Recent reviews by Valn

Good game, good DLC. The stealth is fun, the combat when you screw up the stealth is fun, the art style is fitting, well executed, and original, the world building is almost at the level of good fantasy novels, exploring said world is completely optional with books, but enough about it is brought up that you get an impression that it's immense and meaningful. It's a good game, and unlike a lot of other new and promising franchises it hasn't been murdered yet by cash grab attempts and the like.

It seized the golden crown of the stealth game genre when it was released, and no thief installment has been able to retake it yet.

While it's largely fantastic, I'd say it has two small problems that need to be taken into consideration before purchasing it. The moral choice system is actually well implemented and discrete, but it only cares if you kill people or knock them out. Essentially, if you want the best ending you have to go mostly non-lethal, which makes the good gameplay rather moot as you'll have to confide yourself to a small section - the non-lethal section - for the majority of the game. The other small issue is that the maps - while offering several routes and a lot of chioces - feel a tad small with how mobile you are.

Since this is a stealth game people are going to compare it to what it does and doesn't do that thief did, and I'd like to say that such practices are futile. An apt analogy is that doing so is like comparing spanish and california oranges. Yes, they're both oranges, but if you're really into oranges then you can easily tell the difference. In addition, if you've never had spanish oranges, then there's not much of a point comparing them. It's good, and it's a good spiritual successor to thief, but it isn't a direct descendent, although many - including myself - kind of wish it was. Now go spend money on it.

If you're into the shadowrun universe and played the tabletop/SNES game then you'll mostly enjoy this. It's good, but like the SNES game it's different than the tabletop, which is to be expected since they're different mediums of entertainment. The mechanics are mostly solid, but your experience can be largely determend by which build you decide to start with. If you choose shaman your going to feel useless as all hell; largely the same with decker. They try to make those too more rewarding by giving special dialogue options based on charisma, biotech knolwedge, and intellect, but they're few and far between with combat being the larger focus. Speaking of combat, it's almost as brutal as it is in the tabletop's, but only for enemies. You'll find that you and your teamates are super beefy. I played a mage and with decent positioning and my heal spell I largely never dipped below half HP with crappy body and strength. So, in that sense it's a bit easy. However, it tries to compensate for this by screwing with your dice on hit chances. I can't conferm this, but the only decernable differences between the difficulty settings seemed to be the HP of enemies, how much damage they dealt, and how much the game blatantly lies to you about hit chance. I'm not kidding, I've had people standing point blank with a shotgun miss three 95% chance to hits more than once. I might just be paranoid, it might just be bad programming, but that sort of thing defeintly seems to happen more than it should on the harder difficulties. Anyway, the story is pretty "pink mohawk" as is to be expected from a Shadowrun game, but the writing and character dialogue is actually fairly above average. Despite it's downsides and such it's still pretty good. Everything about the combat other than what I mentioned is either fine or good, and there are a lot of other dialogue options and some cool things you can do out of combat to make your life easier. There's also a fair bit of level exploration, and it functions a bit like an isometric point and click adventure game when you're not bashing skulls.

Yeah, that's about it.

Everyone knows about SR and what it is. I don't intend to simply reiterate knowledge that virtually everyone has about this game. Instead, I'd like to talk about what this game is like after you've finish the campaign. Now, most people stop playing sandboxes a little while after they beat the campaign and fart around for an hour or so. If you're like me, though, and you have a nasty habit of sinking a few dozen extra hours into titles that don't every techincally end, then you probably give a crap - like me - about what they're like in the "end game." Simply put, you can do everything in SR4 that you can in SR3 plus the super powers. This is good, and it's also bad. It also cheapens everything else a bit. You don't HAVE to use the super powers, but why wouldn't you instead of driving around having armed shootouts with the police on a crotch rocket. You'd think the latter was cool enough to justify doing regardless of whether or not you had the super powers, but the fact that there's no consequence to losing your bike, missing all of your shots, etc. makes the whole experience feel fabricated. Ultimately, it feels less fufilling to pull off a motorcycle jump onto a roof top that you'd've had to call a helicopter to reach when you can literally just walk up the side of it. The super powers are nice, but if you want to fool around with stuff that isn't related to them - which some would argue is the majority of the game - you might want to go play SR3 instead. Buy it for the campaigne and new mechanics, but don't think of it as just SR3 plus superpowers.

*Read as an annoying pitch salesman*

Hey, you. Yeah, you. Do you enjoy being commited to playing a single match of a video game for more than 40 minutes. How about learning new languages from nice people all over the world. What about devoteing way to much time to understanding the mehcanics of a game only to learn that, in reality, all you need to know is how to click on objects with the right side of your mouse. And, of course, who could forget the general moments of stupidity that leave you feeling like a worthless sack of ♥♥♥♥ for the rest of the day - meandering about your existance like a snake on crack because you missed a stun. WELL THEN, do I have a game for you: specifically, this one.

Become fluent in languages such as Russian, Bastardised Portugues, Espaniol, French, Slavick, French, Java Script, C++, French, and - of course - English Text Speek.

Learn new and exiting facts about your hidden emotions. Such as whether or not you secretly hate all of humanity and wish everyone would die in a horrendous nuclear war - regardless of the fact that you'd be the only survivor; left alone to wander the world with your trusty six-shooter and faithful canine companion, Spot, in search of food whilst fending off your former friends and family - who have been turned into radioactive space zombies - by landing well-placed headshots into their fomerly functional frontal lobes. (Yes that was only two sentences, get over yourself).

Memorise dictionaries worth of facts about the differences between killing someone with a sharp stick, killing someone with magic, or - better yet - killing someone by magically removing their hit-points, but for some reason it doesn't actually count as magic and instead operates on an entirely different prinicpal that ignores everything magic is restrained by. MAGICALLY.

Learn more about turn-rates and attack animations than you learned about cellular sctuture in your freshmen biology class - IN COLLEGE.

Enjoy the company of the most upstanding teenaged inhabitants of the world, while simultaneously learning more about global cultures and their social expectations. Engage in philosophical debates about life's greatest quandries with said individuals - such as the inherent meaning of the word, "back" to different cognisent persons.


Now, I know what your asking yourself right now: oh wise and omnipotent Mike, how much money must I put forth into the great pocket of our lord - and savior - Gaben that I might come to own a copie of such a life changing, personification of perfection. Well, now that I've subjectified your view of this game to the point were you cannot resist the wonders that await you, I suppose I should mention that it's FREE. That's right, you didn't suddenly become blind and imagine that you read that particular word. The game is FREE, and you can get what can only be described as "the most life-changing game in existance" for absolutely no money.*

Now, what are you waiting for - you consumer of fine goods and exquisit man of taste - go and download it. I guarantee you won't regert it, probably.


*While the product costs no material goods it does, however, have the cost of exactly one human soul - yours, specifically.