Shadowrun Returns Review
- Thread starter Slycne
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It is quite fun (if you like games like it). A bit linear maybe but I hope that they improve on that in the Berlin DLC/Addon as well as in the Steam Workshop. Especially the Steam Workshop has a lot of potential. There is even a short Fallout game someone is working on.
I've been watching a dude calling himself mach1fireman do a Let's Play series of Dead Man's Switch on Youtube. And while there's a lot of text over still images to get through, it makes a pretty convincing case for this being a fun game to play. Well worth checking out if you're on the fence about the turn-based combat system. I wouldn't have thought it would be my cup of tea, but what the series shows of it makes it look like fun.
--Morology!
--Morology!
Linear, watered down combat (in comparison with stuff like XCOM:EU or Fallout Tactics), mediocre overall.
Not a BAD game per se, but definitely not worth all the praise it's been getting.
I think people are not thinking straight about this one because of cyberdwarves and trolls in tailored suits. Which are awesome but also a part of the setting, not something the developers created.
More like 3/5 than 4/5, in my opinion.
And I call bullshit on the whole "It has editor and steam workshop" thing. That is a bonus, the main game and it's mechanics must be able to stand on their own.
Not a BAD game per se, but definitely not worth all the praise it's been getting.
I think people are not thinking straight about this one because of cyberdwarves and trolls in tailored suits. Which are awesome but also a part of the setting, not something the developers created.
More like 3/5 than 4/5, in my opinion.
And I call bullshit on the whole "It has editor and steam workshop" thing. That is a bonus, the main game and it's mechanics must be able to stand on their own.
Technically, the developers did create the setting. So yea.toms said:
Also, there really kinda isn't a "main game". Shadowrun Returns is a vehicle by which to play various campaigns and modules created through the editor, Dead Man's Switch simply happens to be done by the same people as the rest of it.
If anything, the "main" portion of the game is the editor.
The main vibe that I got from the game was that it isn't strictly speaking a full title. Rather, it's a mod tool for multiple bite-sized games, and I'm okay with that. Sometimes I need a title that'll last me around 5 hours yet can still spring out a compelling storyline with fun mechanics. Hell, that's the same reason I liked Force Unleashed 2.
Wouldn't it be great if there was a larger short game market, that doesn't cost as much as a long and epic experience and can be over with between lunch and dinner? Nowadays I just don't have the time to play videogames, and Shadowrun was a hell of a treat.
Edit: Also yeah, I was a decker and I always felt pretty complete and well-rounded. The main problem was having to invest on 5 different side tiers to get both my social and my pistol skills up. Seriously, gun skills are expensive. If you haven't played yet, do your best to not leave a certain attribute's skill tree or you'll be burned out of karma.
Wouldn't it be great if there was a larger short game market, that doesn't cost as much as a long and epic experience and can be over with between lunch and dinner? Nowadays I just don't have the time to play videogames, and Shadowrun was a hell of a treat.
Edit: Also yeah, I was a decker and I always felt pretty complete and well-rounded. The main problem was having to invest on 5 different side tiers to get both my social and my pistol skills up. Seriously, gun skills are expensive. If you haven't played yet, do your best to not leave a certain attribute's skill tree or you'll be burned out of karma.
So far I've loving it. The main campaign was interesting and played smoothly, and another campaign of equal length was already released by a fan on the day of release. For the 17 bucks I paid, that and the promise of more is adequate.
As far as the statement that it is more editor than game, I actually find this rather fitting. 1.1M (minus KS bonuses) got us the structure of the game. The whole Kickstarter thing was pitched in terms of a community, having the game ship as a community driven seems perfect to me. It's a simple way give a project funded by the fans a lifespan that is limited only by the passion of those fans. It's going to be a viable game for a very long time.
As far as the statement that it is more editor than game, I actually find this rather fitting. 1.1M (minus KS bonuses) got us the structure of the game. The whole Kickstarter thing was pitched in terms of a community, having the game ship as a community driven seems perfect to me. It's a simple way give a project funded by the fans a lifespan that is limited only by the passion of those fans. It's going to be a viable game for a very long time.
The editor is pretty damn bad, too. Here's a quote from a modder who tried it:
"Well I wouldn't get your hopes up, the editor is abysmal to work with. Only SR diehards are going to work with this in the longterm.
You can paint maps easily but in the end you have dumb restrictions all over the place, all of which make the editor a nightmare to work with.
A map can only be a few screenwidths in size before the tile renderer falls apart, these guys don't seem to understand basics of culling and streaming textures. Tile engines from a decade ago can do a much better job.
The game can only save very select variables. When you move between areas, it actually doesn't remember anything AT ALL. No NPCs, no items on the ground, no combat states, nothing. The game is physically incapable of storing active data between scenes.
Every time you want to create a connected area, you have to go out of your way to save each and every change via a manual variable with this fucking elementary script system which is so lovingly put into comboboxes instead of an actual script you can write within seconds.
My only hope for this shit is that someone can create an external script editor to reduce some of the tedium, but it won't alleviate the fact the scripting language is missing dozens of key features.
The editor is fine if you want to travel in a straight line, but god forbid you walk off the beaten path... which I tried, and found out wasn't worth the effort. I'm not putting much stock in things changing in the future given they're moving right onto DLC/Mobiles after absorbing 1.5 million.. and still can't figure out how to save their own gamestate."
Bottom line, don't get your hopes up, it's not getting any better than Dead Man's Switch.
"Well I wouldn't get your hopes up, the editor is abysmal to work with. Only SR diehards are going to work with this in the longterm.
You can paint maps easily but in the end you have dumb restrictions all over the place, all of which make the editor a nightmare to work with.
A map can only be a few screenwidths in size before the tile renderer falls apart, these guys don't seem to understand basics of culling and streaming textures. Tile engines from a decade ago can do a much better job.
The game can only save very select variables. When you move between areas, it actually doesn't remember anything AT ALL. No NPCs, no items on the ground, no combat states, nothing. The game is physically incapable of storing active data between scenes.
Every time you want to create a connected area, you have to go out of your way to save each and every change via a manual variable with this fucking elementary script system which is so lovingly put into comboboxes instead of an actual script you can write within seconds.
My only hope for this shit is that someone can create an external script editor to reduce some of the tedium, but it won't alleviate the fact the scripting language is missing dozens of key features.
The editor is fine if you want to travel in a straight line, but god forbid you walk off the beaten path... which I tried, and found out wasn't worth the effort. I'm not putting much stock in things changing in the future given they're moving right onto DLC/Mobiles after absorbing 1.5 million.. and still can't figure out how to save their own gamestate."
Bottom line, don't get your hopes up, it's not getting any better than Dead Man's Switch.
This review......I'm amazed actually. For the most part I have always felt the reviews on Escapist where pretty fair.
I don't think SR is the worst game every, but it's certainly not what people where waiting for, and I have had much more fun with free flash games then I did with SR. The combat is junk....not even up to the standards of games made 20 years ago in many cases. The character generation is horrible....and doesn't even follow the core Shadowrun rules. The matrix was just slapped on as an last minute (oh yeah..we probably should have this), and the official campaign that comes with it...might as well just be a not very good shadowrun book.
I wouldn't say it was absolute trash like many people have, but.....it's certainly not even close to as good as even the SNES game was, let alone the Sega game. I have recently replayed both...and that leads in large part to my disatisfaction with SR. It doesn't compare to the games I enjoyed so long ago in any way.
And the excuse (It was only $20) doesn't hold water for me. Similar games....even longer then the old ones but without shadowrun themes...have sold for half that at launch.....and been a blast!
I can at most say that I was at least able to finish the official campaign....so the game doesn't deserve less then a 3/10 (since if I can actually finish it...it's not a totally broken/worthless game). I didn't really enjoy myself along the way though, so I couldn't possibly give it more then a 5/10.
There are some that seem...somehow...to really enjoy the game. I am glad for them, but there are many who either didn't enjoy it, or actively dislike it....and if you see so many people actually posting about it on the boards (which I hadn't till seeing this on the Escapist)...how many more people are unhappy and just stopped playing and moved on like me?
Very dissapointed.
I don't think SR is the worst game every, but it's certainly not what people where waiting for, and I have had much more fun with free flash games then I did with SR. The combat is junk....not even up to the standards of games made 20 years ago in many cases. The character generation is horrible....and doesn't even follow the core Shadowrun rules. The matrix was just slapped on as an last minute (oh yeah..we probably should have this), and the official campaign that comes with it...might as well just be a not very good shadowrun book.
I wouldn't say it was absolute trash like many people have, but.....it's certainly not even close to as good as even the SNES game was, let alone the Sega game. I have recently replayed both...and that leads in large part to my disatisfaction with SR. It doesn't compare to the games I enjoyed so long ago in any way.
And the excuse (It was only $20) doesn't hold water for me. Similar games....even longer then the old ones but without shadowrun themes...have sold for half that at launch.....and been a blast!
I can at most say that I was at least able to finish the official campaign....so the game doesn't deserve less then a 3/10 (since if I can actually finish it...it's not a totally broken/worthless game). I didn't really enjoy myself along the way though, so I couldn't possibly give it more then a 5/10.
There are some that seem...somehow...to really enjoy the game. I am glad for them, but there are many who either didn't enjoy it, or actively dislike it....and if you see so many people actually posting about it on the boards (which I hadn't till seeing this on the Escapist)...how many more people are unhappy and just stopped playing and moved on like me?
Very dissapointed.
This isn't a four star game. It's a three for a SR fan, a two for anyone else. This review is off the mark.
The combat mechanics are like a poor man's version of X-Com and have little to do with SR itself. Now, I'm fine with deviating from SR canon, devs should do whatever they need to do to get a fun game out of the source material. But the combat doesn't hold up. And if you're changing things from SR game mechanics, why would you keep the one most broken thing in place: Deckers are useless 95% of the time. Basically, they got rid of the good and held on to the bad in terms of mechanics. And "good" deserves quotation marks as the combat gets broken easily by skills that were never playtested. FullAuto for rifles and kneecap for shotgun are just ludicrously powerful, as an example.
Coming to the editor, well. I tried using it. After finishing the campaign, I thought I'd make the DNA/DOA classic adventure. After 10 hours of working with the thing (three evenings basically) I've concluded that the editor is a frightful mess. Lemme present a non-ordered, non-exhaustive list with the issues I had with the editor: Utterly non-intuitive, next to no official documentation (literally half the wiki is blank) but some video tutorials from fans who bumble their way through, severely limited tilesets to craft maps (Want to make a sewer? Best get photoshop out and create the tiles yerself! Upscale mall? Best we can do is corp office, but feel free to make your own!) and lastly and most importantly the inability to change the core mechanics of the game in any way.
Might be someone creates some good maps with the editor, but the effort these devoted fans put in deserves to translate into more than it probably is going to. They gave us tools to create our own adventures with but they neglected to tell anyone that a rock and a piece of flint can be considered tools as well. The editor isn't a redeeming quality of the game as much as it is a slap in the face with a used hanky. If the "main" portion of the game is the editor, then people should be asking their money back.
Mind you, I haven't even mentioned the save system. The save system didn't bother me personally, as I save scum more than I should and not being able to was oddly liberating. And I still actually finished the game and enjoyed it since the SR atmosphere gets conveyed pretty well (though they're butchering fan-favourite characters like Dodger and Harley, but hey...)
This game is only palatable for hardcore SR fans and even for them I'd seriously encourage them to buy the 5th edition sourcebook that was just released instead. Everyone else should give this a wide berth, even at 20$.
The combat mechanics are like a poor man's version of X-Com and have little to do with SR itself. Now, I'm fine with deviating from SR canon, devs should do whatever they need to do to get a fun game out of the source material. But the combat doesn't hold up. And if you're changing things from SR game mechanics, why would you keep the one most broken thing in place: Deckers are useless 95% of the time. Basically, they got rid of the good and held on to the bad in terms of mechanics. And "good" deserves quotation marks as the combat gets broken easily by skills that were never playtested. FullAuto for rifles and kneecap for shotgun are just ludicrously powerful, as an example.
Coming to the editor, well. I tried using it. After finishing the campaign, I thought I'd make the DNA/DOA classic adventure. After 10 hours of working with the thing (three evenings basically) I've concluded that the editor is a frightful mess. Lemme present a non-ordered, non-exhaustive list with the issues I had with the editor: Utterly non-intuitive, next to no official documentation (literally half the wiki is blank) but some video tutorials from fans who bumble their way through, severely limited tilesets to craft maps (Want to make a sewer? Best get photoshop out and create the tiles yerself! Upscale mall? Best we can do is corp office, but feel free to make your own!) and lastly and most importantly the inability to change the core mechanics of the game in any way.
Might be someone creates some good maps with the editor, but the effort these devoted fans put in deserves to translate into more than it probably is going to. They gave us tools to create our own adventures with but they neglected to tell anyone that a rock and a piece of flint can be considered tools as well. The editor isn't a redeeming quality of the game as much as it is a slap in the face with a used hanky. If the "main" portion of the game is the editor, then people should be asking their money back.
Mind you, I haven't even mentioned the save system. The save system didn't bother me personally, as I save scum more than I should and not being able to was oddly liberating. And I still actually finished the game and enjoyed it since the SR atmosphere gets conveyed pretty well (though they're butchering fan-favourite characters like Dodger and Harley, but hey...)
This game is only palatable for hardcore SR fans and even for them I'd seriously encourage them to buy the 5th edition sourcebook that was just released instead. Everyone else should give this a wide berth, even at 20$.
From my experience with the editor I find this to be highly accurate. I was hoping for an editor that would allow someone to essentially make their own RPG, as in a proper one where you can revisit areas again and talk to people about past experiences or see reactions and consequences to your decisions... Dead Man's Switch is essentially a Final Fantasy game without an open world aspect - so it's a shit Final Fantasy game.eevangoh said:
This game is a 3 stars at the most. It's average. For $20 you get what you pay for, I guess.
I find myself agreeing with a lot of the negative comments here, and I'm as big a Shadowrun fan as anyone. I've played the actual P&P, and I'm even a fan of the Genesis game.
That being said, I can't help but feel disappointed at this release. There are some pretty glaring flaws in the engine that have been summed up by the other commenters, so I won't go into them. It really feels like an unfinished product. If I hadn't gotten it on sale during the preorder for $10 I'd be pretty pissed.
I don't have as big a problem with the editor as some people are having, even though I recognize their problems. I think the whole "revisiting an area" thing could be worked around by saving the bare bones map of a place like a bar or small neighborhood, and essentially making new scenes to reflect story progression. It's not perfect, but there are some tricks. It reminds me a lot of the old StarCraft level editor, in terms of triggers and regions.
I'm interested to see where the community takes things, since there seems to be a lot of potential (there's already several tricks and workarounds in the Steam Workshop). But as of right now, it's a bit lackluster.
That being said, I can't help but feel disappointed at this release. There are some pretty glaring flaws in the engine that have been summed up by the other commenters, so I won't go into them. It really feels like an unfinished product. If I hadn't gotten it on sale during the preorder for $10 I'd be pretty pissed.
I don't have as big a problem with the editor as some people are having, even though I recognize their problems. I think the whole "revisiting an area" thing could be worked around by saving the bare bones map of a place like a bar or small neighborhood, and essentially making new scenes to reflect story progression. It's not perfect, but there are some tricks. It reminds me a lot of the old StarCraft level editor, in terms of triggers and regions.
I'm interested to see where the community takes things, since there seems to be a lot of potential (there's already several tricks and workarounds in the Steam Workshop). But as of right now, it's a bit lackluster.
I must respectfully disagree. I played through the SNES game for the first time (so no nostalgia goggles) immediately before I started playing Returns, and the game was a boring and unintutive grind with only the barebones of a story sprinkled over it.wulfy42 said:
I haven't played the Mega Drive game, and Returns can't really compete with XCOM: EU in terms of battle systems, but Dead Man's Switch was a very enjoyable campaign.
Am I the only one here who thought this was a fair review?
I got the Shadowrun rulebook a few days before buying the game. So, I'm new to Shadowrun, and don't have the bias that a lot of people have.
I saw that the main campaign was decent and a good modernization of old isometric games, similar to how Legend of Grimrock is a nice throwback to old dungeon crawlers. No, Shadowrun didn't innovate anything, but it wasn't trying to. No, it wasn't able to give a faithful representation of a pen-and-paper RPG, but I have yet to play a game that has. It's simple and charmingly familiar. With the small budget that they had, I'm glad that they even got that far.
The main focus of SR:R was faithfully recreating the setting and atmosphere of the Shadowrun universe, which it does perfectly. Everything from the color palette to the details within the flavor-text were given careful consideration and executed very well.
Also, for those who think that this is the final product, think again. The dev team is very busy. I mean VERY busy: http://harebrained-schemes.com/post/whats-happening-and-whats-next/
I got the Shadowrun rulebook a few days before buying the game. So, I'm new to Shadowrun, and don't have the bias that a lot of people have.
I saw that the main campaign was decent and a good modernization of old isometric games, similar to how Legend of Grimrock is a nice throwback to old dungeon crawlers. No, Shadowrun didn't innovate anything, but it wasn't trying to. No, it wasn't able to give a faithful representation of a pen-and-paper RPG, but I have yet to play a game that has. It's simple and charmingly familiar. With the small budget that they had, I'm glad that they even got that far.
The main focus of SR:R was faithfully recreating the setting and atmosphere of the Shadowrun universe, which it does perfectly. Everything from the color palette to the details within the flavor-text were given careful consideration and executed very well.
Also, for those who think that this is the final product, think again. The dev team is very busy. I mean VERY busy: http://harebrained-schemes.com/post/whats-happening-and-whats-next/
I love the universe and the potential framework that SR provides for future content, both developer and user created, but it's certainly not without flaws. I'm nearly at the end of the packaged campaign and I find that the UI still isn't comfortable to use. I also agree with the perspective that Dead Mans Switch is more of a sampler platter that shows a little bit of everything that can be done as opposed to a dish that really totally satisfies in any one area. Once again, though, I feel it's not so much that the game can't do it, it's more that DMS isn't set up to reward it.
For those interested in Shadowrun, I would absolutely recommend trying the game. As evidenced by this very thread, you might love it or you might hate it, but the one thing it almost undeniably gets right is the way it treats the universe if not all of the mechanics. Maybe, and I'm probably dreaming here, but maybe if SR is successful enough we'll see more games in the Shadowrun universe again (beyond the already in development Shadowrun Online, of course).
For those interested in Shadowrun, I would absolutely recommend trying the game. As evidenced by this very thread, you might love it or you might hate it, but the one thing it almost undeniably gets right is the way it treats the universe if not all of the mechanics. Maybe, and I'm probably dreaming here, but maybe if SR is successful enough we'll see more games in the Shadowrun universe again (beyond the already in development Shadowrun Online, of course).
