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I played Shadowrun at E3. This is despite the fact that the opinions regarding the game universally regarded it as horrible - I simply had to see it for myself.

When I first sat down to play the poor man who had been guiding demos all day long asked me if I was familiar with Shadowrun. I replied honestly - I have played the game for almost ten years and am very familiar with much of the background material, both in English and German. The nervous reply I got was "Well, this takes place before that." Before what? Before I knew what Shadowrun was? Before anyone had any concept of the richly detailed fantasy cyberpunk setting that we all have come to know and love? I know that the poor guy at the Games for Windows booth had seen people like me before and had his fair share of disappointed attendees so I politely played the game and left.

It's not Shadowrun. FASA Studios has taken a license that has been sitting around since they canned Shadowrun: Assassin four or five years ago and gave some programmers a six month deadline to churn out a title for Windows Vista and the 360. Shadowrun deserves better than that. What they've done is tantamount to taking the Lord of the Rings - the movies, books - everything that makes the whole Lord of the Rings package great - and using their license to create a Barman of Bree dress-up game.

I don't like to piss on people's parade without justification, but the more I think about it the more justified I think I am. I have been to Gencon three times now; my fourth will be this year. I've talked to the artists and writers that make Shadowrun and make it everything that it is. I talk to the fans who put a lot of their time into bringing the system to life in their games. I talk to people who pour so much of themselves into this setting and I become angry. These people deserve better than that. Their works deserve better than some shitty FPS counterstrike ripoff with a few "special abilities" thrown in.

FASA Studios has made a shitty game, plain and simple. It's obvious that they wanted to use a license that has been languishing since the incredible Sega Genesis version of Shadowrun. It's also obvious that they didn't want to spend a great deal of time, money or thought on it else they'd come up with something other than a thinly veiled ripoff of one of the most clichéd and imitated games the PC world. Horrible games are going to be made on licensed properties there is no way around it. It is a fact of life and of video gaming that companies are going to rush games out to capitalize in the short term on well known properties like The Da Vinci Code and E.T.

FASA Studios is spitting in the face of everyone who has worked to make Shadowrun everything that it is. Hundreds of artists and writers, tens of thousands of players and GMs, hundreds of thousands of man hours of work are being insulted, denigrated and degraded. The game doesn't even use Shadowrun concepts and ideas - just that technology and magic exist together. It would be one thing if there were unique gameplay, if they had done something interesting or new but everything about what I played and saw just screams rush job at me.

The worst part about is that we may never see a good Shadowrun video game again. FASA Studio's ill conceived abortion will be a dismal failure and the license will be written off as worthless and not worth the risk. I feel sorry for the guy at the Games for Windows E3 booth. Having to sit back and shill a shitty product that is poorly received by almost everyone visiting it isn't an easy job – it's up there with the guy on the street corner thrusting surveys at people.

I will end this rant on a high note. There is still hope. Maybe, just maybe, after this game devalues the Shadowrun license to the point that it's not worth keeping they'll sell the license to someone who can do something that we can all be proud and make all of this seem like a horrible nightmare.

If you want to know more about Shadowrun visit the Shadowrun RPG home page. The tabletop game is currently published by Fanpro and the Fourth Edition was published last August at Gencon There are also tons of third party web pages out there like DumpShock, a huge network of pages dedicated to all things Shadowrun. There are two excellent video games on the property for the Sega Genesis and SNES that I can highly recommend. Till next time, ABBACAB.