Name: Shadowrun
Genre: First Person Shooter
Platform: Xbox 360, Windows Vista PC

Not every game can be Gears of War. As a community we must accept that. I am not stating that Gears in the pinnacle of gaming, just that it shows a good example of an amazing blend of multiplayer and single player.

Shadowrun does what some other games have done in the past with some success - most notably the Battlefield and Tribes series. The single player campaign of Shadowrun is much more comparable to a tutorial. There are 6 levels which take around an hour to finish completely and each teaches you something new about the gameplay mechanics.

After you finish you have two options and two options only: put the game away and be content with your 60 achievement points, or begin playing more skirmishes and matches. In fact, this game does not have campaign or single player story, it just has multiplayer. I must end my review here for people without Xbox Live. If you do not have XBL then the review stands as TRASH IT.

If you do have XBL then you are the target audience for the game. It is built, from the ground up, for online play. It has ranked matches and custom matches that revolve around a capture the flag type match, with both teams trying to capture “The Artifact.” It also has 4 playable races with different magical or technological abilities to be upgraded for each of them.

The customization of the characters is what makes this game shine. You can choose to use a katana or a rocket launcher; each having bonuses and shortcomings (like the rocket launches costing way too much and only having one shot). The ability to choose different strategies will have you hooked for a while.

The game should keep any shooting fan occupied as long as they can find some games to join into. When I tried to play online it did not seem like it had a huge community of people banging at the door of Live to make servers or play. Even with the inclusion of PC gamers being able to play with 360 players, finding a game is timely (maybe due to the exclusion of XP players – its Vista only).

If the game had any sense of a real single player portion I would recommend buying it in a heartbeat. The combat is quick and interesting, and the techniques you can employ due to magic and other upgrades spice up the otherwise repetitive genre. The graphics are also nice and have a fun style to them. However, it appears the company decided to invest too much time in a multiplayer experience and because of that, I suggest you rent it first. You may enjoy it enough to buy it – but give it a try first.