It sounds cool, and is cool, and when supplemented by the RPG-inspired magical ability that lets you summon a terrifyingly strong minion to guard a particular area, you can’t help but think that someone deep in FASA Studio is a rather switched-on individual.

Nonetheless, stuff like the magical resurrection ability that lets you “do a Lazarus” on dead teammates (who then slowly bleed to death after you’ve snuffed it yourself) brings a genuinely clever twist to the capture the flag and team deathmatch games on offer.

Put into a well-produced UT mod or created with a decent engine in a PC-only game, all this would be a fairly tasty proposition - this much is undeniable. But unfortunately, the way Shadowrun looks and plays acts like a local anesthetic on the joy department of your noggin - you’re aware of what the game is doing, but are thoroughly incapable of feeling anything about it. It’s mood-deadening lithium in gaming form. Sluggish, poorly balanced and graphically average, with kills that feel like the result of pure luck as opposed to any form of skill.

There’s not even that much here to play: nine poorly designed maps (although there’s one that’s essentially a giant set of steps that’s quite good) and two generic multiplayer game modes. Single-player, meanwhile, is so sparse that it’s barely worth mentioning, while bots are almost on the Battlefield 1942 level of stupid. In simple gameplay terms, meanwhile, you often find yourself dead without quite understanding how, and despite the resurrection process it can be extremely frustrating lying dead while the battle rages on several levels above you.