Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Review @ Kill Screen

Zach Hines (Kill Screen Daily) reviewed Shadowrun: Hong Kong:

All cyberpunk heads to Hong Kong eventually. Shadowrun does it right

Asia is so often the dream of a cyberpunk future. Neon-soaked skyscraper canyons, and an abrasive mix of high and low tech, of the ultra-rich and the ultra-poor—these are the things that cyberpunk is made of.

But all too often, the essence of the place fades into a backdrop of the story at hand. Ridley Scott’s take on the Los Angeles of Blade Runner is a thinly veiled Hong Kong, but this serves as little more than visual shorthand for futuristic grittiness—at best, it’s an instant noodle signifier of mood in an otherwise more typical LA noir story.
This is true of many cyberpunk works that snatch a little Asia to add flair. In the 2000 videogame Deus Ex, a significant part of the middle third takes place in Hong Kong. Though the game reaches for the headier themes of cyberpunk, such as transhumanism and the atomization of identity, it fails to tap into the rich vein of this stuff that’s at your disposal when you decide to travel to Asia; instead, it focuses on the most obvious visual cues as little more than exotic window dressing.
Indeed, “Asian-ness” has become a trope of cyberpunk so deeply ingrained it borders on cliché. All of this stems from the genre’s coming of age in the 80s, when authors were writing against the backdrop of Japan’s rapid technological and economic boom, and artists were left gobsmacked by the majestic violence of 1988’s Akira. When William Gibson created Chiba-City in Neuromancer, he was putting down ley lines that continue to shape the genre to this day, but which have so far gone largely untapped.

[…]

The actual shadowrunning is no great evolution on the tried-and-true formula of the past two Shadowrun games (though it has improved its hacking minigame with a system swiped from the ‘80s pass-it-along-game Simon). This is a shame when it comes to creakier systems in dire need of updating, such as the counterintuitive inventory management, and the lack of briefing menus when you take on a mission. The turn-based combat remains deliberative and solid, despite wonky stabs at systems the engine is simply not built for, such as stealth. And for all its smart writing, the pacing becomes dull after the first act, when you are basically forced to wait for someone else to deliver the climax to you on a plate.

These are quibbles. Shadowrun Hong Kong’s success boils down to a smart early decision to stay true to Hong Kong, and exaggerate the flaws of the city’s bizarre governing philosophy to find a new, urgent relevance in the cyberpunk genre. As a long-term resident of the city myself, I found that as the central mystery started to resolve into a corrupt state-sanctioned housing scam that enriched a family-run business at the expense of the ultra-poor, I started to cringe; it was too close to the bone. Setting aside the orcs, elves, and Chinese demons, Shadowrun Hong Kong taps directly into one of Asia’s driving economies to deliver a startlingly clear vision of our cyberpunk future: one where we are all merely economic units on a corporate spreadsheet—to be compounded or deleted at the whims of an anonymous board of directors.

Score: 75%

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Thanks Eye!

I have been playing it a bit more recently while waiting for WL2DC and I must say that new Matrix is worse then the old one. I even reloaded a save multiple times to do some of the minigames right which I never felt the need in Dragonfall.
I don't even feel like playing any more matrix parts anymore.
I always enjoyed SRR games for good story and non stress TB gameplay and new matrix completely kills that. I feel like when I played TW2 after loving TW1 combat system only to find myself in some bizzaro world where the game was now twitchy too fast action RPG. Hopefully HK has no matrix required main mission levels or I will be forced to abandon it half way just like I did with Twitcher2

I love the new Matrix, I think it adds a lot more gameplay variety, but I can understand why some people don't like it. The endgame has some required matrix areas, so there's no way to totally avoid it.

Originally Posted by Archangel
I have been playing it a bit more recently while waiting for WL2DC and I must say that new Matrix is worse then the old one. I even reloaded a save multiple times to do some of the minigames right which I never felt the need in Dragonfall.
I don't even feel like playing any more matrix parts anymore.
I always enjoyed SRR games for good story and non stress TB gameplay and new matrix completely kills that. I feel like when I played TW2 after loving TW1 combat system only to find myself in some bizzaro world where the game was now twitchy too fast action RPG. Hopefully HK has no matrix required main mission levels or I will be forced to abandon it half way just like I did with Twitcher2

Wow this is exactly how I feel about The Witcher 1 vs 2.

I am just in the middle of Shadowrun: Dragonfall and love it, I hope I am not turned off by the new Matrix in Hong Kong as I bought that game just the other day based on how much I'm enjoying this one.

Originally Posted by Warmark
Wow this is exactly how I feel about The Witcher 1 vs 2.

I am just in the middle of Shadowrun: Dragonfall and love it, I hope I am not turned off by the new Matrix in Hong Kong as I bought that game just the other day based on how much I'm enjoying this one.

I'm not a big fan of action games, and much prefer tactical games. The new matrix basically has two minigames. A timed run and a timed codebreaking puzzle, these are combined with limited tactical combat. Should you blow these parts, then more I.C.E. appears, which means more tactical combat, but you don't have to repeat these sections. All in all the new Matrix has ways to reduce the amount of tactical combat you face in the web, so that if you do there is a lot less combat in the Matrix. I found this good. However, you can always skip the timed puzzles and mess up the time run and more I.C.E. appears, which makes the game more like Dragonfall. So if you're good at combat, its not really a problem. I liked it because it gives you the opportunity to do something else than have even more of the same type of gameplay, but if you're not good at it, or just blunder your way through, you get more or less the same system as in Dragonfall, just a little harder.

Actually it has 3 non combat time sensitive parts. #1 is avoiding the watchers, #2 is the repeat this numbers after me minigame, #3 is spot symbols that appear for 1 second and compare with list of 10 possible answers and if you fail I think the whole thing resets.
All way too stressful compared to what the game was before.
#1 should have been turn based, not real time.
#2 and #3 I would prefer my character to use his skills or at least less stressful minigames that are not time sensitive. I do not want to do IQ tests each time I enter Matrix, fuck that shit. I am not applying for a job, I am relaxing after a job!