Shattered Horizon

Well, Shattered Horizons was released by Futuremark Corps., yesterday on the 4th of November. So I got to get my hands on this game I had been waiting for since last year! Now I'm going to tell you what I like, dislike, and love about this game.

When you first hit Shattered Horizon in multiplayer mode, you'll feel a bit disorientated as you get use to moving around in three dimensions. However you will quickly gain a "feel" for the game, acquiring a sense most people never will. It does have a learning curve, a long one towards mastery, but this is not to say that you won't be good at the game long before that.

If there was any gun that felt perfect in any game, it would be the assault rifle in Shattered Horizon. It is your "Swiss Army Knife" of guns, it has three distinctive functions. All in which can be used in conjunction with other functions of the gun. First off it functions as your standard assault rifle, nothing new there eh? Well it feels fantastic firing it, let alone getting kills with it. Then there's the bayonet that extends from your gun with a push of whatever you have it binded to. There's also a scope that allows your gun to fire 10 shots at once, that is effective at tankshots, and headshots. It does a lot of damage to the body, but will probably get you killed if you aim for the body.When you run out of ammo charging someone, and they're in similar situation a well placed strafe bayonet attack will quickly net a kill, if you execute it perfectly. The other tool you have at your disposal is a grenade launcher that can fire several types of nades at varying distances depending how long you hold the grenade launch button. All of them are non lethal,(atleast when used alone) and finite unlike the ammo of the assault rifle itself. An ice grenade is the space version of a smoke, that also blocks you from radar, and can serve as a vision blocker. MPR grenades, are a grenade that lets out a shockwave that sends all nearby flying back, it can be used to do anything from boosting team members out of harms way to sending your enemies into outer space. The EMP grenade will quickly decimate a group of closely packed enemies, rendering their movement practically useless, and easy to pick off. Using grenades in combination, like a EMP grenade followed by a MPR can send a group flying very far away.

Movement in Shattered Horizon is very easy to get a hang of, but something very hard to master. In the first 30-60 minutes of gameplay, you will learn how hard the game is on those who can't maneuver properly.

There's a multitude of things to hide behind in game asteroids, space containers, space stations, space shuttles, and more. Movement also plays a key role in winning battles, sticking together is good, but if you're too close they'll just quickly decimate you with a well placed EMP sneak attack. Movement plays just as much a part in victory as aiming does. Being sneaky is rewarded, and there's many ways to do so. For instance you could go into Stealth Mode, which shuts all the power in your suit down, and sound. However you will no longer be effected by EMP grenades, and can float in from dark shadows without being identified or from the suns direction, which will blind them and give you cover as you burst first into their face. This comes at a sacrifice to sound, and movement speed. You can also cling to the surface of a asteroid for improved accuracy for sniping, and long range burst firing. However it leaves you a sitting duck if you sit for too long.

Shattered Horizon is also a beautiful game, however I feel the game isn't optimized the best as of currently, but hope that will change in the future. It has some high System Requirements, and currently my gaming laptop struggles to get a manageable FPS at desired settings. But if you have an insane gaming rig you shall have no problems! The minimum requirements are a 8800GT and, E6600 which is pretty high. The recommended settings are a GTX 260, and a Quad Core CPU. The game in its current state is a lot harder to run at high settings than Crysis in all of its glory. However, the beauty is undeniable the second you see the shading on the asteroids. The sun looks beautiful, and so do the textures with their crisp, satisfying textures.

The only downsides so far, are the unoptimized graphics, not saying it's directly Futuremark Corps fault, but most likely newer drivers will be much better performance wise in this game. There's also no VOIP chat in game which can be hectic, but most of us use vent so it's not that bad, but still no excuse to not have it in a modern game for the casual gamers. Also, the game is very hard to run for a lot of gamers.

In the end this game only costed 18.00$, and is a great buy for what I had put out for it. I recommend you buy It if you can run it, there's no other reason not to get this game, unless you get sea sick easy. If you do I don't recommend this for you.

Gameplay 10/10 - Seemingly simple gameplay tactics, turn into masterful plans when interweaved into a fast paced, adrenaline filled 0 Gravity game.

Visuals 9/10 - I give this game a 9/10 for visuals because it's not as pretty as crysis but it's pretty close.

Sound 10/10 - Everything sounds right for a space game, there's technically no sound In space, but the simulated sound in the suits computer make this pseudo realistic.

Value 10/10 - This game cost me 18$, nothing more needs to be said there.

Overall 9.5/10 I can see myself playing this game for a long time to come, especially with the promised new content.

Article by Travis A. Garrett.

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