I was always intrigued by the table top version of Shadowrun as a kid but never got a chance to play it. This seemed like a great opportunity to delve into that world without the need for friends or the ability and patience to understand a whole bunch of rules. It looks ok and there’s lots Lore which I guess is to be expected with a game with this heritage but it’s really let down by the very linear game play, you’ve got this cool world you want to explore but you can’t. The mechanics of the game are also really dull, I’m by no means an aficionado of the genre having only played the new X-Com and Dead West which are comparable but both those games beat this one hands down for game play. There doesn’t seem to be enough depth to the game to have any particular combat tactics but fortunately the game is so easy it doesn’t matter so the whole experience is just a chore. I only played on the default medium difficulty, maybe if you made it harder then there’d be need for more tactics and you’d discover a game mechanic I totally missed but I found no way of varying the combat at all, just shoot things more than they shoot you, win. Overall a very disappointing experience for something which for me had so much childhood wonder.
This game looks pretty good and manages to do that rare thing of making 3D work for a point n click, the voice acting is o.k. even some of the puzzles aren't bad but alas for me it was still a total miss. My problem is the story... is there a story... I don't know... the collection of seemingly random loosely connected events. It felt like the game was made backwards, they made a point n click engine which is genuinely good then had to come up with a game to fit in to it. It seems to grab bits and pieces of other fantasy stories and characters and shoe horn them together to create a collection of puzzles. These puzzles sometimes are quite good but the story is so bad you just don't care. I chugged all the way through this one as I did want to like it as it felt like a lot of effort had gone in but it was a grind and I was glad when it was over. Probably more like a 2.5 star game.
This game is good but by Wadjet's own high standards it's not the best. The main issue for me was the story. It starts off interestingly enough and does have elements of social commentary, who is really bad and good or is it all just shades of grey, but as it goes on the story starts to get pretty far fetched even for its own fantasy setting and at the end you're forced to make a choice which has quite unexpected outcomes and the "good" choice really didn't feel all that good but of the multiple endings it was about as good as it got. That said it's still a great game and well worth playing hence the 4 star rating.
This game should be great and nearly is but its flaws are so glaring I could not recommend it. So the positives, it does really re-create the feel of the original Star Trek series, it’s split into episodes and each episode could be a TV episode. The writing is good and the production values for the most part are very high, all the lines of the main characters are voiced by the original cast not just the cut scenes or main speeches, everything. The dynamic of the game is great, it does a surprisingly good job of putting you in the captain’s seat, Spock scan this, Chekov raise shields etc. it also has a points system so there may be many ways through but did you do it as Shatner would’ve wanted?!? So what’s the problem? It’s the controls, the controls are just hideous there are sort of modes you get set in, look, pickup, you interact, Spock interact, Mc Coy interact, Ensign Ricky interact, use item etc. Changing in between these modes requires a lot of clicking and working out or remembering some modes exist is a challenge in itself. I had to google how to combine items, I’d assumed for most of the game it was impossible but then there were 2 items that just had to go together but I couldn’t figure out how. Part of the problem is despite high production values in most places for a lot of “bad” interactions there’s no feedback, not even an on-screen message “these don’t go together” or “you can’t do that” so you don’t really know if it’s not worked or if you didn’t quite click in the right place. Quite often the later is the case, I’m sure at some points I tried the same thing several times then on the 10th time of trying it magically worked… but why? This made the game not only incredibly frustrating and long winded to play but also difficult, but not in a good what a cool puzzle I’m so smart for working it out kind of way. So am I glad I played it… yes I guess so, I will certainly talk to my friends about it. Would I recommend any of them play it… no.
