wander the streets of Seattle, talking to people, getting into fights and just existing within that world. This always hampers my progress, and sometimes stops it completely. While I'm clearly not a hardcore gamer, I believe it's this ability to just be in the game that makes Shadowrun such a unique gem on the SNES. It would be a decade later before GTA would make this kind of gaming commonplace, along with a handful of other influential games in the years between.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/05/07, Updated 11/06/07

Game Release: Shadowrun (US, May 1993)