At its core, Shadowrun is a team-based multiplayer shooter, the first to support Microsoft's new Live Anywhere service. This will allow PC and Xbox 360 players to actually compete against each other for the first time, something we actually got to see in action during our visit. Personally, being a console gamer at heart, I spent most of my time playing the Xbox 360 version, but discussions with PC-centric editors revealed that both games control similarly. Perhaps the best news is that it was impossible to tell which players were playing on an Xbox 360, which ones were using the PC's keyboard-and-mouse setup, and which were playing with a controller on a PC. We played a bunch of games, and no one had the upper hand thanks to their chosen setup.

For curious PC gamers, Achievements will be included in the PC version, and those points transfer over to your existing gamertag (if you have one), in accordance with Live Anywhere standards. Nobody really specified what the Achievements would be, however, though they'd concentrate mostly on online play. PC and X360 gamers will be able to yell at each other to their heart's content, as the game is shipping with built in voice over IP support. All PC gamers need to do thereafter is plug in their PC headset and start screaming at those with Live headsets playing on their TV.

To solve the issue of X360 gamers with HDTVs getting a field-of-view advantage against PC gamers using the still common 4:3 monitors, FASA is dropping black widescreen bars on the top and bottom of non-16:9 screens. The game will limit servers to 16 players, which FASA believes will help focus play on team strategy, rather than devolve into general chaos.