That's a fair point, but the quality of Mass Effect 1 was leagues higher than Shadowrun Returns could hope to be. You weren't just paying for a longer game. You were paying for a showcase title.ME1 was a $60 game.
Shadowrun Returns is a $20 game$/hour, it's the exact same return for your money by your calculation.
Depends on how you're measuring quality. If "quality" is limited to graphics quality for you, then yes.
Depends on how you're measuring quality. If "quality" is limited to graphics quality for you, then yes.That's a fair point, but the quality of Mass Effect 1 was leagues higher than Shadowrun Returns could hope to be. You weren't just paying for a longer game. You were paying for a showcase title.ME1 was a $60 game.
Shadowrun Returns is a $20 game$/hour, it's the exact same return for your money by your calculation.
Again, there are many more categories than just graphics that one might measure quality by in which large-budget titles have a demonstrable advantage over small-budget titles.
Be careful not to reduce my argument to something as naive as, "More graphics is more better." That's not what I'm saying, at all.
It's a sweet game! I've been playing for a few hours and loving it!
Depends on how you're measuring quality. If "quality" is limited to graphics quality for you, then yes.That's a fair point, but the quality of Mass Effect 1 was leagues higher than Shadowrun Returns could hope to be. You weren't just paying for a longer game. You were paying for a showcase title.ME1 was a $60 game.
Shadowrun Returns is a $20 game$/hour, it's the exact same return for your money by your calculation.
Again, there are many more categories than just graphics that one might measure quality by in which large-budget titles have a demonstrable advantage over small-budget titles.
Be careful not to reduce my argument to something as naive as, "More graphics is more better." That's not what I'm saying, at all.
Your other arguments weren't terribly convincing to me. I was able to get voice actors that were just as good when I was working for a startup as when I was working for Microsoft (save, of course, when MS used actual movie stars, but they don't for most games). The main difference was we recorded them here in Seattle rather than in LA.
I'm not sure what you mean by "interpersonal interaction." It's not generally a phrase we see in design documents. If you're talking about character interaction, the quality isn't really determined by anything as simple as budget. It mostly comes down to how interactive the dialogue is, and the skill of the writer(s) at working within whatever the structure is. The ability to program and record massive sets of branching dialogue (which, let's be honest, doesn't branch so much as undulate even when the budget is massive) doesn't equate to satisfying or emotionally resonant dialogue. I found my interactions with Elizabeth in Bioshock: Infinite far more emotionally affecting than my interactions with anyone in Skyrim, despite having far fewer options. And I loved Skyrim, don't get me wrong.
Bottom line, the main qualitative difference between a game produced by a big company and a game produced by a small company, especially with the availability and affordability of graphics engines these days, will generally boil down to scope.
There is, as with most things in production, an economy of scale. A large game company can generally produce more quality content for less than a small company.
Beyond that, quality's a crapshoot regardless of the size of the developer. Large companies regularly put out crappy games alongside great ones.
My major issue so far is the UI. It feels fairly obvious that they didn't have a lot of time and didn't really think some things through.
Like, you can buy something, but if you don't immediately equip it, it is magically transported to your stash, where you have to go get it.
Also, there's no options for custom characters to have something other than pistol and shotgun. If you make a custom character and put all your points in Willpower and spellcasting, all you get is a pistol and shotgun, no spells. Make a phys adept? No powers. Etc, etc. Basically, if you make your own character, you don't get as much starting stuff as when you grab a premade class, which is too bad.
The look and feel of the game are great. Combat is entertaining, while relatively simple. The dialogue and language is good and it's definitely steeped in shadowrun lore. Basic concepts that have survived multiple editions of the PnP game are all here as far as I can tell.
It does feel like a longer testing period would have resulted in a little more refinement.
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That's not too bad. Short for a big RPG (the last AAA RPG I completed in 12 hours was MASS EFFECT 1, and felt a bit shortchanged for that), but respectable by the standards of any FPS, for example.It makes me really sad for the video game industry that 12 hours of gameplay is considered respectable these days.
It makes me feel really sad for humanity that 12 hours of entertainment for $20 is considered short.
You pay that much to see a movie.
I bought the game last night and played for only about an hour, but I wasn't hugely impressed. The character creation was very lackluster, especially compared to the PnP version. You basically get to choose how you kill stuff, and maybe decking too. There's barely any hint of social skills, no lockpicking or forgery, no infiltration skills, no driving, no athletic skills, etc.
I bought the game last night played about 1.5 hours of it here are a few initial reactions I had.
- The turn based combat is almost exactly like XCOM (the newest one) which IMO is not a bad thing.
- The visuals are OK. I have played some indie games with worse.
- The fact that you cannot save at any time (autosave only) is annoying. especially since the autosaves are pretty far between (beginning of every scene only in the scenes I completed)
- the $20 price tag for a 12 hr campaign and a level editor didn't bother me much I expect there to be plenty of fan created material being released.
Like I said these are just my initial reactions I'm hoping that the game opens up a bit once you get into it. Sor far its pretty railroady, simply moving from scene to scene.
I bought the game last night and played for only about an hour, but I wasn't hugely impressed. The character creation was very lackluster, especially compared to the PnP version. You basically get to choose how you kill stuff, and maybe decking too. There's barely any hint of social skills, no lockpicking or forgery, no infiltration skills, no driving, no athletic skills, etc.
The social skills are covered under charisma. As you get more, you unlock more dialog options. Honestly, this is how pretty much every computer RPG I have seen has done it. They simplified it so that you can actually have a talking character that shoots stuff without being able to take the extra points they would have needed to add to make the character viable if there were more skills. I have found charisma to be very useful on my summoner in dialog options. Similarly, I think they rolled a lot of athletics into strength, but haven't played anyone with any str.
I do dislike that there is very little B&E stuff. The campaign is very linear. There tends to only be 1 path through things as far as I can tell. You get a few options in how you resolve some of the things, but actually progressing through the level is a run and gun. I would have liked something more open ended. I feel like the system is there for it, but that it just wasn't implemented.
Also, I don't get the auto-save issue. It prevents save scumming and I have never been more than 15-20 minutes away from a save 4 hours in.
I bought the game last night and played for only about an hour, but I wasn't hugely impressed. The character creation was very lackluster, especially compared to the PnP version. You basically get to choose how you kill stuff, and maybe decking too. There's barely any hint of social skills, no lockpicking or forgery, no infiltration skills, no driving, no athletic skills, etc.The social skills are covered under charisma. As you get more, you unlock more dialog options. Honestly, this is how pretty much every computer RPG I have seen has done it. They simplified it so that you can actually have a talking character that shoots stuff without being able to take the extra points they would have needed to add to make the character viable if there were more skills. I have found charisma to be very useful on my summoner in dialog options. Similarly, I think they rolled a lot of athletics into strength, but haven't played anyone with any str.
I do dislike that there is very little B&E stuff. The campaign is very linear. There tends to only be 1 path through things as far as I can tell. You get a few options in how you resolve some of the things, but actually progressing through the level is a run and gun. I would have liked something more open ended. I feel like the system is there for it, but that it just wasn't implemented.
I was hoping that I could make a character good enough at social skills that I could bypass most obstacles through diplomacy and bluffing. That's what I did the first time I played the PnP version; my first character was a social adept, with just a couple of ranks in pistols, and the hacker and I completed an entire session without having to fire a single shot.
But the social skills in Shadowrun Returns consist entirely of your Charisma score. Every other rank you put in it gives you a new "etiquette," which opens up dialog options, but if you pick the wrong etiquette, you're out of luck.
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Also, I don't get the auto-save issue. It prevents save scumming and I have never been more than 15-20 minutes away from a save 4 hours in.
Yes, limiting people's options is always a good thing!
If you want to avoid save scumming, don't do it yourself. Why would you care how other people play? Not having a manual save option is madness, and knocks a couple of points of my score for the game.
Which is a shame, cause everything else is pretty much wonderful. Really looking forward to new content coming out for it.
The game was worth every cent I paid for it. The save system is the only downside unfortunately.
Having great fun The 8th Dwarf rides again well worth $20.
Also, I don't get the auto-save issue. It prevents save scumming and I have never been more than 15-20 minutes away from a save 4 hours in.
Did it ever happen to you to have to stop playing like, ''right now''? I don't know, maybe your ride is outside, waiting, or you just received a call from your boss, asking if you can go to work to replace someone who's sick. Sometimes, you just don't have 15-20 min to save and quit a game, and losing progress in a RPG is never fun.
I am enjoying the hell out of it. It looks like there's already a playable alpha test of a complete port of the SNES game. Looks pretty impressive.
The Genesis version should be coming soon after.
The music in the Shadowrunners' hideout is great!
UPDATE: I'm only 4 hours into it, and I'm already bored. The combat is dull, unchallenging, and tedious, and there's not much else to do besides combat.
UPDATE: I'm only 4 hours into it, and I'm already bored. The combat is dull, unchallenging, and tedious, and there's not much else to do besides combat.
Are you playing on the very hard difficulty? Still, I only had to reload once yet.
UPDATE: I'm only 4 hours into it, and I'm already bored. The combat is dull, unchallenging, and tedious, and there's not much else to do besides combat.
I finished it - I enjoyed the tactical level of the combat. I loved the story... typical shadowrun :-)
I am going to down load the new content as it comes out.
I hope that can create a multi-player expansion.
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It's a decent game, but the fact that you can't go back to an area you came from, unless the story wants you to go there next, is ridiculous.
For example, heading off to a mission, realising you forgot to buy some medpacks, and being unable to just walk out the front door that's just behind you. I mean, c'mon.
Made worse by the fact that it autosaves after you enter. I have no problem with being unable to save whenever I want, except for this.
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Assistant Software Developer
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It's a decent game, but the fact that you can't go back to an area you came from, unless the story wants you to go there next, is ridiculous.
For example, heading off to a mission, realising you forgot to buy some medpacks, and being unable to just walk out the front door that's just behind you. I mean, c'mon.
Made worse by the fact that it autosaves after you enter. I have no problem with being unable to save whenever I want, except for this.
You can click on Load Game and then rewind to any point in your timeline, just FYI.
That said, beat the game, and overall I had a LOT of fun. I never did figure out how to upgrade my cybereyes and I can agree that the out of combat experience could use a bit of work. By and large, the game was tactically interesting without needing to be Napoleon to win. It was visually pitch perfect. I loved everything about the art direction. The story was pretty good though more branching and side quests could have been nice. This was not Shakespeare but was good enough to keep my interest. Jordan putting himself in the game as a ghost in a bar in Redmond was hilarious. Shotguns are the way to go. I can't wait to see what the dragon in Berlin has in store for us in the next installment.
I am finding SRR to be profoundly enjoyable.
Also, I don't get the auto-save issue. It prevents save scumming and I have never been more than 15-20 minutes away from a save 4 hours in.Yes, limiting people's options is always a good thing!
If you want to avoid save scumming, don't do it yourself. Why would you care how other people play? Not having a manual save option is madness, and knocks a couple of points of my score for the game.
Which is a shame, cause everything else is pretty much wonderful. Really looking forward to new content coming out for it.
You can't alt tab, do what ever it is you where doing, and come back to it?
Or just accept that on this occasion, the last few minutes play will just have to be re-done.
It really isn't a big deal, and honestly, I am glad they focused on getting other stuff right, rather than finding a work around for saves.
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You can't alt tab, do what ever it is you where doing, and come back to it?
I can, and I can also redo a few minutes, it just sucks that I have to. It also creates a mentality that you have to get to the next screen, which I've never found healthy. Being able to leave at my leisure creates a casual environment and is great because I tend to only have short stops at the computer myself.
Anyways, I've got it the other day. I've been having fun with it. Hopefully user generated content can really wow me later on, but probably going to have to wait some time for some real gems.
It's a very good game, but I must admit to finding that the first big Kickstarted 'old school RPG' is riddled with some of the worst and most hated limitations of modern gaming - rigidly linear progression, autosaves and streamlined-to-non-existent inventory management - to be extremely ironic.
Don't get me wrong, it is great, and the nature of the game and the campaign means the problems are nowhere near as bad as they could be in another context: the focused investigation storyline actually justifies not letting you wander off and explore the city at will or whatever. But this is the exact stuff people have been moaning about in modern AAA RPGs for the last few years.
As for saving, there is no real justification for not letting you save in a game wherever you like. If you've paid for the game and want to play the game, it's both condescending and alienating for the developer to then say, "You can only save exactly when we say so." If people want to 'save-scum' their way through the game which they have just spent their money on, why not just let them do that? If you're playing the game for an hour before going out for the day and you don't want to leave the PC on for six or twelve hours or whatever, it gets rather annoying to get to the switch-off time and realise you either have to delay leaving for half an hour to get to the next save point, or lose the last half-hour's progress. In an action game, where your character has no inventory or skill system that you might just have spent ages tweaking, or an FPS where there are save points every 5-6 minutes, it's not a problem, but in a big RPG it certainly is.
And the technical argument is pure nonsense. If massive open-world games like SKYRIM can allow you to save at will - even though it means recording the position of every single 3D object in the entire game universe every time you do - then a very linear 2D RPG without loot drops, destructible scenery or changed world states can certainly do it.
What is save scumming anyway?
NPC: Hey! Want to gamble?
PC: Yeah sure, just let me make a second save first... I bet everything!NPC: You lose everything!
PC: *loads save* I bet everything!
NPC: You lose everything!
Repeat until profit.
Anyways, its when a player creates a save(or multiple) and just keeps reloading until he gets the desired results. Some games actually expect you to do this, some work against it(tactics games in particular). Shadowrun Returns works against it, but it doesn't keep people from restarting levels(which they still do...), and it means I have to redo 10 minutes if I decide to log out in the middle of a mission.
Meh, if the people have such low self esteem that they HAVE TO WIN, who cares really?
Its single player anyway...
The developers might. You might ruin their creative vision or cheat their game. They were making it for themselves, thought you knew?
I don't agree with it either, but not much I can do about it. You see it here and there that it has something to do with the community telling the developers they don't like what other people do or the developers saying you have to do things a certain way. Portals being removed from cities in WoW so you had to see the scenery or no mounts in GW2 because they wanted you to see the world they made for instance. Not much are for the customer in either of those cases.
Apparently the Berlin episode will be a slightly different game and more sandboxy, so I can't wait to see what it looks like. At least I can hope it has a friendlier save option and gives the community more options for mods.
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If they paid money for the game, it's none of their business what a player does with it as long as he does not break copyright law. And if they didn't want them cheating, they could not implement cheats in the game.
Plus, do you think that people like that really care about the developer's creative vision?
You don't need mounts in GW2. You have waypoints. And what's wrong with seeing the scenery? Its gorgeous.
You don't need mounts in GW2. You have waypoints. And what's wrong with seeing the scenery? Its gorgeous.
Not that it has anything to do with shadowrun(though I do like the setting even though I'm new to it), there isn't anything wrong with viewing scenery. Taking away the option to skip it however is not cool. I played WoW for several years, I got tired of some of the scenery. I swear I saw the griffon fly around stormwind or bat fly into Undercity dozens of times. I didn't want to have to spend a few minutes fly to Dalaran or the Argent Tournament every time I went to Northrend. Besides, I paid with my money, why shouldn't I be given options? The guy who wants to view it or not save scum has the option to and the guy who wants to skip it or save scum can have his option. No one's hurt.
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You don't need mounts in GW2. You have waypoints. And what's wrong with seeing the scenery? Its gorgeous.Not that it has anything to do with shadowrun(though I do like the setting even though I'm new to it), there isn't anything wrong with viewing scenery. Taking away the option to skip it however is not cool. I played WoW for several years, I got tired of some of the scenery. I swear I saw the griffon fly around stormwind or bat fly into Undercity dozens of times. I didn't want to have to spend a few minutes fly to Dalaran or the Argent Tournament every time I went to Northrend. Besides, I paid with my money, why shouldn't I be given options? The guy who wants to view it or not save scum has the option to and the guy who wants to skip it or save scum can have his option. No one's hurt.
Yeah, that's dumb. One of the reasons i stopped playing wow.
Anyways, its when a player creates a save(or multiple) and just keeps reloading until he gets the desired results. Some games actually expect you to do this, some work against it(tactics games in particular).
This was enough of a problem even in 1999 that Black Isle made it a feature of PLANESCAPE TORMENT by making your character immortal. You can die, but you just wake up again five minutes later. In fact, you can do this to solve certain puzzles or appease NPCs. That was a fairly creative approach to the problem.
The recent XCOM actually handled it quite well: save-at-will in the easiest difficulty options and in the hardest 'ironman' one you only have one slot which saves on game exit (IIRC) and that's it. You can choose in that instance how hardcore you want to be.
Some games also fix the issue by generating results well before the results are known. For example X-Com chose where UFOs landed several 'days' before they landed, so you often would have to go much further back than you might want to.
Meh, if the people have such low self esteem that they HAVE TO WIN, who cares really?
Its single player anyway...
The developers might. You might ruin their creative vision or cheat their game. They were making it for themselves, thought you knew?
I don't agree with it either, but not much I can do about it. You see it here and there that it has something to do with the community telling the developers they don't like what other people do or the developers saying you have to do things a certain way. Portals being removed from cities in WoW so you had to see the scenery or no mounts in GW2 because they wanted you to see the world they made for instance. Not much are for the customer in either of those cases.
Apparently the Berlin episode will be a slightly different game and more sandboxy, so I can't wait to see what it looks like. At least I can hope it has a friendlier save option and gives the community more options for mods.
First off. Those of use who backed it, did so to give the developers the creative freedom to make such decisions.
Part of what makes so many games so very bad these days, is the fact that designers are restricted from making exactly those sorts of decisions by the need to serve the largest possible audience.
If the reason had been that they thought that the best way to get the feel they want from the game is to set up the save this way, then good for them.
But it is my understanding that the save issue had nothing to do with that.
It was a technical issue. They where having trouble implimenting a more modern save system. They made a decision; that while a save system was implimentable, it was not the best use of their very limited resources. So they focused there efforts before release on making it a great game in other ways, and stuck with the check points. Which honestly, is laudable.
It was a technical issue. They where having trouble implimenting a more modern save system. They made a decision; that while a save system was implimentable, it was not the best use of their very limited resources. So they focused there efforts before release on making it a great game in other ways, and stuck with the check points. Which honestly, is laudable.
That's fair enough, and there are hints that they are thinking about a better save system for the BERLIN campaign, but it seems a bit weird. You could save anywhere in - for example - EYE OF THE BEHOLDER (1991), or the Gold Box Games IIRC. You certainly could in BALDUR'S GATE (1998). Save-anywhere is actually a traditional mechanic which has been phased out by modern publishers for action games, but is still (mostly) in place for RPGs. So I find the 'technical problem' explanation a bit bizarre. It's one of the underlying basics of the genre.
I never played them, but couldn't you save anywhere in the Megadrive and SNES versions?
It was a technical issue. They where having trouble implimenting a more modern save system. They made a decision; that while a save system was implimentable, it was not the best use of their very limited resources. So they focused there efforts before release on making it a great game in other ways, and stuck with the check points. Which honestly, is laudable.That's fair enough, and there are hints that they are thinking about a better save system for the BERLIN campaign, but it seems a bit weird. You could save anywhere in - for example - EYE OF THE BEHOLDER (1991), or the Gold Box Games IIRC. You certainly could in BALDUR'S GATE (1998). Save-anywhere is actually a traditional mechanic which has been phased out by modern publishers for action games, but is still (mostly) in place for RPGs. So I find the 'technical problem' explanation a bit bizarre. It's one of the underlying basics of the genre.
I never played them, but couldn't you save anywhere in the Megadrive and SNES versions?
i don't know the full details, I cannot remember the source address, but if my memory is at all accurate, it is a conflict between unity and other aspects of the game that makes it difficult. Not impossible, but enough of an arse ache that they thought the time would be better spent elsewhere.
I just found out that a certain character is in this game and that makes me wish I was playing this right now.
** spoiler omitted **
Yep that character is in it a lot.
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Purchased this and ran thru it. Loved it. The save issue was only a big deal when the wife wanted me to go somewhere and I couldn't save. But it worked out ok. Beat it as a mage and am now playing thru again as a decker. Reminded me a lot of the SNES version, and I loved that one to. also loved the tie in with the books. Burning Bright tells about the Chicago bug assault.
I find it funny that Armitage sleeps in a morgue drawer, reminiscent of where he started the SNES game. XD
It's good, but the original campaing is so linear and so easy (even on very hard) and the AI is so bad that I don't think that I will do more than one playthrough. Maybe the Berlin campaing will fix some of those issues.
Bought it and played through. When I heard this project (January 2013) I was really excited as it is kind of retro game and about Shadowrun which interests me greatly. I really enjoyed Dead Man's Switch campaign. If I ever get a chance to run p&p Shadowrun I might use DMS as campaign outline. It took me about 11 hours of playing to complete and I enjoyed every second. This kind of text heavy "roleplaying" game with tactical combat works perfectly for me.
I downloaded two homebrew campaigns and they are nice too. Waiting for more custom scenarios and also official campaigns. First run was with elf street samurai focusing on pistol and conjuring, nicely working combo. Street samurai is easily my favorite archtype in Shadowrun.
If you are even little interested about this game, get it.