Malf on 2/8/2013 at 11:00
You know what would really rock?
A campaign based on the Queensrÿche concept album "Operation Mindcrime".
Stick with me people...
The original Shadowrun rulebook had shedloads of Queensrÿche Mindcrime era logos hidden in the artwork; the album was obviously a massive influence on the people who put together that book, and even better, the band are Seattle natives.
Of course, the music of the band steadily went downhill after the original Mindcrime, but it doesn't take away from the fact that it'd make one helluva campaign; Sister Mary, Dr. X, conspiracies, drug addiction, oh my.
Angel Dust on 2/8/2013 at 11:14
Played 2 hours of it so far and I'm quite happy with it. I have no experience at all with the Shadowrun world and games but I was immediately drawn into the world and its denizens. The writing is very good, striking a good balance between enjoyably cheesy hacker slang and solid character work. I was amazed that, despite having only met him 10 minutes before, I got a little emotional at Sam dying. I wasn't crying or anything but I felt something and I'm now appropriately motivated to find out who/what killed him.
icemann on 6/8/2013 at 11:22
User made maps list updated.
EvaUnit02 on 6/8/2013 at 22:10
(
http://www.shadowrunidentity.org/)
These guys are working to port over every pen & paper campaign to SR:R as UGC. Best of luck to them and their grand ambitions.
Avalon on 11/8/2013 at 14:22
I just finished Shadowrun Returns and I'm pretty underwhelmed. I'm guessing, like many Kickstarter projects these days, that the majority of the Kickstarter money ended up going towards paying for the things offered in exchange for donating to their Kickstarter campaign. Vicious cycle. On the other hand, unlike many kickstarter projects, they didn't offer a whole ton of physical goods, so maybe they just sucked at managing money. Or spent it all on booze and hookers.
I have to admit that I've never followed the pen and paper Shadowrun shenanigans so all my knowledge of the series comes strictly from the various video game releases, but this one strikes me very firmly as "developed by people who write really bad novels but have never made, and possibly never played, and possibly have no interest in, video games." There's all but nothing to interact with in the world and the gameplay mostly centers around fiddling with over-the-top rambling prose and conversations (I feel bad about ragging on a game so hard when I loved its predecessors, but I also want to throw out there that the story is really, really simple and extremely uninspired). Shadowrun Returns wouldn't have suffered much if it were made a text adventure instead.
That said, I think they were banking on the editor being the saving grace of the release. Hell, it gets more screen time in the description of Shadowrun than the game does. The engine has all of the elements and capabilities there to make a really awesomely fun RPG, so the fans or future DLC will have no problem doing that - but the base game did absolutely nothing to sell that point.
icemann on 12/8/2013 at 06:53
Can tell you, having been working in the editor for the last few weeks that much of what annoyed you about the game was design (on HBS's end) based and not things that weren't do-able in the editor.
Free roaming and random encounters, both of which featured MAJORLY in the earlier SNES and Genesis games is very much do-able and quite simple to implement. I have both of those in the work I've been doing for example.
Not being able to save anywhere (which there is a mod out now which fixes this sort of), and not being able to use custom music + custom sound effects in user made modules are the remaining things pissing people off at present.
I would HIGHLY recommend that you spend some time playing the user made stuff as there is an absolute STACK of content out already for the game. Not all of it is complete, but from it you'll see the directions the game can be taken + introduce yourself to whole new levels of fun with the game.
icemann on 16/8/2013 at 16:14
Alpha version of Old Habits Die Hard: Episode 2 - Ghost in The Machine now up. I'll be updating this daily as I add content to it.
N'Al on 9/9/2013 at 07:56
Finally finished the Dead Man's Switch campaign yesterday.
I had given the game a break about 3-4 screens before the end, simply because the game's saving system had really made itself felt at that time, i.e. I had cocked up a few things so I was forced to load an earlier save, and because of the checkpoint save system I had to replay much more than I was willing to at the time. Result: ragequit.
And it's not like I'm not used to checkpoints; I play console games all the time. It's just here they really got on my nerves.
Also, I got fed up with the game's enemies at the end (the bugs). Honestly, enemies that fully revive unless you manage to take them down in just 1 turn, that's just a bit of a dick move. Yeah, it added some tension, but it got a tad annoying after a while.
Having said all that, I did like the game.
The atmosphere was pretty damn good (can't say whether it accurately reflects the P&P game, since I only played that once a long time ago), the story was quite good imo, and exceptionally well told. I also liked the underlying RPG system (again, no idea how it compares to the P&P version); I can see how that would allow for very varied character builds.
Shame the campaign itself didn't really allow for many different approaches, but I'm hoping they expand on that in the Berlin campaign. Looking forward to that.
icemann on 9/9/2013 at 12:28
Much of the lack of approaches side of things came down to was design. The capabilities are there for it to have been there but it wasn't put in. It's easy enough to do in the editor, just takes time.
Hoping that the Berlin DLC improves on things and adds more of the skills used in the P&P game + provides for a more open world experience. We shouldn't have to play to fan made stuff just to see the game at it's fullest potential.
