Besides spending time with Necropolis, I also got a chance to try out another of Harebrained Schemes other game at the conference, Shadowrun: Hong Kong. Now, let me preface this properly – I have NEVER played a Shadowrun game in my life. All I know about it is that it’s apparently been around forever, is an old school RPG and has lots of cyberpunk goodness. So perhaps I wasn’t the best person to try it out, but nevertheless here are my impressions.
First off, the game has you choose the race, gender, appearance and stat distribution of your main character. I was okay with the visual appearance, and quickly chose a female Ork (I think it was an Ork, at least). Then the kind person running the demo explained the stat distribution, and what each unfamiliar term meant. I made sure my Ork girl, code named Purple, was good at close combat and decent at ranged attacks. Then I was quickly drawn into the world of Shadowrun: Hong Kong via cutscenes with still shots and lots of character profiles. This is a dark and miserable world full of subterfuge and corruption. You have a lot of options in the game, ranging from your response to questions to weapon and armor. And best of all, Hong Kong makes use of intuitive and simple, yet hard to master, turn based tactical combat. All you need is a mouse to do pretty much everything, which I rather appreciated.
There’s not much more I can say about it. I am a definite Shadowrun noob, but I enjoyed my time with the game. According to the developers, it’s a game you can easily spend 15+ hours playing, and that’s assuming you only try one playthrough. Given the sheer amount of decisions to make, I’m sure you could enjoy multiple playthroughs that are totally different. If you are a fan of Shadowrun, or just like cool old school turn based RPGs, you can get it right now on Steam, GoG and Humble Store for $19.99. Well worth it, for that price.
