After a successful crowd-funding campaign and subsequent confusion about its name, shape and form, Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown – formerly Shadowrun Online – is at last ready to be judged solely on its merits. The first chapter of an always-online turn-based strategy title that supports one to four-player co-op teams, Shadowrun Chronicles carries the weight of expectation of both franchise fans and of wider genre aficionados alike.
Unfortunately, our early experience with Shadowrun was plagued by technical gripes commonly associated with an Early Access title and again, once it was released into the wild, with strained servers. Still, by the time you read this it should have shrugged off its early technical hiccups, so the question is whether what lies beneath is a truly compelling turn-based title and if it fulfils its at-a-glance potential as a tantalising mix of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, cyberpunk sensibilities and fantasy elements.
The simple answer is no, it doesn’t, and while it has one or two interesting ideas of its own, it can only disappoint those who come to it hoping to find something of the quality, depth and polish exhibited by Firaxis’ title. Nonetheless, the basic nuts and bolts are broadly similar to XCOM, so those that have invested time there will feel at home, with a familiar split of a non-combat hub area and combat-orientated missions out in the field.
A garishly-lit, grimy back alley serves as your home stomping ground and offers a place to manage character progression and gear load-outs, as well as pick-up missions from a shady but genial troll. Here, player interaction is limited to text-chat and so a steady stream of game requests soon fill-up the always-on chat window.
While you’re here, though, there are a dozen skill trees through which to distribute Karma points and vendors from whom to purchase gear, weapons and armour. The nature of your progression and arsenal largely depends on your preferred play-style, but will be determined in part by an initial choice of character from one of five fantasy racial archetypes, along with a selection of backgrounds that determine any stat bonuses and penalties.
Whether you favour the brute force approach of a shotgun combined with doling out blunt force trauma with a modified 2×4 or prefer pistol-play, automatic firearms or bladed weapons, there are a host of skills and equipment to support your choices. Those looking for something a little more in keeping with the fantasy sci-fi aesthetic are well-served by exotic options of tech-weapons, drone deployment, spell-slinging and summoning rituals. What Shadowrun does not do is take the time early on to impress upon you the importance of specialisation to long-term success. Regardless of initial character choices, you begin with an inventory stocked with one of each type of weapon or tool, which suggests a freeform approach to experimentation.
With only enough Karma points to make inroads into a few of the dozen skill trees, and some upgrade choices excluding others, it greatly benefits you to take time to pore over those initial choices and focus on two to form your primary and secondary combat options. There’s a degree of flexibility in the underlying system, with a host of passive skills available to bolster your more pro-active skills, but the game does a poor job of equipping you with the knowledge to make informed choices.
You’ll soon discover how effective your character choices are as you embark on Shadowrun’s missions. For the first few hours, you’re funnelled down a linear story path that is by turns both quirky and dull. These runs consist of buddying-up with between one and three other team members that can be made-up of real people or a selection of stock computer buddies.
Once on a run, the individual skills and traits that you’ve either taken time to explore or blindly chosen can be employed against a host of basic AI stooges using a two-action turn system. Most of the attacks lack any sense of connection or flair and while there’s also the ability to interact with a number of environmental features, allowing appropriately equipped players to pick locks or harvest organs for loot, none of the equipment you gather is particularly well-realised or exciting.
Shadowrun’s identity is very much informed by its previous moniker of Shawdowrun Online. It’s not just that co-op play is more rewarding than solo-play, but that playing alone actually becomes unsatisfying and frustrating. The computer sidekicks begin to feel deliberately nerfed, pushing you to seek out other players to succeed in later missions. Meanwhile, the upgrade system requires a certain degree of grind and replaying missions with other people in order to earn enough Karma points to properly explore the skill trees.
These frustrations make it particularly difficult to recommend Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown to solo-players, especially over its previous incarnation, Shadowrun Return’s Dragonfall. Playing with others addresses some of the issues, but it’s only with a group of friends with characters tailored to complement one another, that you begin to derive any of fun from it. Longer term developer support may iron out many of its issues, but as it stands Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown boasts little to enthral any but the most diehard of fans.
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