I won't deny that I've been looking forward to Shadowrun for some time now, so it was even more of a pleasure when I finally fired it up and almost intuitively started blasting the crap out of the opposition. And that opposition? Well, they're real online players, and the rules of combat have indeed changed - so much so that I don't want to go back to what was previously thought of as a first person shooter.

Shadowrun is primarily an online title, so if you don't have Xbox LIVE Gold then you can hit the road Jack, because the game is pretty pointless without real online foes. The small portion of offline play consists of a tutorial covering most aspects of spellcasting, shooting, race strengths and other details, and the other half of offline play lies in bot matches, where you can fill up two teams with bots and start playing instantly. Unfortunately, Shadowrun doesn't support offline multiplayer split screen, something that I thought the game would support judging by the hinted features before release, but something that sadly didn't make it into the finished product. For me this is where Shadowrun loses a valuable point, because offline multiplayer still exists, people still like to get together for real, and it's a damn shame I can't have this title in my games night line-up.

But I digress. The point is, unless you enjoy facing bots that aren't intelligent enough to write home about but aren't dumb enough to nitpick then I'd say your money would be better off spent elsewhere. However, if you're reading this, chances are you're online anyway, and if you haven't got Xbox LIVE Gold then Shadowrun could well be the reason to make that jump - because it's certainly a good one!

One of the big differences in Shadowrun to other shooters is that all the game types are team-based - there are no 'everyone for themselves' deathmatch games here. You pick a side - either the RNA Corp or the Lineage - but don't worry, because there's no difference in the two sides other than aesthetics; the Lineage look a little more corrupt than the RNA Corp. Each team has the same four races: Humans, Dwarves, Elves and Trolls, and each race has their advantages. The Elves are the fastest race and they regenerate health when they aren't in combat, for example.

Having played solo deathmatches on loads of shooters before this, it's a refreshing change that you have to co-operate. This also puts off those people who don't work with other people in games, so your game experience will generally be a little bit better thanks to the types of players Shadowrun attracts.

Brace yourself for the next piece of news - once you're dead, you're dead; there are no respawns here! Lots of people are getting upset about this, but with rounds only lasting five minutes each, if you die then you've not got long to wait - and the fact that you don't respawn gives you more of an incentive to stay alive in the first place. However, there is still a chance to come back - if you befriend a teammate who has the resurrection spell, he might be able to bring you back to life, providing the opposition haven't destroyed your corpse by shooting at your dead body for a short period of time after your initial death. Once your teammate brings you back to life, you're almost as good as new, but your time is limited - your teammate forfeits four essence points (the game's source of magic energy) while you're alive. If you die a second time, your corpse is destroyed and you can't come back a third time. The biggest twist with resurrection is that if the person who resurrected you dies, you slowly bleed out until you die too - that is, unless another teammate casts resurrection on you before then! This is just one example of how innovative and fresh the game mechanics are in this game, and it's all balanced out very nicely.

Each race has a different amount of essence. The Dwarves have the most, although they regenerate essence at a slow rate, but steal from nearby friends or foes automatically, a power unique to their race. There are loads of magic powers to purchase at the start of each round - Shadowrun is similar to Counter-Strike in this respect and you need to spend your money wisely. Money is earned by killing opponents, healing or resurrecting allies and even holding onto the special artefact, which I'll cover later. Some spells cost more than others, but you're probably going to want to get the teleport spell first, because it completely changes how you play the game. The teleport spell lets you shift eight yards in the direction you're travelling - forwards, backwards, left or right, this spell is as handy as handy can be! But to make it even handier than you could ever anticipate, you can also teleport vertically up by jumping and then shifting, or down by crouching and then shifting. I don't think words can convey how much fun it is to lose an enemy by teleporting through a wall or down through a floor, then healing back up and teleporting towards your enemy to finish them off!

As well as spells that include resurrection, the Tree of Life, which deploys a tree that heals anybody, friend or foe, within a certain range, and Summon, which calls a ghost-like ally from another realm to fight for you for a short period of time, you can also invest in tech abilities. Equipping tech abilities has some kind of positive effect on your character, but you have to forfeit some essence points to equip them - most tech powers take off two essence points - unless you're a Human, in which case you can use tech stuff for free. Humans also start off with $2500, as opposed to the standard $2000 the other races get. There are five tech abilities in total - some of note include the Glider, which essentially allows you to fly for a short period of time, while Enhanced Vision allows you to see through walls for a distance of sixty meters for about five seconds. Enhanced Vision also tells you how far away your enemies are, which is perfect for planning those surprise attacks - unless they've got Enhanced Vision too, in which case they'll probably see you coming! All tech abilities are reusable, but most of them have a small cool down period before you can use them again.

It's worth mentioning that you can have up to three magic or tech abilities equipped, or a mixture of both, mapped to your Xbox 360 controller. However, you can still buy more than three things, because you can keep swapping what you have equipped, or you can use magic from the quick access magic selection screen too. A spell like resurrection that you don't use too often could be one of the spells you actively look for and use in your little magic menu, for example.

The last thing you can spend your hard earned cash on (aside from donating it to other teammates) is weapons, and they come in many different shapes and sizes. Trolls have no problem carrying the heaviest of weapons without having an affect of their speed (although they are the slowest race anyway) - but some of the best weapons include the Mini-Gun, which is a beast up close, especially if you're a Troll, because they have a lot more health to sacrifice than other races do and your foe will most probably die before you do if he's taking all the bullets you're firing at him. Sniper Rifles are also great, although you can't fire them without first looking down the scope. You can carry two weapons at a time; personally I have a pistol for accuracy and a sword for backstabbing enemies and making them bleed out over time - it's my favourite deadly assassin combination!

Shadowrun supports sixteen players online, so when you have two teams of eight running around using magic and weapons, you can expect some pretty awesome things to happen. With sixteen maps to battle across, you won't get bored of the views for a while either. The shortcoming of the game is that it only has three different modes, which all seem very similar. Raid is like a one-flag capture the flag game, although it's not a flag, but an artefact - the Lineage have to escape with the artefact and RNA Corp have to prevent them from doing so. Extraction is very similar, but instead of one team doing the preventing, Extraction has both teams going for the artefact, and the first one to escape wins (or the surviving team wins, either will do!) The third and final mode, Attrition, is just like a team-based deathmatch, and in Attrition, the artefact allows the wielder to see where his enemies are, as well as earning him and his team a bit more spending money. Nice.

It's no big deal that the modes are similar and that there aren't many of them, although I'm hoping the developers will add more at a later date, as Shadowrun should be supporting content downloads. Even if they don't, once you get playing with a couple of friends, you won't worry about anything but killing the bad guys by combining your magic, tech and weaponry - and if you think about it mathematically, there are hundreds of combinations to try out, with different races on different maps - it's brilliant!

Graphically the game is fairly good. The map designs are varied and most are nice to look at, with the expectation of one or two. The game supports 1080p, which is HD in its rawest form. Weapon effects are good, but not stunning; the rocket launcher explosions should have been bigger and fierier than they are. Also, the spell effects are a little on the basic side, although the Tree of Life looks cool when you cast it, because a tree spouts from the ground, while the other magic spells consist of different coloured ripples of air, something that the avid spell loving geek will not be impressed by. The sound is a marginally better though, with grunts for trolls, voices for humans, and you can even call for support in a robotic voice if you don't have a microphone by using the d-pad. The gun sounds are spot on, while the magic and tech effects please the ear too.

In a historic gaming first that shows the shape of things to come, you can play Shadowrun with PC players. It's the first Windows Vista/Xbox 360 crossover game, although you can't browse the dedicated servers that PC players have set up, which is a major bummer, because the match finding in the 360 version screen can sometimes take five minutes to find players that match up to your playing experience. On the one hand Microsoft are saying that the PC and Xbox 360 cross platform playability is fantastic, but then on the other they're taking away the ability to tap into dedicated Shadowrun server games made by avid PC players who play the game 24/7. Nevertheless, this is a big step forward and opens up the game to a much wider audience of gamers and competition - may it be the first of many games to do this!

There's no denying that I love Shadowrun to bits - it's almost like World of Warcraft meets Counter-Strike. I love RPGs and I adore FPS games, so Shadowrun seems as if it was made just for me! It wasn't of course - and there are lots of players already battling it out online to prove it! Without doubt, Shadowrun is one of the most entertaining titles I've played in a long while and regardless of whether we'll ever be able to browse PC servers or play an expanded range of modes, it offers an engaging and unique experience that will run away with your gaming time.

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).