It's no coincidence that Microsoft Games Studio's new Shadow run has been released simultaneously for both PC (Windows Vista required) and Xbox 360. The game's key feature is its cross-platform multiplayer compatibility, where Xbox 360 players can go online and kill (or heal) online Windows Vista players -- and each other -- and visa versa, thanks to the spiffy technology of Xbox Live and the new Windows Live.

Dual system compatibility is not a new feature, but it marks the first time its been done in this generation. Sadly, it's not done with any degree of sophistication, more like a high degree of anxiety in order to catch up with the Vista/Live hype machine. (That said, it's done well enough that duality Live will mostly likely be a common feature in future games, hopefully with something resembling elegance.)

Shadowrun looks acceptably pretty on both platforms -- neither dazzling nor "new gen" in the slightest, mind you--, and technically its controls are familiar. Nevertheless it's a bit cumbersome getting a grip on the whole shooter/RPG hybridization thing, because it's as much a game of buying the right spells, powers, weapon, ammunition and enhancements in a few scant seconds at the start of each round as it is a game of point & shoot and "dance all day" proficiency. As for those actual shooting bits, though most ardent PC gamers will insist their keyboard & mouse if far superior to a console's skimpy gamepad and thumbsticks, you wouldn't know it by the lambastings going on -- not because those Xbox dudes have been polishing their skills on Halo 2 for years now, but because aiming has been handicapped so extremely, the weapons so wimped out, that shooting straight is ridiculously difficult for everyone while a solid shot to the chest does little damage. Grenades, meanwhile, are super powerful and non-partisan, as are a few other specialty weapons. Ergo, it's hard to discern the better platform when gameplay has all the sensibility of a waterballoon fight to the death... with dwarves and trolls and one better-built chaingun between them, plus the ability to suck the essence out of the fallen. It's as contrived as it sounds.

Worse, beyond the barely-pretty, the primer-coat polish and the atypical role-playing-shooter (RPS?) setting, there's not much to it; an ambitious game that throws in way too many team-play mandates -- someone needs to be a healer, someone needs to be a sniper, someone needs to not be another freakin' elf, etc., or there's no hope of winning a round, let alone ten -- and teams are more-or-less randomly created to begin with and, even then, can only play on just nine different maps. The whole RPG-mysticism meets sci-fi arena shooter premise only thinly veils the fact that it's not very good at either, because everyone playing is real and won't necessarily understand the team-based tactics needed nor care to employ them if they do.

Ultimately, Shadowrun is only interesting because of those said same people that play it, themselves waxing at hell-bent for manslaughter -- or, better said, you-slaughter -- before mom calls down an tells them to put their PJs on and go to bed. If you don't hook up with the right, like-minded players, there's little point. There's no single-player play in Shadowrun (aside from a scant practice mode and faux-multiplayer against computer controlled opponents), so you're left to run amok in that virtual community that is Live, maybe meet some simpatico players and have a ball as you each pick characters and attributes that sum-total a diversely domineering team... maybe meet some annoying dweebs that are, in the end, more fun to kill but still annoying with their desperate web courage and pre-pubescent trash talk -- and those are the guys on your side. Yeah, fun.

TIP: With a nod to Counter-Strike's "run faster with a knife," you will run faster in Shadow run when carrying a pistol.