Video Games Suck - Shadowrun Returns

I never played the one first but all I do remember of Shadowrun is that fucking awful first person shooter that came out in 2007. That game was a pile of fucking dogshit. Well apparently, the people who originally made Shadowrun had nothing to do with it, then they made this kickstarter to make a new RPG. So they made this RPG for a mere 1.8 million dollars which is fucking nothing but this game is alright. Its fairly cheap and fun to play but lacks some of the depth that I am sure most people were expecting. Anyways, read more so I can explain this shit in more detail.

So there are two major things about the game that I like and its the graphics and the music. The graphics uses a mix of 2D Backgrounds with 3D models over the top of it and the backgrounds look fucking awesome. Shadowrun is apparently some mix of cyberpunk and magical worlds that are shoved on top of each other. The look of the city is awesome with giant neon signs, corporate offices and run down slums that you can traverse through. The 3D models for the most part look OK, but the animations are pretty limited to a handful of things. The graphics are also much less interesting when you go into the cyberworld, but other than that they are pretty cool. The music is also extremely well done and has been the first time in a long time that Ive actually given a shit about the music. It is very atmospheric for the game and electronic sounding.

The gameplay is turn based and consists of you and your teammates blasting the shit out of other assholes that take their turns as well. Overall, the game isn't that difficult combat wise as you simply either shoot an enemy, move, reload, or use an item/spell during each of your turns. I dont know what the fuck the point of melee in this game is as it sucks fucking ass. Anyone with a gun will blow the shit out of any melee character because they do fucking shitty damage and miss all the time. At one point, you get forced to be with some melee clown and he FUCKING BLOWS. The other half of the gameplay is basically dialog which is kind of disappointing. All of the dialog leads to the same fucking outcome so I dont even know why you get a choice of what you would like to say. Sometimes you can use a character trait or stat in the dialog but it doesn't seem to make any fucking difference. Also, lock picking is a useless skill as you can only use it like 3 times in the game. It feels like the developers didnt have time to fully flesh out the dialog system, and while the writing is decent, when it all leads to characters saying the same exact fucking thing, whats the point then? Just have a linear dialog session instead of giving some illusion of choice.

While the combat is fairly pleasing as well, although not overly difficult, the game follows the design pattern that I fucking hate where combat/dialog and separated into two things instead of seamlessly transitioning. For example, you will walk around the city and be in the dialog portion but then when you enter a building, ITS COMBAT TIME, no more dialog to interact with any characters. I'm overblowing it a little bit because Metro Last Light is the worst fucking offender at this. Overall though, taking turns blasting enemies feels satisfying and when they finally die it feels good as well. The level up system is fairly straight forward, you get Karma points at certain points in the game and then allocate them in whatever the fuck you want be it guns, hacking, magic, stats, etc. Nothing new or special here other than you can make your character however you like.

The game takes place in Seattle, and a free Berlin campaign coming later, which is decent considering I only paid 13 bucks for the game. The Seattle campaign isn't anything special story wise and is about 10-12 hours long. You basically just find out some asshole you knew got shot in the fucking face, and you go out and investigate it. Turns out it was his sister who joined some stupid church brotherhood thing. Spoiled it fuckface, go kill yourself.

This game has TWO extremely annoying elements that pissed me the fuck off. First is the god awful save system, who the FUCK does checkpoint only saves? They are annoying as shit, and if you lose a battle or have to leave, GUESS WHAT SHIT HEAD? You get to do the whole fucking section of a game over again. Knock this shit off and implement a NORMAL save system. Secondary, the end sequence where you have to kill all these resurrecting bugs are fucking annoying. You have to kill these bugs who then turn into some celestial form and you have to kill them specifically with a TWO shot weapon before needing a reload. The dumbest part of this bullshit is that you only get ONE round to do it again, otherwise you have to kill the bug again. Who the fuck thought this was a good idea? You will be stuck fighting stupid resurrecting bugs. Anyways, overall the game is pretty fun, cheap albeit a bit shallow with an annoying save system.

7/10