I've been playing a lot of Halo Reach, and lately it's really been giving the urge to revisit and replay Shadowrun. I loved Shadowrun more than most. No regrets paying $60 for it, cause I LOVED that chess match of one team matching abilities and races against the other.

The similarities are obvious and incredibly reasonable when you consider that talent from FASA worked on Reach. The armor abilities in Reach are basically just reworked magic and tech abilities from Shadowrun, and the aiming system in Reach uses a refined version of the bloom system from Shadowrun.

So Halo Reach really is something of a spiritual successor to Shadowrun, as well as an evolution of the Halo franchise with it's defining shoot/melee/grenade core, regenerating health, and infanty/vehicle interplay.

Anyway, I really felt an urge to go back and play Shadowrun, just to appreciate where the systems in Halo Reach were drawn from. Shadowrun was a really under-appreciated game, and I know there's a bunch of legal and brand reasons for not bringing it up, but I wish there was some way to spread the word to more people that 'if you like Halo Reach' you should check out Shadowrun.' Because I bet it would blow their minds that this overlooked game influenced one of the biggest franchises in gaming.

Can you think of any games you loved, only to realize there were older games you missed that heavily inspired them?