By Jason Van Horn

Dwarves, Elves, Trolls, and Humans. Yep, sounds like your typical MMORPG or role playing game. Oh, but what's this? Instead of swords and maces we've got machine guns and grenades. Of course, you've also got transportation abilities, the ability to grow life healing trees , and turn yourself into smoke, and summon giant blue minions of destruction. But wait, there's more! Take all of that and wrap it in a multiplayer frag fest where death is the only answer and prize.

Shadowrun is all about one thing and that is fragging to your heart's content in an age old war that includes humans, dwarves, trolls, and elves. You'll begin each match by choosing your character, and though everyone of them is capable of using the same weapons and abilities, some are more adept at certain things, like elves and being able to use magic quite easily with no limitations, while someone like the Troll can use abilities like transportation but his reliance on weapons will make him more of a force that way than relying on some magic he probably wouldn't have been that good with them to begin with. And if you are talking strictly weapons, you've got about the usual standbys with pistols, SMG, minigun, rifle, rocket launcher and others.

On the tech side of things, it gets a bit more interesting, because though everything has a plus against something, it remains a negative and is easily countered if you have the right techs to counter. For example, the improved vision sight will let you find where your enemy targets are on the level, but after you target a player that player will then know you know where they are. You can also go a bit invisible with the smoke effect, but it can be countered by doing gusts that blow away the spells. It is this counterbalance system that really seems as if it will keep players always playing, as everyone is essentially on a level playing field. Really, the way in which you win this game will not be from having the best weapons and best abilities, but rather how you properly manage them to the character you are playing as.

There are also some cool features unique to the game, such as a Tree of Life that will heal you and your team if you get near it, but it will also heal enemies who run across it as well. One of the coolest features is the resurrect ability, which allows you to heal up a dead teammate who are laying on the ground, but the cool thing is that if the person who resurrected them dies in combat, everyone that person revived and that person revived will slowly start to bleed out and die, due to the fact that their sort of puppet master aren't along anymore to keep up the pretendences of your life. Also, there is a good special ability if you are a dwarf - no head shots! Apparently dwarf heads are so hard they resist damage to their skulls. Also, the player bots will speak for themselves, and this will be the first Microsoft product to be cross platform Live, so if you gain an achievement while playing on the PC and you have the Xbox 360 version as well, they'll show up as unlocked on both; and the nice thing is you'll only need one Gold membership to fully play both games. Plus, will be able to use the 360 controller while playing the PC version of the game if you wish to choose that over the mouse and keyboard.

In the end there is going to be between 8 and 10 maps with some being scaled for a maximum of eight players and others 12 maximum and others 16 maximum. In the end, 16 maximum will indeed be the final and ultimate maximum map number as there can only be 16 players playing at one time, which is actually a pretty good number of players. The maps also look really nice and detailed, from the industrialized zone of a factory filled with packing crates to a shanty town with little shacks stacked high on top of each other with dilapidated building fronts, grime and graffiti everywhere, and patch tin roofs. No matter the map, it appears as if there will be ample room to use your glider to fly around, teleport around, and in the case of the teleport it will know when you can and can't teleport, so there will be no fear of warping into a wall and quickly screw up your game.

In the game while you are playing you'll earn money for doing things like getting kills, healing players, and resurrecting them as well. As you get this money throughout the rounds of play, you'll then be able to use that money to unlock better weapons and abilities in the later round. It acts as sort of a RPG-esque upgrade system in a loose way, but it seems as if it will allow every match to start on equal footing so no player is better than another right from the get-go, but rather matches will truly be based and determined on who is the better player and can utilize their weapons and abilities the best. In the end, Shadowrun is a really good looking game, filled with enough unique matches, characters, and abilities to put a smile on any multiplayer fragger at heart. However, if you are the single type, then no game could probably be less for you - this is for the multiplayer and multiplayer only.

For more information on Shadowrun please visit http://shadowrun.com/.