Shadowrun Returns Review

Shadowrun Returns

Shadowrun Returns is a Strategy RPG game that takes places in the future where a group of mercenaries known as Shadowrunners or Runners are hired to do different types of jobs. The game gives you the choice between five different races, each with their own benefits and restrictions and six different kinds of specialization classes. The game offer loads of skill choices and a very interesting  story. This game is a top down strategy game, similar to Xcom: Enemy Unknown so fans of that genre should enjoy the gameplay and the customization that comes along with it. So now let’s go into my thoughts about the game.

What I like:

- Skill Customization

This game as I stated is an RPG game as well as a Strategy game, so as you advance through the story or small side missions you will earn karma points which will allow you to allocate another point into some of your skills to make you more accurate, do more and/or take less damage or unlock a new skill. The system does require some planning but once you find out what skills you want to focus on your runner will be a force to be reckoned with.

- Engaging story

The story for Shadowrun’s initial campaign is “The Dead Man’s Switch”   you are hired to  investigate the death of an old friend and ex runner Sam Watts per his request via a video sent out upon his demise. As you go through the game you meet various types of characters and delve into the cyberpunk version of Seattle’s underbelly. This story engages with the player as they go through the game, giving hints and clues on what is required to advance.

- User Generated Content

The game allows for the community to go in and make their own story and set up the environment and scenarios.

What I don’t like:

-Chance aiming Issues

If you played Xcom then you will be a bit use to this issue. The best way to describe this to those who aren’t familiar with this would be this scenario. During one of the later fire fights in the game I had a 55% chance to hit my target with three chances and only a bit of health left for the enemy and my last movable character. Thinking that I had at least a chance to get some damage in with three shots and a 55% chance to hit him I fired three times and missed each and every one. I know it’s probabilities but sometimes they are very all over the place as an earlier fight had a guy with a shotgun right in front of me fire a shot and missed entirely. This is a minor issue as I still enjoyed Xcom and this game but it’s still one of my pet peeves  with top down Strategy games.

No respec option

Another minor issue that I have with RPG games is the option to not respec in case of a mistake or simple change in what skills you want. So if you before placing a karma point make sure that you are confident in how you want to spec the character.

Interaction issues

Another issue I have with top down games is the interaction cues. There were times when interactable items on the screen wouldnt generate a prompt and I would just end up running around from room to room looking for the next thing. Another issue that is similar to this would be while moving characters into a room that has a cue for a conversation or dialouge the first of your team to enter the room will stop mid movement when the cue is activated and it would take up the entirety of the action point cost leaving them open.

What I look forward to seeing:

- User content

I’m very much so looking forward to seeing what the community will do with this game to provide more story content. I also would like to see someone make a content that is mostly going on runs with a created or picked out team rather than having to recruit people each time.

Overall Opinions:

Shadowrun Returns is a very fun and engaging game. If you played the 2007 Online Shooter for the Xbox then keep in mind that this is a somewhat different experience but it is still a fun one. The game provides plenty of skill choices and firefights to navigate through. While the game has it’s issues from time to time with some vague objectives or prompts I would say that I still found myself immersed in the game and wanting more. I would say fans of the casual Xcom experience would enjoy the game.

Tips

Specialize:

As I said before this game has no respec options that  I know of so I would recommend focusing on a combat aspect first and trying to max then focusing on trees one at a time that out rather than jumping around all the skills. The Karma points work sequentially so a level seven quickness  require seven karma points to advance and will only allow you to upgrade up to level seven on it’s subtrees so be careful of your choices.

Pistols or shotguns:

If you are going to use a ranged weapon I would recommend either of these two weapons. The Pistol for my character had great accuracy and damage and allowed to hit most of what I saw with at least a 90% chance once I had it at about level four or five and the chain shot ability allows you to fire three shots at three targets for one action point, while the shotgun’s kneecap ability allows you to lock down an enemy or two by taking away their action points and dealing good damage, it’s wide low ability also can mess up a cluster of enemies.

So I found a game to review after some time, cool. Let me know what you think of the review or the game itself in the comments and be on the look for my Payday 2 review coming soon.

Future Review Plans.

So due to the lack of new games coming out the rest of this month I don't have any reviews coming up for a couple of weeks. I plan to do the State of Decay DLC as soon as that comes out and talk about the new things that will be featured in there but the next big games that I plan to review are Payday 2, Xcom: The Bureau, and Splinter Cell Blacklist. You'll have to give me some time to get the last two out since they come out on the same day but I plan to have those two out as soon as I can so be on the look out for that. In the mean time if there are any game suggestions you have I'd love to hear it in the comments or if there are any suggestions or opinions on the formatting of the site or reviews themselves let me know.

State of Decay Review

State of Decay:

Around the time this game came out it was buried under E3 news and The Last of Us. With all that going on this game flew below a lot of people’s radars for a few days. I picked this game up and found myself pretty immersed in it for quite some time and after playing this game for sometime I have to say that this game for me brought some life back to the somewhat dead Zombie Genre.

About The Game:

State of Decay is a open world zombie rpg game created by the indie developers Undead Labs. This game provides plenty of gory, brutal action that we have come to expect (and enjoy) in most zombie games. But if you think this is just any other zombie game then you are wrong as this game brings some pretty interesting concepts to this zombie filled game. The game allows you to go from building to building searching for supplies (somewhat like DayZ) but unlike DayZ this game focuses more on you trying to survive with a community. The game provides you with one basic outpost after the tutorial and at least two characters to play as within the community and as you explore the world you will have the chance to friend and unlock more community members to play as and also discover new outpost to manage.

What I liked:

- Immersive Experience with Fun Exploration

This game has a very large world with about three towns that have plenty of buildings to search for supplies and weapons as well as plenty of zombies to kill. This is a pretty fun aspect of the game. I spent whole play sessions just ignoring missions and simply searching building after building for more and more supplies.

- Simple but fun Combat

The combat in the game is pretty simple as well. You can use numerous weapons from wood trunks and table legs to Crowbars and Shotguns. The game has the standard buttons mechanics for striking, dodging and shooting but theres just something satisfying about playing the game and sneaking up on a zombie horde and taking them out one by one with the brutal takedowns.

-Interesting Leveling System

The game’s rpg elements come in with the way each member of your community levels up their skills. Each time you use one of your skills to takedown a zombie each skill that was incorporated in the kill will gain a bit of experience. So if you shoot enough zombies you will gain a star in that character’s shooting skill. Gain enough stars in a skill and it will unlock the ability to gain a technique or ability associated with that skill. These can range from an ability that allows the character to slow down time temporarily to line up the perfect shot or to a counter that allows a character to suplex a zombie.

-Base Upgrades

As you are in charge of what goes on (mostly) with members of your community. You also have the ability to decide what facilities each part of your base will have. This is partly where the strategy section of the game comes in as you must manage your resources and the community itself to decide what facilities are truly needed to allow for survival. These facilities canl also distribute benefits to each of the characters such as increased stamina or health as well as repairing vehicles and weapons left there.

What I didn’t like:

-Stupid Ai

My main tiff with this game is that the AI for the community members can be a bit dumb and random. When bringing a member along for a mission they would stand in doors, reopen doors that I previously closed, and reanimating zombies I had killed with takedown by running up and attacking the dead corpses. Another thing would be that crucial members of my community would from time to time just run out and get lost within my safe zones (somehow) or even worse just run out unnecessarily far and get lost or go out for missions.

Things I would like to see in the future (Dlc or sequel):

-Coop

Sadly dreams of running around this game with a friend in coop have been crushed as Undead Labs has already stated that it would take too long and ultimately be a poor experience if they attempted to add Coop into State of Decay. Undead Labs did originally release this game as a test for their game Class 4 ( a open world zombie mmo) and have talked about making State of Decay a series of it’s own so I hope if they do go down the path of continuing State of Decay that they will add at least some four player coop to the game. Either way I’m excited to see more information on the studios game Class 4.

- Ability to take AI with you

Despite my complaints about the AI earlier. It was ultimately very helpful to have other members of the community travel with me as they made scavenging safer (especially when dealing with Feral Zombies and other special infected.) If Undead Labs does add the ability to bring along members of the community I would also like to have the ability to give them orders such as to search the house for supplies with me rather than watching me move from room to room while standing in the way.

- Ability to give orders to Community members

This is more so the ability to dictate responsibilities such as who stays to guard the camp, who cooks, and who goes out to scavenge the surrounding areas. That way important members like the doctor and the chief didn’t get lost and members of the community who were more suited for combat and survival could go out and look for supplies. Also so that members who went out actually got supplies or information rather than just going out and getting lost.

-Larger Camps

I would appreciate if the Sandbox mode added more areas if not at least larger bases or the ability to expand the base to allow for more facilities.

-Much more

I could honestly go on and on about all the things I would love for this game to have. But those were the main things that I want to be added in this great game.

Overall Opinion:

State of Decay is an amazing game that I feel brings something very unique to the zombie genre. Its not just about shooting and killing zombies but also about maintaining resources and a community in order to survive. This game is very immersive and is well worth the 1600 points ($20.00) the game asks for.

Tips:

Switch characters:

This game has a number of things that makes sure that you don’t rely on one character too much. There is the health bar being permanently drained if you take too much damage without rest, the stamina bar taking a hit if a character explores too much without any sleep or energy supplements and most importantly the permanent death that comes to a character that is overwhelmed by zombies. This means that you need to switch between characters and get a decent group that can hold their own while they are out exploring.

Always check how many supplies your group goes through:

I’m not sure what happens to the survivors if there is a deficit of supplies but the game runs on a simulation so when aren’t playing the game still keeps going for a bit longer. This means that if you don’t want to come back to dead community try to make sure you have at least the minimum of supplies need to keep things going.

For more tips on State of Decay Check out the Let’sPlayCatGaming Channel on Youtube. 

http://www.youtube.com/user/LetsPlayCatGaming

This guy does a really good job answering questions and going through most of the tips and trick for the game and as always leave me some comments letting me know what you think of the reviews and the what games you would like to see reviewed next.

Review Update

Just got back from vacation down in Florida. Due to Gamefly not sending me Dark I've decided to do a review on the XBLA game State of Decay. That should be up sometime later today or early tomorrow be on the lookout for that and let me know any other suggestions for games that you are interested in (if you haven't played them and are curious or just interested in another opinion.)