Love the teleporting, the Tree of Life, the glider, etc., but the firefights felt slippery as hell; none of the guns ever were remotely accurate. I know that was intentional, to force the player to use the magic and tech, but still. The primary and secondary foci in Shadowrun are totally reversed. Should have designed the game around the weapons first, using Gears of War or Halo 3 weapon power levels (or even CS:S). Then developed the magic and tech.

That way, if you want to only use guns, you won’t be at a huge disadvantage. And if the weapons were balanced–rather didn’t suck horribly–then you could conceivably go up against a Tree of Lifer/Teleport build and wreck them without the mega-damage you’d receive presently.

With three main categories for magic and tech (Offense, Defense, Mobility), there’s a lot of room for those abilities to augment the combat rather than dominate it. And there’s no doubt in my mind that with the proper balancing and fine-tuning, either Shadowrun or its sequel could blow most console FPS away.

Just right now…it’s a bizarre uber-stress on magic and tech with next-to-nothing in what makes a FPS: the shooting.

…maybe I should start looking into a career as a play/balance tester…

I guess Shadowrun isn’t the only game that has worked hard to force FPS gamers to re-evaluate strategies. I think this’ll make the game more accessible to new players: when in doubt, just start shooting and hope that your opponents aren’t hiding behind concrete.

However, unlike Shadowrun, COD4 will have a story line and good graphics!