Shadowrun

Now that the Halo3 beta is over, I had been trying to find a game to pass the time. While I have enjoyed games such as Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas, the online component is still different from Halo in that most of the game types involve one life with lots of watching the rest of your team.

On the plus side the Rainbow Six Vegas Black map pack is now available for download at no cost, wahoo. It might be enough to rekindle my interest in the online play except for the fact that I now own Shadowrun.

At first I was skeptical about Shadowrun. Elves, magic, and a first person shooter? On a whim I decided to give it a try and it turns out to be very well balanced, fun, tense and entertaining. The only problem is the lack of a campaign and playing in bot mode is hardly as fun as playing online. Xbox live is definitely required to get the most out of this game.

What has impressed me about this game is that powers, races, and weaponry are very well balanced. Each race has its pros and cons and it allows for exploration to develop your own fighting style.

Unfortunately there is no split screen multiplayer so if any of you want to get online with a friend, its a no go. Next the server/connection issues have improved but the game still aburptly stops if the host leaves the game. Considering the makers of Halo helped to make this game you would think that they would be able to switch hosting responsibilities to someone else in the game. Instead the game ends and usually all of the reamining players are able to restart the game but sometimes you just end up with a screen telling you connection is lost and a new game must be started from the menu. Hopefully that will be fixed in the next update, I can only hope.