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<div style="float: left; padding: 3px;"><img src="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/shattered%20horizon%20box%20art.jpg" border="0"></div>Shattered Horizon
Release Date: November 11, 2009
Reviewed On: PC
Developer: Futuremark Games Studio
Publisher: Futuremark Games Studio
ESRB Rating: Teen (Mild Suggestive Themes, Violence)
PEGI Rating: 16 (Online, Violence)
Shattered Horizon is the first ever game to roll out of Futuremark Games Studios, and given their history of benchmarking software, it could be one of the most graphically demanding titles to be on the market.
With a clean slate to build on, Futuremark has the chance to wow the PC gaming market and make a name for themselves as one of the top developers. Can they do this with Shattered Horizon? Read on to find out!
Story:
It should be noted that Shattered Horizon is a multiplayer-only title; firing up the game I was surprised to find that I was not greeted with any kind of background story. Within two clicks I was thrown into a live server without any explanation as to what I was doing, or why I was there. Thus, I retreated to the Shattered Horizon manual in search of clues!
According to Futuremark, “Shattered Horizon is set 40 years from now” and man is back on the Moon along with a number of companies turning huge profits. However, a mining catastrophe leads to rock debris being fired through space causing havoc for those living in space. The International Space Agency (ISA) is given the role of extra-terrestrial Police men, their mission to apprehend the Moon Mining Co-Operative, the company responsible for the incident.
In what could be conceived as a rather aggressive tact, the ISA are shipped weapons to defend themselves with. It is not known how the MMC came to acquire their own heavy arsenal, but as the baddies, one assumes they were stock piling hardware capable of mass murder all along.
I can fly!
Gameplay:
Shattered Horizon is an FPS and is currently priced at a rather modest £14.99. Therefore, it is unreasonable to expect it to have the depth of gameplay as other full priced titles. Battlefield 1943 will be a good comparison as both will retail for around the same price.
Unlike other FPS games, Shattered Horizon has a trick up its sleeve. The world you play in is completely 3 dimensional as opposed to games played on a flat plane. Players are able to zoom around space using their jetpack, gliding gracefully between asteroids and space debris. The “W” and “S” keys provide acceleration and braking, the mouse controls the X and Y axis view and the middle mouse button rolls the character. The “F2” key enables you to plant yourself on objects such as debris, asteroids and buildings to gain extra weapon accuracy, and the “F” key allows you to jump onto walls on a different axis.
The lighting is quite impressive
This freedom of movement enables the players to make some rather nifty moves; it was not uncommon to see an enemy back flipping through the air whilst launching EMP grenades. Despite my rather big ego, inflated through hours of Battlefield 2, I found myself constantly rolling face-first into asteroids and looking rather stupid. This is where training servers come in!
Shattered Horizon features both competitive and training servers. The former is for standard multiplayer and shall be explained later. Training servers allow you to practice moves and get used to what is honestly, a quite difficult to master control set. Other players are usually more than happy to explain and show off their moves, however. I would actively encourage anyone who buys this title to start here before hitting the main servers. It may take a few hours to come to grips with the controls, but it will save you countless lives floating upside down in the outer bounds waiting for certain death.
In standard multiplayer servers, there are 3 game modes: Battle, Assault and Skirmish. Here is how they break down:
The game modes certainly aren’t revolutionary, but it’s nice to see that there is variation should you get bored. Hopefully this should keep player numbers up for quite a while.
Battles in a 3D environment have never looked so good
Audio & Graphics:
There is not much to say about audio really. In game, the weapons sound basic; not awful, but nothing special. A greater range and quality of sounds would definitely make for a more immersive experience, but they aren’t so bad as to leave yourself feeling as if everything is being fed through a pair of £2 earphones.
Now, the graphics. Given Futuremark’s previous work on the benchmarking scene, I was expecting great graphics and crippling performance. I was not disappointed. Firing up Shattered Horizon, I automatically switched to 1920x1080 and all options high including 8x anti aliasing. Whilst my graphics card is not the newest (4870 1GB), it is no slouch either. At these settings I received around 20fps-30fps depending on the context. This was a little too low to play comfortably, but dropping post processing effects and anti aliasing one notch netted me a nice 30-40fps. The graphics/performance scaled well meaning that even those with old hardware will be able to play.
The graphics were a little disappointing. From afar, the post processing effects and contrasting range of colours made levels seem beautiful. The odd flash from an EMP grenade looked great. However, as I flew closer to the action, I found that textures lacked depth and were quite plainly coloured. Structures were slightly more detailed, but not perfect. I felt that a better job could have been done, especially given that games such as Modern Warfare 2 managed to provide better graphics with a lower performance hit.
The enemy is up there... er... down there?
Multiplayer:
Now, down to the main content - the multiplayer experience. Loading into a server, you are given the ability to choose which faction to fight for, MMC or ISA. I was able to join a team with more players on thus creating an imbalance; I did not notice whether balancing was carried out later. Spawning sees you chucked into the level, just inside the out of bounds area (which kills in a similar way to Battlefield 2) but not in the middle of objects. This helps cut down on camping as the enemy have nowhere to hide from which they can kill spawning players. Depending on the game mode and your own focus, you can either proceed to capture/defend objectives or simply look for an enemy to pick on.
Players can only use a plain looking assault rifle with grenade launcher. Whilst this makes each battle more equal, it stifles the ability to play in different ways. A magnified scope can be used to shoot targets too far away to engage normally, but the hugely excessive amount of sway means it feels like you are playing drunk and thus makes hitting anything rather difficult. Shooting in scoped mode also fires 10 rounds, providing so much kickback that you find yourself looking completely the wrong way half the time.
It is possible to choose ICE, EMP or MPR grenades, each of which with their own advantages, but the quick style of play means it is hard to effectively use all but the EMP. Rifles also have unlimited ammo, but need to be reloaded often.
Enemies can be spotted by holding crosshairs over them for a few seconds. This produces a red bracket around them, similar to Battlefield 2142. Losing sight for more than a few seconds causes the bracket to disappear and usually ends up with the enemy behind, drilling a few hundred rounds into your posterior.
In space, nobody can hear you scream (unless you have a mic)
Finding enemies is not hard, as players tend to concentrate together and the action simply revolves around flying between debris, letting off small bursts of fire. There is no real feeling of weightlessness, more that your player is being pulled by strings each time you press a key. Weapons come off as weak sounding. There was absolutely no sense of immersion, the whole game felt weak and quite frankly, tacky. I put this down to both the poor engine and the lack of different gameplay styles.
Inside buildings such as space stations, it was nigh impossible to fly around properly without bumping into every wall. Using the attach to surface function means you walk every at the same pace as an 80 year old. Fighting inside felt clumsy, buggy and frustrating as you fly upside down into the door frame over and over again.
Lastly, I found Shattered Horizon difficult to play for more than 30 minutes. Despite eventually getting the hang of the game and frequenting the tops of the leader boards, I just felt frustrated by the lack of accuracy when flying or walking and just the sheer lack of immersion. There was no teamwork and no real impetus to actually go achieve objectives. My main issue, however was motion sickness. In theory it sounds great to be able to fly and perform other aerial acrobatics, but as you spin, everything, bar your rifle, turns with you. This leaves you disoriented and I actually felt ill. This may not affect everyone, but it was the first time I had ever had to stop for fear of projectile vomiting over my lovely 24” monitor. So, if you are weak of stomach, you may want to give this game a miss.
Headshots and tank shots are instant kills
Summary:
To summarise, I felt as if Shattered Horizon was more a proof of concept from Futuremark rather than a title in its own right. There are some great ideas in the game, but implementation felt rushed and lacked the polish that could have made it far more enjoyable. Some will find fun in this title, but I believe it may end up being one of those games that passes everyone by and is soon forgotten.
At £14.99, the price was a little steep for the fun it provides. It would need to be below £10 for me to even recommend buying, and as such I do not feel I could give it high marks.
~Reviewed by Alex98uk
Release Date: November 11, 2009
Reviewed On: PC
Developer: Futuremark Games Studio
Publisher: Futuremark Games Studio
ESRB Rating: Teen (Mild Suggestive Themes, Violence)
PEGI Rating: 16 (Online, Violence)
Shattered Horizon is the first ever game to roll out of Futuremark Games Studios, and given their history of benchmarking software, it could be one of the most graphically demanding titles to be on the market.
With a clean slate to build on, Futuremark has the chance to wow the PC gaming market and make a name for themselves as one of the top developers. Can they do this with Shattered Horizon? Read on to find out!
Story:
It should be noted that Shattered Horizon is a multiplayer-only title; firing up the game I was surprised to find that I was not greeted with any kind of background story. Within two clicks I was thrown into a live server without any explanation as to what I was doing, or why I was there. Thus, I retreated to the Shattered Horizon manual in search of clues!
According to Futuremark, “Shattered Horizon is set 40 years from now” and man is back on the Moon along with a number of companies turning huge profits. However, a mining catastrophe leads to rock debris being fired through space causing havoc for those living in space. The International Space Agency (ISA) is given the role of extra-terrestrial Police men, their mission to apprehend the Moon Mining Co-Operative, the company responsible for the incident.
In what could be conceived as a rather aggressive tact, the ISA are shipped weapons to defend themselves with. It is not known how the MMC came to acquire their own heavy arsenal, but as the baddies, one assumes they were stock piling hardware capable of mass murder all along.
I can fly!
Gameplay:
Shattered Horizon is an FPS and is currently priced at a rather modest £14.99. Therefore, it is unreasonable to expect it to have the depth of gameplay as other full priced titles. Battlefield 1943 will be a good comparison as both will retail for around the same price.
Unlike other FPS games, Shattered Horizon has a trick up its sleeve. The world you play in is completely 3 dimensional as opposed to games played on a flat plane. Players are able to zoom around space using their jetpack, gliding gracefully between asteroids and space debris. The “W” and “S” keys provide acceleration and braking, the mouse controls the X and Y axis view and the middle mouse button rolls the character. The “F2” key enables you to plant yourself on objects such as debris, asteroids and buildings to gain extra weapon accuracy, and the “F” key allows you to jump onto walls on a different axis.
The lighting is quite impressive
This freedom of movement enables the players to make some rather nifty moves; it was not uncommon to see an enemy back flipping through the air whilst launching EMP grenades. Despite my rather big ego, inflated through hours of Battlefield 2, I found myself constantly rolling face-first into asteroids and looking rather stupid. This is where training servers come in!
Shattered Horizon features both competitive and training servers. The former is for standard multiplayer and shall be explained later. Training servers allow you to practice moves and get used to what is honestly, a quite difficult to master control set. Other players are usually more than happy to explain and show off their moves, however. I would actively encourage anyone who buys this title to start here before hitting the main servers. It may take a few hours to come to grips with the controls, but it will save you countless lives floating upside down in the outer bounds waiting for certain death.
In standard multiplayer servers, there are 3 game modes: Battle, Assault and Skirmish. Here is how they break down:
Battle: “Two teams compete to capture control points and dominate the map. Teams must defend their own control points while attacking the enemy’s”
Assault: “A turn-based control point capture game. Teams take turns attacking and defending. Control points cannot be recaptured by the defending team once lost. The attacking team must capture all control points in order to win the round.”
Skirmish: “A team deathmatch game mode. At the end of the round, the final score determines the winning team”.
Assault: “A turn-based control point capture game. Teams take turns attacking and defending. Control points cannot be recaptured by the defending team once lost. The attacking team must capture all control points in order to win the round.”
Skirmish: “A team deathmatch game mode. At the end of the round, the final score determines the winning team”.
The game modes certainly aren’t revolutionary, but it’s nice to see that there is variation should you get bored. Hopefully this should keep player numbers up for quite a while.
Battles in a 3D environment have never looked so good
Audio & Graphics:
There is not much to say about audio really. In game, the weapons sound basic; not awful, but nothing special. A greater range and quality of sounds would definitely make for a more immersive experience, but they aren’t so bad as to leave yourself feeling as if everything is being fed through a pair of £2 earphones.
Now, the graphics. Given Futuremark’s previous work on the benchmarking scene, I was expecting great graphics and crippling performance. I was not disappointed. Firing up Shattered Horizon, I automatically switched to 1920x1080 and all options high including 8x anti aliasing. Whilst my graphics card is not the newest (4870 1GB), it is no slouch either. At these settings I received around 20fps-30fps depending on the context. This was a little too low to play comfortably, but dropping post processing effects and anti aliasing one notch netted me a nice 30-40fps. The graphics/performance scaled well meaning that even those with old hardware will be able to play.
The graphics were a little disappointing. From afar, the post processing effects and contrasting range of colours made levels seem beautiful. The odd flash from an EMP grenade looked great. However, as I flew closer to the action, I found that textures lacked depth and were quite plainly coloured. Structures were slightly more detailed, but not perfect. I felt that a better job could have been done, especially given that games such as Modern Warfare 2 managed to provide better graphics with a lower performance hit.
The enemy is up there... er... down there?
Multiplayer:
Now, down to the main content - the multiplayer experience. Loading into a server, you are given the ability to choose which faction to fight for, MMC or ISA. I was able to join a team with more players on thus creating an imbalance; I did not notice whether balancing was carried out later. Spawning sees you chucked into the level, just inside the out of bounds area (which kills in a similar way to Battlefield 2) but not in the middle of objects. This helps cut down on camping as the enemy have nowhere to hide from which they can kill spawning players. Depending on the game mode and your own focus, you can either proceed to capture/defend objectives or simply look for an enemy to pick on.
Players can only use a plain looking assault rifle with grenade launcher. Whilst this makes each battle more equal, it stifles the ability to play in different ways. A magnified scope can be used to shoot targets too far away to engage normally, but the hugely excessive amount of sway means it feels like you are playing drunk and thus makes hitting anything rather difficult. Shooting in scoped mode also fires 10 rounds, providing so much kickback that you find yourself looking completely the wrong way half the time.
It is possible to choose ICE, EMP or MPR grenades, each of which with their own advantages, but the quick style of play means it is hard to effectively use all but the EMP. Rifles also have unlimited ammo, but need to be reloaded often.
Enemies can be spotted by holding crosshairs over them for a few seconds. This produces a red bracket around them, similar to Battlefield 2142. Losing sight for more than a few seconds causes the bracket to disappear and usually ends up with the enemy behind, drilling a few hundred rounds into your posterior.
In space, nobody can hear you scream (unless you have a mic)
Finding enemies is not hard, as players tend to concentrate together and the action simply revolves around flying between debris, letting off small bursts of fire. There is no real feeling of weightlessness, more that your player is being pulled by strings each time you press a key. Weapons come off as weak sounding. There was absolutely no sense of immersion, the whole game felt weak and quite frankly, tacky. I put this down to both the poor engine and the lack of different gameplay styles.
Inside buildings such as space stations, it was nigh impossible to fly around properly without bumping into every wall. Using the attach to surface function means you walk every at the same pace as an 80 year old. Fighting inside felt clumsy, buggy and frustrating as you fly upside down into the door frame over and over again.
Lastly, I found Shattered Horizon difficult to play for more than 30 minutes. Despite eventually getting the hang of the game and frequenting the tops of the leader boards, I just felt frustrated by the lack of accuracy when flying or walking and just the sheer lack of immersion. There was no teamwork and no real impetus to actually go achieve objectives. My main issue, however was motion sickness. In theory it sounds great to be able to fly and perform other aerial acrobatics, but as you spin, everything, bar your rifle, turns with you. This leaves you disoriented and I actually felt ill. This may not affect everyone, but it was the first time I had ever had to stop for fear of projectile vomiting over my lovely 24” monitor. So, if you are weak of stomach, you may want to give this game a miss.
Headshots and tank shots are instant kills
Summary:
To summarise, I felt as if Shattered Horizon was more a proof of concept from Futuremark rather than a title in its own right. There are some great ideas in the game, but implementation felt rushed and lacked the polish that could have made it far more enjoyable. Some will find fun in this title, but I believe it may end up being one of those games that passes everyone by and is soon forgotten.
At £14.99, the price was a little steep for the fun it provides. It would need to be below £10 for me to even recommend buying, and as such I do not feel I could give it high marks.
Story: 6/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Graphics: 7/10
Audio: 6/10
Multiplayer: 6/10
Total Gaming Network Rating: 6/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Graphics: 7/10
Audio: 6/10
Multiplayer: 6/10
Total Gaming Network Rating: 6/10
~Reviewed by Alex98uk
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