Prologue

Long before Keanu Reeves ever said, blankly as only he could, "I know kung-fu" and long before he ever said that same line in a movie, Jake Armitage was tapped into the Matrix courtesy of a headjack and cyberdeck in the year 2050.

Welcome, boys and girls, to the world of Shadowrun. Put your pens and papers down, grab yourself a controller and get ready to rock the streets of Seattle harder than Kurt Cobain ever did.

The Question Keanu Reeves Asks Himself Every Morning:

"So, who am I?"

What were you expecting? "What is the Matrix?"

You take the role of recently deceased, and even more recently re-animated, decker Jake Armitage. Sound strange already? It is.

You see, the opening scene is actually you waking up on a morgue slab, just another punk "geeked" by the gangs on the streets. So when you walk out of the morgue, you totally freak out the wussy workers who run away screaming their heads off like they just seen a ghost or something. Of course, you were dead so I guess that makes you a zombie.

Jill Valentine they ain't.

Quickly, as you make your escape, you run into someone who seems to know you. That's good because your memory is almost as bad as Ace Hardings'. (For all you kids out there, that's a reference to an 8-bit game called Deja Vu. Yes, there were games before 32-bit.) Of course, follow him down an alley and you get to see him get geeked by an orc. Bummer.

Worse yet, the orc's after you, now. Double bummer.

So, acting quickly, you grab your fallen friend's Beretta and Leather Coat (which, I guess, you were admiring though your sprite is already rocking a trench coat) and pop many a cap into his orcish bum. Congratulations... it seems that the world around you is not friendly. You can almost hear Scott Bakula sigh out an, "Ooh, boy."

The Obvious Statement of Stated Obviousness

So, it already goes without saying that this roleplaying game is different from the rest, but that's nothing when you compare it to the rest of the unique features that separates Shadowrun from the average roleplaying pack.

Ha! Take that 5 damage for having 5 swamps, geek mage!

First and foremost, let's get this straight right now. There is no experience system and, hence, no leveling. Instead, when you kill enough bad guys, you gain karma. So, for all intents and purposes, your karma is your experience.

With this karma, you can increase your skills and attributes. When you first start this game, you're a wuss... no if's, and's, or but's about it. You sneeze wrong and you might end up dead. Getting started isn't easy and there's a good chance you might end up dead. This is due to the fact that you're kinda just thrown into the game.

Imagine sitting on the couch at home when some government agency nabs you and throws you into a world-class soccer game versus one of the top teams. You haven't played soccer. All you know to do is run around and try not to get killed. Yeah... same principal with this game.

You're left with, basically, no information and only a few items that don't really mean much to you when you steal them from the morgue.

Great, first you're a zombie... then you're a zombie thief. Err, treasure hunter, right?

Hmm... let's see... scalpel, slap patch, torn note... I know, I've got to watch someone die, kill an orc, save an old shaman from certain doom by healing him with this slap patch thingy and then find my way to the person who takes me to the next section of the game. And I get all this information from where? That's right. A scalpel, a slap patch and one torn note.

AOL owes it all to this game

Alright, it's not that bad, really. There are people in the towns for you to converse with and they will give you leads. Actually, unlike most roleplaying games, conversations are an integral part of your character's mission and, actually, growth. You see, when you talk to the right people, you receive "keywords" that you, then, in turn can ask other people about. Some skills and such can only be unlocked by asking people the right keyword.

Fight It Out!

But enough chit-chat about, well, chit-chat. Let's get to the meat and bones and the basis of every single roleplaying game this side of Final Fantasy VIII: a strong battle engine.

Fighting is done in real time. So, basically, this is by all means an, ugh, action roleplaying game. But before you go getting all Mariah on me for talking this game up only to let you down, slow your roll, Bunny Bread, and give me a chance.

Let's break it down into full detail, shall we?

All movement... hell, the whole game, save menus, takes place from an 3/4 top-down, isometric view. Imagine Solstice or Equinox and you know what I'm talking about. Or Landstalker. Or Marble Madness. Hell, wasn't Crazy Castle that way, too? And what about Syndicate? Let's not even get started on the Gameboy Advance Tony Hawk games.

Anyhow, the map design is well done as rooms all interconnect and many scroll, as well. The best comparison I could use would be to say it's like Seiken Densetsu 3 or The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past as the size of the zones vary from place to place but all make sense logically.

Also, the zones are marked, sort of, since there are some areas that are completely safe at all times while others have randomly generated enemies. So, with experience, you'll learn the safest way to run from Drake Towers when you've only got 3 hit points, no slap patches, no magic points or no mage runners with healing like Kitsune with you. Of course, random snipers never help, but safety is a relative thing in this game.

When in doubt, I whip it out!

All this time and I've still yet to touch the combat and how it takes place. Funky.

Alright, here goes. The A Button breaks out your weapon of choice... always a gun of some type. Don't worry, you don't have to manage stupid things such as how many rounds you have in the chamber. Then, you guide the crosshairs to another character and start shooting by pressing the A Button again. Keep pressing until bad guy is dead. Should the enemy move while you're firing at it, the crosshair cursor also moves with him for easy auto-aim killing fun. Simple, effective, deadly.

Mind you, this whole time you've been concentrating on nameless bad mage A, nameless bad mage B has been throwing powerballs at you, while nameless decker A is shooting and charging at you.

W.W.J.D. (What Would Jake Do?)

So, the enemy is trying to pelt you with an area attack, eh? Well, you could just take the powerballs like a man all while you're chipping away at the decker pegging you worse than if you were Al Bundy, or you could run up to the decker and watch his faithless mage buddy blow him to bits with the same powerball that's coming after you. Sure, the monster of a man taking the powerballs might pick up the chicks afterward in the real world but, frankly, that's only if he survives. And since you're almost always outnumbered, your real goal is to dispatch of the enemy in as timely a way as possible so you may want to keep this in mind when some street punks are after you with molotov cocktails in hand.

But, really, don't worry... the numbers don't necessarily have to be against you. That's why you can hire NPCs known as shadowrunners to aid you. Whether you want a mercenary, a shaman or just another decker to run through the matrix for you, it's up to you. Just realize that you might be safe this way, but you're not going to get anywhere cash-wise.

Of course, this is why you should train leadership and negotiation, the latter of which can only be unlocked through using keywords. The higher those stats are, the longer the shadowrunners will stay with you and the less they'll ask for when you hire them, respectively.

Speaking of training, I never really stated how karma works. Here's the deal. Each time you buy a point in the respective field you're trying to improve, it raises one more karma to purchase the next until the stat is maxed out. No big deal, simple and effective... just how you want your character to grow is up to you.

Personally, I like to max my firearms as soon as possible, though I also like to have around 80 hit points before I take on the King of the Junkyard. So, first, raise my firearms enough to where I hit most of my shots against the regular enemies I kill while gathering karma. Then, afterwards, raise my hit points enough to survive longer stays building karma. Maybe you want to spend more time running through the Matrix in the beginning but don't have many hit points... that's okay, though, because you can just raise your computer skill. The choices are finite, but how you raise your little decker is all up to you.

Later in the game, you'll finally unlock the power of your spirit guide... the mystical power who, I think, brought you back from the dead to seek revenge. This mysterious power that guides your spirits? Rover, the spooky ghost dog. Okay, okay... he just calls himself "Dog" but, heck, so did the bad Logan son in Origin and see how he turned out?

This unlocks even more things to waste your hard earned karma on, including magic points and leveling your spells. Sadly, when you level a spell, it not only increases in power but casting cost. So, you might want to hold off on maxing that heal spell until you really need all that healing power. No sense in leveling a heal spell to heal 150 hit points when all you have is 110, right? Especially when you don't have much in the way of magic points. Why pay 10 magic points when all you have is 30 and you could be spending only 6 a spell?

What'll defend the computers of tomorrow? Minesweeper.

Finally, the reason I even bother mentioning Keanu in this review is because, for all intents and purposes, I knew about the Matrix before he did. You see, I had already been through the Matrix and seen the corruption. I dug through all the virtual filth and saw the truth. I didn't need Morpheus, because I knew more than the great mastermind of the Matrix knew... because I knew how to break through their security systems. I knew... how to play... Minesweeper.

You see, the basis of the Matrix interaction you'll have is guiding yourself through a booby-trapped grid until you get to the easily marked bit of information that can either be all you need or unlock the next area to which you need to go. Each step you take in the Matrix gives off a security level warning. Have a security level of 1 IC on the square you're standing on now? Good... feel free to move about freely. But land on a 3 and it's all random. You can disarm them easily enough with the press of a button... but if your computer skill isn't high enough, you'll take damage and fail to disarm it. Worse yet, if you choose the wrong square, you take damage for trying to disarm what wasn't there. Still, if you know how to play Minesweeper, then you'll have very few problems navigating your way through the corridors of the Matrix.

As for exploration, well, it's simple... if not a bit on the slow side. The only problem I have with this game is the fact that Jake Armitage himself moves so slowly. While the pacing of the game during fights seems just right, the areas in between where you're just running seem to inspire Aya Brea's slow-motion antics in Parasite Eve.

When you're searching for items to pick up, just tap that thar B Button and it brings up the all too common hand icon that points at stuff. Move it over an item and it'll say what it is in the bottom right corner of the screen... and if it DOES show up there, that means you can pick it up. Simple, easy, and most stuff seems as out of place as the low-resolution polygons against high-resolution backgrounds in Resident Evil 2. Press the B Button again and it'll give you options such as pick up or view. Great. You'll use this often to pick up currency, nuyen, from fallen foes but that's about it. And, if you learn the trigger button shortcuts, you'll find seldom touching that button.

As for the menu screens, they're all accessible through the start button. From here, you'll equip weapons and armor, choose your spell that's ready for casting at all times, examine items and view your attributes. It's a little clumsy at times but, overall, damn easy to use.

My only true complaint is that some events must be done in a certain sequence before the next area of the game is unlocked. Sure, your major goal may be to kill the Jester Ghost, but until you find stupid plot item A, Dog won't tell you where to go and you're just aimlessly wondering around until you find it on accident. You'll find yourself often going to check with Dog just to see if you accidentally triggered something to happen. Of course, if you're thorough, this isn't a problem. But be prepared to get lost in this free-roaming world.

For all you uber-new g4m3Rz out there...

Alright, so since I've covered all the bases old-school gamers were looking for, I might as well break it down for the new generation of ritalin fiends.

Plain and short, the graphics suck. The sprites in Final Fantasy for the original Nintendo were nearly as clean as these and they were palette swapped less. Though conversation portraits are fairly decent, and most seemed based off of celebrities of the time the game was made, they too suffer from too many palette swaps. It's like playing Mortal Kombat Trilogy all over again.

It also doesn't help that Data East tried to push too much out of the SNES. Slowdown does happen often, especially if you've got some shadowrunners tagging along with you. There's just a lot of action going on when 3 samurai with uzis and swords, 1 mage with heightened reflexes, a pistol and powerballs, Jake and his gang and some plate armor spells and the little machine that could finds itself huffing and puffing the whole way. Surprisingly, though, this DOES NOT take away from the fun one bit.

The music, too, suffers from the fact that there are just too few tracks to go around. Sure, they do well to set the pace and the gritty feel of the cyberpunk Seattle, but they're also used, re-used and used again.

Sadly, the effects of the storage media show. In an attempt to save money, what was at least a 12 MB, though possibly 16 or higher MB project got crammed into the small confines of an 8 MB cartridge.

In the End

Is Shadowrun worth a play?

Yes.

Don't doubt me, don't think again about how you might not like this game. Just play it. Because too few people did and, though I may be the world's biggest backer of this game now, I didn't like it the first few times I played it. Once you get past the initial stages of the game, you'll be amazed at how deep the game is, even though it is amazingly short.

Let's get this straight right now... this game is able to be finished in one sitting. Of course, Thanksgiving dinner is also able to be finished if you've got enough time and if you want it bad enough. I'd say for the average gamer, it'll take around 20 hours of gametime to run through the first time and once it's over, it's over.

Of course, I still find myself running through this game every once in a while, just as I tend to do with Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse every few months.

Ask anyone who's played the Super Nintendo Shadowrun and you'll see a faint glimmer in their eyes of fond memories scouring the grim reality of the desolate future after the Day of Lavos or whatever.

I've yet to find a gamer with intelligence who could pass on this game. Forget the I.Q. tests... give this game a chance and you'll see just how smart you really are, jerky.

Recommended: Yes