Shadowrun

You wouldn't automatically expect a multiplayer first-person shooter like Counter-Strike to serve as the main inspiration for a game based on a 1989 pen-and-paper RPG, but that's exactly what you get in Microsoft's Shadowrun,

which takes all of the cyberpunk-plus-magic stuff from the RPG and boils it down to magic spells and technological character upgrades. The action is kind of neat, but a lack of variety and its multiplayer-only offering make for a pretty shallow experience that feels about $30 too expensive.

Aside from six brief-but-necessary training sequences and the ability to play against bots of questionable intelligence, Shadowrun is played online. Up to 16 players can get into one eight-on-eight game, pitting the rebellious Lineage forces against the new-world-order-like RNA Global, who are apparently fighting each other in an attempt to control magic, which has recently returned to an already-high-tech world. But that's about as much story as you're going to get here, as the rest of the game is all about buying skills and controlling artifacts.

Shadowrun is a round-based multiplayer first-person shooter that works a lot like Counter-Strike. At the front of each round, you're given a safe period where you can access a buy menu and purchase weapons, tech upgrades, and magic spells. So in addition to buying a submachine gun, you might pick up some aim enhancement in the form of the SmartLink tech upgrade, and the ability to teleport through walls, floors, and ceilings. These skills set the game a bit apart from the average team-based shooter as it lets you specialize. Spells like tree of life and resurrect let you heal and revive other players. Or you might get smoke, which lets you transform into a smoke form that can't be damaged by conventional weapons. Or perhaps you'll buy gust, which blows players around and, not so coincidentally, makes for a powerful counter against players using smoke. There's a pretty good collection of abilities to play around with, but the catch is that you can have only three of them equipped at any given time.

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