Shattered Horizon – Review
Well the new PC has performed admirably and whilst it copes very nicely with Dawn of War 2, I wanted a fairly modern game to try and tax my graphics card. Now when I saw that what Steam was running for free this past weekend, I jumped at the chance to try it for free.
Shattered Horizon
Shattered Horizon is an interesting idea for an FPS – rather than the age old “fight in a space station” somewhere, this shooter puts you outside in space. In zero gravity. This obviously gives you a whole 360 degrees of action and movement rather than the rather linear gravity based shooters where everything is essentially on the floor with you.
Not only the gameplay sounds good, but the graphics look fantastic.
However this comes at a cost – it’s a Direct X 11 game only so requires either Windows Vista or Windows 7 to run. No issues here as I’m running Windows 7 Professional (thanks to University discounts) , however readers might not have this.
First Impressions
Loading the game up and starting playing and the game lives up to my expectations. Considering I hadn’t heard of it before, I assumed it was a fairly simple affair and I wasn’t wrong.
There is only one weapon – an assault rifle that has fully auto fire and also a sniper capability. It also has an attached grenade launcher with 3 different grenade types (EMP, Explosive and ICE). Controls are fairly basic and just like in space, when you stop pushing forwards, you wont really stop moving forwards so the controls may take people a slight getting used to.
Gameplay is quite fast and frantic and there are a few different game modes, such as assault (attacking fixed points) and the standard death match. The levels are quite large and open with lots of differing routes around the levels.
After a While…
The space and zero gravity aspect works very nicely – whilst your assault rifle doesn’t have any kick back as such, firing it in sniper mode will send you spinning wildly. Therefore you can land on any scenery an secure yourself to it so you can fire as a sniper quite safely without spinning into a meteor field. With no health or ammo pickups, flying off into spaces isn’t really a great idea!
Ammo seems to be unlimited for the assault rifle but you need to reload after every 60 rounds. You have 3 grenades per life and the different grenades come in handy – you can time them to explode when you want and they can bounce off scenery. The ICE grenades are essentially smoke grenades, they make a large area unnavigable for a while. EMP disables a spacesuits control systems making the player move very slowly and the explosive do as they say!
All the technology you are wearing comes at a a price – the suits radar can detect your team mates and enemy alike. That is until you switch to silent running, where all suit systems are turned off so it’s harder to move, however you don’t appear on enemy radars. Check this video for an example:
Conclusions
Shattered Horizons is a simple FPS – for £15 on Steam, you don’t expect massive, genre changing, gaming. Yet Shattered Horizons manages to set itself apart from other FPS games with the addition of the zero gravity element. It all combines everything for a simple to pick up shooter.
Don’t expect deep character development or anything – this is a pure shooter which is pure and simple and addictive. It does feature a stats feed (mine are here), however due to the simple nature of the game, there’s not much to track (unlike Battlefield 2′s award and medal system).
Overall, well worth the money (I paid £7.50 as it was half price this weekend) if you want a shooter that is different to the current offerings.
