I spent an hour playing Bioshock on the 360 yesterday. NDA restrictions mean that- bah - I can't give any details for a couple of weeks. Suffice to say it was a whole lot more enjoyable than Shadowrun, the multiplayer shooter due out tomorrow. Shadowrun, the first title playable simultaneously on both 360 and Vista, is quite frankly the most fiddly game I've ever played on a console.
Forget shooting, ducking and running - Shadowrun also asks you to teleport through walls, plant trees to heal and generally prod the pad in the vague hope you have the right skill mapped to the right button. Having to assign actions in the heat of the battle is just far too much like hard work.
Of course, the upside is the strategic potential offered by the abilities available to you. But this is the first console game in years where I have needed to read the manual. Add this to the fact that players receive a big warning if they go straight into a multiplayer battle without doing the - lengthy - training first and you have a game that will alienate many potential players before they even get their first kill. Of course, dumbed down games are equally annoying - POTC: At World's End for example - and it may suddenly click over the next few days but at the moment Shadowrun just feels a bit too clever for its own good.
