Slot Off, Frag-Face! Let's Play Sega's Shadowrun

i think you should do more cash runs and bulk up your equip first. no need to be underprepared!

I vote we grind cash until we can buy all the best equipment in the game. Only then will we be prepared for the rigors of the story.

All illegal, all the time!

I wanna see some magic. Since that's the part of the game I never bothered with.

Those are all submachine guns, not assault rifles. They fire pistol rounds, and run the same power gamut as pistols; games just tend to use less powerful SMGs to keep pistols relevant in a world where size, recoil and maintenance aren't an issue. Using the Uzi analog, since the Mach 22 is described as a machine pistol, the difference between it's bullets and your pistol's is probably something like this:



Like you said, it's for game balance. The actual pen & paper game has assault rifles, machine guns, and ridiculous things called 'assault cannons' which are basically hand-held tank cannons toted around by trolls. If Shadowrun has anything going for it (and that's under debate), it's variety.

Ah, game balance. I could swear I heard one of those hellhounds calling me a good sport as they spawned out of nowhere and gnawed my face off.

Yeah, what the hell is up with the magic? We voted in a Shaman but all we have seen so far is, "Damn suckers why didn't you pick Decker."

I will admit however I feel unmitigated thrill when I see the money come in from the info runs.

Bummer chummers - no entry this week on account of just getting back from relatives for Thanksgiving. But next week's update is clear - so I'm off ter spend, spend, spend!

Shamans start with completely worthless spells. The only difference in the LP if he used them instead of a gun would be a lot more screens of Seattle General. To get good spells you need money, and the fastest way to get money (by a huuuge margin) is the matrix. Magic will play a bigger role later, when the main story requires you to bust some heads.

Wiz chummers, back again after an unintended Thanksgiving break. (Rumors that I was instead picking off grunts in Halo: Reach Firefight by the hundreds are completely unfounded!)

We last left off with a fairly good situation - we no longer have to fear for our lives every time someone looks at us funny, but we can still do a lot better in the possessions department.

I think the technical term for this is middle-class.



General consensus seems to indicate that we head back into the Matrix for mo'money, hopefully avoiding mo'problems.



Oh, Deception, how I love you so.



Just a heads up here - this is a I/O port. Most of the time we'll leave them be, but they're where you would enter the Matrix if you're actually inside the workplace in question. Should we do a corp run (which we will, eventually) these'll become more relevant.

I don't think that Lockout does anything, really. About the only thing I think it could be used for is to lock yourself out if you're trying to crack the Matrix from inside a corp. I could see this having some use if there were other corp deckers trying to derezz you or something, but sadly this does not come into play in this game.



Ricky stumbles and almost falls against the CPU here, bringing things all the way to Active Alert on us.



Heh heh heh.




A little safecracking here, and we've got another file to fence.

After a quick trip back to the CPU to get rid of our Passive Alert, it's time to check the other DS - unfortunately this one doesn't play nice with deception.



Ricky shows off our alternate attacks while the ice tries to send out an alert. (The one on the left is a little laser beam, and the right is him throwing a ninja star.) I can't really tell if there's any difference between any of these attacks or not, though.



Drek! Ricky's got himself in a bucket of syrup here. After ice reaches Active Alert (and you're in combat), it will tend to pull out some backup ice to get things done. This here is Blaster, and looks like a perpetual explosion, man.




The big problem with this sucker is that it's one of the ice types that fights back. Those spiked balls aren't coming from me - they're coming *at* me. Unfortunately, my crap screenshotting skills didn't get them very well. (Look around the persona's head.)

The important thing is that each hit from the ice damages my persona a bit - which you can see in the lower left corner.



...and Ricky, unfortunately, isn't cracking this ice very well. He gets booted out shortly after this.

While the file fetches a respectable sum, it's probably a good idea for us to find a better decker. Time to go exploring...



Now that we have a little green, heading into The Matchstick is a lot better decision than it was mere hours ago. Surprising how just a couple of files can make the diff...



Oh dear. Unfortunately, we've already used up the LP title, so I guess it's time to play good Samaritan.



Well, at least I scared some of them off...



Man, am I glad I bought some armor last update...we'll have to look into how to keep from getting harassed by these street gangs.

That said, we did fight off some murderous street gangs, so the first round's on me.



I still think that option B is the best one.



Man, for 150 large it better be open bar. Anyway, let's see what the VIP lounge booth has in store for us this time.

I think I figured out where Captain Price went off to after Modern Warfare 2 concluded. Unfortunately there's no option to ask about Soap.



Fair enough - not to mention that 1000 nuyen is no longer the impossible dream it once was with Gunderson. That said, as long as he's just giving stuff away...



It looks like he's cordial with Caleb for the moment - it's odd that we have the opposite relationship with him, though. When I get a bit bigger, I'll be greeting him warmly for runs (and Matrix passcodes.)



Him and Mortimer Reed, though, have less than a friendly relationship. I like to think that this is how neighboring Ford and Chevy dealers talk about each other to their friends.

This is where I think Sega missed a golden opportunity - have one of the Mr. J's hire you to take out another one, with things changing depending on whose offer you accept. I don't think that this particular choice had been implemented in a game until GTA 4.



Hmmm...a grizzled veteran? Kinda tempting. We'll file this away for later.

And that will probably be the last we'll hear from Julius for the rest of the game. He's in a weird spot, see - his runs are the same that Mortimer Reed offers. The only difference is that you've gotta fork over 150 each time you want to see him. (The bouncer apparently both ran out of wristbands *and* lost his hand-stamper.) Since you need to visit him at least twice for each run (one to get the run, and the next to get paid), that takes a pretty heavy chunk out of your profit. Consider that the lower level runs he offers pay about 500 total, and you'll be thinking, why bother?

That said, there's another reason we popped into the bar.



A cyber-elf. Humina humina humina.



Yeah. I can think of two things I want that kind of stand out.



Whoa, they talk too! I mean, um, yes, fascinating.



Psh, AI. Yeah, it starts out as a powerful force, but then it gets stuck behind a tree for three hours. As for raw elven talent, here Rianna is being horribly racist. Elves may have some slight advantages in attributes to do better in the Matrix, but everyone's computer skill tops out at the same level.



And here Rianna confirms what I was talking about earlier - how it's easier to hack systems from inside a corp than outside. The only problem there is the whole "getting inside the corp" part.

(Insert snarky caption here.)



Here we add Rianna to our team (for the short term, at the moment.) Note that she's the priciest runner yet by a wide margin. Good thing we fenced that file earlier, ya?



That said, there's a reason why she charges so much. Look at all she brings to the table. First off, she has a weapon that doesn't just fire styrofoam pellets/ Secondly, in addition to the Datajack she has very good Cyberware in her. A Smartlink allows her to sense where her gun's pointed without looking down the sights, making her super accurate. Wired Reflexes makes her uber-fast, and she has not just one, but two doses of the stuff.

Finally, and most importantly at the moment, she has a computer skill of 6 right off the bat, making her three times as effective at Petr at hacking. That said, we'll keep Petr around until we finish a run. It doesn't cost anything to still have him in our team, and you never know when an extra gun may come in handy.



Time to put Rianna through her paces. And we're in luck - this system looks a bit more complex than the others we've seen so far, meaning that it logically it should lead to far more valuable files. Granted, the Genesis' version of logic is subject to change at the oddest times, but I still think that we should pick up a pretty penny here.




The ice is still pretty thick, though. Rianna cuts through it, but it puts her up at Passive Alert.

Executive area, you say? Now that sounds expensive. We're still at yellow alert, though - so it's time for a quick detour to the CPU to get everything nice and calm.



Yeah, I didn't think it would be that easy. Well, actually, I kinda hoped it would be for a little while...



Oh. Drek! This is Black Ice, and it can be just as fatal as its road-based namesake. For one reason -



Notice how the picture in the lower left changed from the Persona to Rianna? This is because the Ice is now shooting directly at her. And like in Canada - if you die in the Matrix, you die for real.



It's OK, Rianna has a few tricks up her sleev....oh geez...



C'mon, keep shelling the ice...



Heh, nice dodge! You can take th...ack!



C'mon, you can do it...just a little more...

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHhddddddbkla-*



*thud*

Not the hot one!

Black Ice doesn't really do very much damage. It's just that Rianna starts with a Body score of 1.

This is unacceptable.

I demand a reload! Reset and try her again!

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHhddddddbkla-*

"...I had a cigarette," she said, looking down at her white knuckled fist. "I had a cigarette and a girl and a place to sleep. Do you hear me, you son of a bitch? You hear me?"
Echoes moved through the hollow of the arcade, fading down corridors of consoles. She stepped out into the street. The rain had stopped. Ninsei was deserted. Holograms flickered, neon danced. He smelled boiled vegetables from a vendor's pushcart across the street. An unopened pack of Yeheyuans lay at her feet, beside a book of matches...



"It's cool," he said. "It's just okay. It's something these guys do, is all. Like, she wasn't dead, and it was only a few seconds...."
"I saw th' screen, EEG readin' dead. Nothin' movin', forty second."
"Well, she's okay now."
"EEG flat as a strap."
- Neuromancer, William Gibson (Chapter 9)
(Also changed the genders around too)
(Go read the book if you haven't already, or else Billy Gibson will gag me with a spoon)

Wiz chummers, welcome back. When we last left off, our top decker was clinically dead. Whoo!



Luckily, as with all of Shadowrun's "for real" deaths, this one can be easily cured by restorative items and/or spells. It's a good thing that I noted that in passing ages before, or this would just be a cheap way to rack up dramatic tension! (See also - every Harry Potter book ever.)

Here we see our Shaman stepping up to the plate for the first time with actual magic - using Heal Wounds. Now, the success rate of said spell is rather crap, just barely bringing Rianna back to life.



But a few applications of the spell work wonders. That said, if you set the drain too high, you can do things like heal yourself and then immediately pass out - the likes of which haven't been seen again until Eternal Darkness and its ability to spend your magic power to restore your own magic bar. Heh. Anyway, since we're in a relatively safe spot, we can take a little while to he...



Oh come on! Right, that's it - this episode will be now be devoted to getting rid of these damn street gangs. That is, until I get dist-ooh! Shiny!



Our first stop is in Puyallup, barren as ever.



Hang on, you said it was deserted! How can there be people in it? And where the hell's my cake and ice cream?!!

Anyhow, Friendly here is the representative for the ork gang in town, so let's get on their good side first.




He gives us a completely unbiased rundown on Seattle's turf wars as well. Though it turns out that he's a bit off about the Eye-Fivers, as they've got a pad in the Penumbra District. Now that we've got the lay of the land down, let's talk to the H.O.I.C. (Head Ork In Charge.)



Once again, the correct response is obvious.

I'm actually surprised that this doesn't result in you getting jumped. Go fig.



Now's as good a time as any to proceed with phase one of Operation: Get Rid Of Street gangS. (Note: plan details stolen from Calvin, right from under Hobbes's nose to boot.)



Two grand? Geez. All right, all right.



*perk*



Huh. I guess the apocalypse replaced all the Pakistani cab drivers with orks. Don't know if it helped the English speaking ratio, though.

Now it's time to give you the full Shadowrun experience: i.e., man I was thick as a teenager. *Pays 500 creds*



Now when you ask yourself, "Can a game make you cry?", you'll know that the answer is "Yes." Mainly it will make you cry at the depths of your own stupidity. (As opposed to the game designers', natch. How dare you have one niggling flaw in your game that I'll play for 100+ hours regardless! U SUK!!11!!)

*state load*



And if he didn't tell me that when I picked yes, I'd probably go back in and pay him anyway. Sigh.

Anyhoo, we've now got the Ork armband, which means that one of the street gangs will leave us alone.



While we're here, we try to score another contact, but paying for protection has made us come up a little short.

Also, if you go back in to see the leader, Roadrash (He took over the gang after Skitchin's untimely death), you don't have to pay the guy in front a second time. Not bad, not bad.

Also, for some reason I find Roadrash's greeting the second time inordinately amusing. I guess Freakonomics was right - being in a gang really is like working in a regular job.



Anyway, back to Redmond to try and sneak into DigiPen again chat up some weenies.



Heh heh heh.

That said, I don't know whether or not getting the Ork Armband is ultimately worth it. Yes, cab rides are free, but getting on Roadrash's good side sure wasn't. I suppose that since we've still got a ways to go we'll eventually make a profit off of this thing.

That said, cab rides cost 20 to 100 nuyen, so we'd have to take anywhere from 28 to 138 to come out ahead after 2750 in expenses. Then again, we covered all of that with those bank account numbers last update. Oh well, cab rides for free, and we don't even have to be broke to get them!



Anyway onto mor...



I find that the best thing to do when seeing Johnny Law is to scream loudly.



Damn it! Pee Wee Herman lied to me!



Yeesh. Maybe we should've used the 2k to get that cop contact from Caleb. A few more of these encounters will erode the ol' bank account rather fast. (Incidentally, the illegal weapon they were talking about was Rianna's SMG. Maybe I should turn that in for a Predator...)

Anyway, time to see the Halloweeners...



Not that way! (Now that I've got three gunners on me, this fight was over before I could get the screenshot. What a difference having an automatic weapon and two extra guns makes, eh?)

Anyway, um, time to go in and talk to the boss of the gang - whose bullet-riddled corpses I've left sitting on their doorstep twelve seconds ago. I predict that I'll be the subject of some very pointed criticism in Dear Abby next week.




Apparently the lookout didn't like those guys either, so he shoots the breeze with me for a while. Oddly enough, he seems to agree with the ork's views on the Eye-Fivers. What are the odds?



Sigh. They all want me to pay to talk with their boss. Perhaps I should order a hamburger from them, complain that it has pickles on it, and then demand to see their manager.

That said, his advice is sound. Perhaps it is time for us to make a name for ourselves...

By taking a snooze. Yeah, I know it seems kinda unorthodox to improve your rep by hitting the hay, but considering that I've spent decades of this hobby hitting boxes with my head and eating mushrooms which spilled out from them, I'm willing to give this a pass.



That said, I've got to do this for another reason - mainly that anti-cool Autogun in front of Club Penumbra. Though maybe if I set my clock to next year I can cheat my way onto the waiting list. Hey, it worked against The End!



Oh you son of a...



Believe it or not, improving my Rep just now kept him from charging me a *third* stack of 500 large. Ah, remember when that was real money? That said, I think I should hit the net after this.




Yep, definitely have to go out and search the net for crap to sell. Ah well.

Especially if we want The Boss's number. I dunno, I think I'll hold out for Big Boss.

Given the previous conversations we've had with gangers, I think I can guess who this Boss is - one of the Yakuza. Now that's upper class stuff.

Anyway, we've got a few more things to spend our cash on, so let's head over to the last gang in the game, the Eye-Fivers.



Wow, they're friendly. You know the drill...




Huh. Now I don't know who to believe. I'm so lost.



Oh, come on! The other gangs are *way* less costly than you! I can think of only one way to respond here.



That was strangely cathartic.



Die, sparkly scum!



That was even more cathartic.

But I still need to take a breather from the city for a while. Time to put those free cab rides to good use.



Maybe an island getaway will be good for recharging the ol' batteries. See you next week, folks.

Wiz chummers, welcome back to Seattle. When last we left off, I'd gotten so mad at the street gangs that I'd decided to head to an island paradise. So...



I think that this Council Island place will be just the thing. Normally I'd pick Hawaii or Cancun, but Council Island has the advantage that it's one of the few islands that can be reached by taxi. Now I won't have to worry about Carnival Cruise lines running aground yet again and stranding me for weeks!



Ah, here we are. Things look a bit different than in the big city - this asphalt parking lot is about as high-tech as things get around here. Well, visibly.



Yay, a tourist trap! Unfortunately, I'm low on scratch, so I won't be able to get any of you a "My friend visited Council Island and all I got was this lousy T-shirt." I'll be sure to get you a Friendship Restaurant punch-card, though. When you come here and eat 9 more 30� or higher meals, you'll get the next one free!

Unfortunately, I messed up and didn't get a shot of the inside - honestly, it was much like every other bar/restaurant we've been in so far. I apologize in advance for not being able to share evidence of this earth-shattering revelation. That said, it does have one denizen:



A magic ork! Sweet, I like 'em curvy.




Nice to see someone subscribing to the whole "running away from people making fun of you" philosophy. Now we've got the "empty an AK-47 into your workplace" one to deal with. This is all due to those violent videogames, of course. That and that awful music, too. The other day I saw a kid repeatedly shooting insects until they broke apart while singing "Centipede, centipede, can't run away!"



As a Gator Shaman, I find this un-bear-able. She also runs away whenever someone straps a bell to their backpack.

That said, she's pretty a pretty OK ork. And she's awfully polite for having traveled to this planet by egg. (Shazbot!)



She also knows about someone we're looking for. Unfortunately, it seems that Owlfeather is further inside AmerIndian territory than the freely-accessible island. Blast.



Unfortunately, we can't ask her to come with us, as we can only have a three-man team at any given time. If we wanted to, we could ditch Petr and hire Bear in his place. Bear is fairly expensive, though. Until we deck around some more, we should save our pennies.



Let's see what else is on this island...



Huh. Given that this is an embassy building, I think that some country in Europe turned all ork. I'm guessing Vatican City, as that would explain a lot.



I remember one guest on Colbert saying something about how we could fulfill our protein requirements by eating insects instead of cows and chickens. It's a pretty fair theory, and one that I can see saving a great deal of resources, but until they can make a grasshopper taste like a 16 ounce cut of Prime Rib, I'll have to pass. Ah, we're all gonna die horribly in the next couple decades. Wait, hang on...*pops antidepressants*

There we go! Let's continue with the Let's Play!



Yeesh, thanks for the platitude out of nowhere, Sega. It's not like I didn't already think that, what with the orcs being the most friendly street gang around. I think that they mixed up the scripts for this and a Captain Planet game by accident.



The hospital has a rather ostentatious front, as well as a nurse that fulfills several fetishes simultaneously. Unfortunately, we can't get anything done here - everyone is at full health, and the Cyberware is still too expensive. Since there's no "Ask when sweet-cheeks is on break" button, we'll have to depart.

Next up...



The Medicine Lodge.

These guys are the first magic specialists we've seen so far - there are some in the city as well. Unfortunately, the staff isn't for hire here either. I think that he's working with Black Vulcan SuperVolt to form a B-Squad of heroes protecting Seattle. Hey, it beats law school.




Running Stream does show us what spells he has to offer. Unfortunately, most of them stink. And not just in the way that Stink stinks, these stink stank stunk. Mainly, most of these spells don't really do much besides mildly inconvenience enemies.

That said, we have a useful one in Heal Wounds, which performs as advertised. Invisibility is useful as well for sneaking into places we don't belong undetected. (Note that it's not foolproof, though.)

Until we get back into cyberspace, though, we're lacking the green to get these spells. I should explain how purchasing them works, though. Any magician can learn any spell, and learn it up to any level. - none of these opposing magic schools class divides here. Upping the level of a spell lets you cast a more powerful version - which increases a spell's success rate at the possible cost of increasing drain. (Luckily, you can still cast spells at lower force levels to reduce drain even after you learn the more powerful versions.)

So getting all the magicians in Seattle to become the best wizards ever is solely a case of putting time and money into them - much like making everyone grandmaster wizards in Final Fantasy 6.



2-X-Stream also sells Foci, which let you boost the force (and thus, success) rates of particular spells. It's also where we come up against another trade-off that wizards have to deal with: inventory space. See, each focus boosts a single spell. That means that for each spell we want to boost, we sacrifice one of our precious inventory slots. In Melchior Halliburton's case, he only has seven since one is always filled with his Gator Totem. Armor and a gun take up two more. Add another space for a fetish to suck up drain, and we're down to just four. (And we don't even have any emergency medkits in there, either!)

Thus, these foci should be avoided. If only there was some way of doing this without sucking up so much space...



Finally, there's the Protection Talisman, which is sweet. It acts as another layer of powerful armor against both physical and mental attacks, and only takes up one inventory space. Unfortunately, it's apparently made of diamond-encrusted platinum, so back on the display rack it goes.

Our last stop for the day is the passport office.



This is our ticket onto the Salish-Shide. Well, one of them anyway. Even though Boris was selling those forgeries, it's a good idea to stay on the legal straight and narrow when possible. For one, it's much cheaper.



Blech, maybe we should've gone with Boris after all. At least we wouldn't have to be filling out all these forms. No, I'm not bringing any vegetables inside AmerIndian lands...Yes, I've had all my shots...

Note that the background check is not just flavor text here. If you've gotten arrested by Lone Star, the clerk will turn you down. (And keep the 500�, the cheap bastich...)



Whoo-hoo! Bring on the duty-free alcohol and cigarettes!



And here we are, on AmerIndian land. Finally away from all those damn street gangs.