I’ve been keeping pretty close tabs on the news coming out of this year’s CES, and tonight I stumbled across a description of some hands-on time that Kotaku’s Michael McWhertor spent with both the 360 and Vista versions of the upcoming Live Anywhere tech demo title Shadowrun. The impressions posted were surprisingly positive, which is nice, but the fact is that it doesn’t matter: The title is still overwhelmingly pre-destined to suck.

The core issue really has very little to do with the quality of the gameplay delivered. If there’s one universal thing about nerds that you need to take to heart, it’s that we’re incredibly anal about a consistent story experience. What other demographic could produce people who will complain bitterly about the canonical standing of the multiplayer portion of a Star Wars video game? To that end, we’re also susceptible to being particular about the ways in which a particular franchise is used commercially. Even the most devoted Sam Fisher fan has no interest in a Splinter Cell kart racer, and similarly I doubt that anyone out there is holding their breath for a Lord of the Rings themed football title. The possible exception to this rule would be the wide variety of entertaining Mario titles, but Mario ceased being solely about platformers a long time ago. Regardless, of all of the different ways to think about and interact with the Shadowrun IP, in my mind a Counter-Strike styled FPS ranks just slightly below Shadowrunner’s Intramural Soccer League in terms of legitimacy. I suspect I’m not alone in this.

A new Shadowrun game is not only great, it’s encouraged. But don’t play us for dumb: When you’re resurrecting a respected IP simply to allow your strange, unrelated ideas to wear it like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, we can see though it. And we don’t like it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 4:23 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.