Shadowrun (Genesis)

Shadowrun:  It’s like D&D with guns in the future with evil corporations and the Lawnmower Man in a 16 bit package.

Joshua’s life stops to a halt when he gets word that his brother is dead. A shadowrun went bad. Bad is an understatement since it got reported in national news from the cybereyes of one of his dead partners. He flies to Seattle to a coffin motel where his only clues come from a shady manager holding his brother’s gear for a price. After doing jobs for equally shady Mr. Johnsons (middle men of corporations that hire out highly illegal work of varying degrees) he gets enough cash to get the gear and sort out what the hell went wrong. Three of his contacts come up from the holopix in his possession. Three people are the clues that Joshua needs to settle the bill.

 


"I stepped into to the wrong neighborhood? Fuck you. Look whose bleeding in the streets when my machine gun did the talking."

Trolls, guns, cybernetics, virtual reality, dragons, and corporate runs; Shadowrun takes the ball of cyberpunk and keeps running past the end zone. It’s fucking banana’s in a mirror shades sort of way. You are placed in the role of Joshua, a potential “Shadowrunner” that takes on the dirty work corporations and at the start, got to pick between pumping your body with cybernetics, slinging spells, or hacking the Matrix for creds. Starting off you did odd jobs like escorts or killing ghouls for cash, but if you were smart, hacking for data nodes paid off nice. Honestly, it took me forever to tackle on the main story since I was busy grinding for better jobs and better gear. At the end, my character was built like the fucking Terminater and hitting corporate police at their own building was fucking sweet. Actually, I guess I did recreate that scene in Terminator. All the bodies made the game slow down. Fuck you Lone Star.


Lightning bolts are the lockpicks of the digital world.

Shadowrun Returns, Dragonfall, and Hong Kong all are great and worth play throughs, but are too story driven and linear compared to what the Genesis offered. Sometimes I just enjoy the grind of murdering hellhounds for that sweet Fairlight Excaliber.