Review: Shattered Horizon (PC).

Shattered Horizon is the first game to be released from the Finnish Futuremark Games Studios. If the name sounds familiar, it should, because Futuremark have been making PC benchmarking software for over 10 years with 3D Mark probably being the most famous amongst the gaming community. Many of you will no doubt have run one a version of 3D Mark at some point in your PC Gaming career and if you were anything like me you probably wanted to actually play in some of those glorious looking demos and wondered what it would be like if Futuremark actually made a PC game.

Well wonder no more, Futuremark’s first game is now with us and available through Steam’s online distribution service. The game itself is an online multiplayer first person shooter set in the space around the surface of the Earth. The rather weak storyline is set 40 years in the future where mankind has returned to the Moon and driven by greed has managed to cause the largest mining accident in history. The accident causes a gargantuan explosion which throws billions of tons of rock into orbit around the Earth.

This rock eventually settles and forms an arc around the Earth and apparently prevents anyone who was in space from being rescued. There are two factions left in space; the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) and the employees of the Moon Mining Cooperative (MMC). The ISS occupants are given the task of apprehending those responsible for the catastrophe which given there was only one other group in space at the time, I’m guessing the actual detective work here wasn’t too wasn’t too difficult.

I don’t really know why I’m here; but I’m going to shoot you anyway.

As you’ve probably gathered, the actual plot in Shattered Horizon isn’t anything to write home about; in fact had I not accessed the games online manual I wouldn’t have known there even was a story. That said this is a game which isn’t about plot and in all honesty it doesn’t really need one. So here’s a simple version. There are two factions in space and they want to annihilate each other because talking to resolve their issues really isn’t their thing. As the player you take control of an armed astronaut on one of the sides and attempt to assist in the destruction of the other.

So what makes Shattered Horizon so different from other online FPS shooters? Quite simply it’s the environment you fight in; zero gravity. Unlike other first person shooters you are not simply able to look up and down, you can move there too. Shattered Horizon truly is a 3-dimensional shooter.

Control at first is difficult but it will click quickly.

In addition to your standard WASD FPS movement controls (and a boost button which essentially acts like a sprint function), you’ll need to master a further 3 inputs just to get around and orientate yourself. These are up and down thrust which unsurprisingly allows you to move up and down within the environment, and roll which essentially alters the angle of your viewpoint; pretty essential when you are traversing an environment of this nature. You also have an additional key which allows you to switch between nearby surfaces but I found this best mastered after the basics of control.

When you first play the game its likely you’ll feel completely overwhelmed by both the environment and the controls and it’s this initial period that may very well put some people off the game. Stick with it however and you’ll be rewarded with a control system which is implemented extremely well and this is something for which Futuremark should be congratulated. It really surprised me just how good the controls are and once you’ve got your head round the concept (and possibly like me reassigned a few of the keys to alternate locations on your keyboard), you’ll be flying round in this new arena with quite some confidence in amazingly little time.

Unusually for this type of game the player only has access to one weapon, a multi-functional assault rifle. The rifle comes with a scope which allows for some long distance kills, although it I wouldn’t recommend trying to use this whilst in flight; its best used with your feet firmly planted on the ground (well at least some surface anyway). The gun is also armed with a secondary fire mode which fires one of 3 selectable grenades.

There’s the EMP grenade which stuns your opponent by disrupting their suit; the ice grenade which creates an icy cloud of crystals to disorientate your foes or cover your own escape and finally there’s MPR grenades which basically push your enemies away from you. Of the three grenades I guarantee you’ll probably end up using the EMP ones the most as they are the more useful (indeed in terms of balance they are arguably over powered).  It may seem odd to have only one non-upgradeable gun and I’m sure some people will be put off by this; but at least it does provide complete balance to the game - everyone starts and finishes with the same tools, it’s how you use them that counts.

Only having access to one weapon may put some off.

Your suit also has the ability to power down and this is a useful feature which can help you flank your opponents. By powering down the suit you lose many features such as player identification and audio simulation along with a lot of your control over movement; but by doing this you also remove many of the features which your opponents use to identify you such as the glow from your rocket thrusters and suit lights. This allows you to glide past the less observant enemy before powering back up and blasting them out into deep space. It’s a great idea that’s implemented brilliantly and wonderful to pull off.

The game can be played in 3 different variations; Skirmish (straight forward Team Deathmatch), Assault (Teams take turns in attacking and defending control points) and Battle (Teams attack the enemies control points whilst defending their own). I personally found Skirmish a tad under whelming compared to the other two modes of which Assault was my own favourite. Shattered Horizon ships with 4 maps; Moondust, ISS (the International Space Station), The Arc and Flipside. Each map looks fantastic although they do vary a bit in size with The Arc in particular more suited to smaller scale confrontations.

Although damaged,  this Space Station is still worth fighting for.

Aside from the unique control mechanics, Shattered Horizon has also raised more than a few eyebrows due to its heavy hardware requirements compared to other current PC games. The game is DirectX 10 only so if you are still using XP as your main gaming platform then you can forget about trying Shattered Horizon. The game also requires an E6600 processor and either a Geforce 8800GT or ATI HD3870 as a minimum along with 2 gigs of Ram. The game certainly looks fantastic and it’s easy to see why it demands such a hefty processor and gfx card, but I personally can’t see why the game wasn’t made compatible with DirectX 9.

Approximately half of Steams current user base run DX9 and in all honesty there is very little difference between DX9 and DX10 regardless of what Microsoft might try and tell you. I put the question to Futuremark and they did kindly respond:

“Shattered Horizon was coded from ground up to use DX10 and is based on the engine used in 3DMark Vantage (which also requires DX10). The engine has features that were just not possible on DX9.”

I personally read this as their most advanced graphics engine was Vantage and they naturally used this for their game; I’m sure it would have been a lot cheaper and speeded up their development time considerably. In essence I think it would have perhaps proved too expensive for them to backwards code in DX9 compatibility even though the game could theoretically run perfectly well in this environment. Given they are essentially a small indie developer I can understand this reasoning and course of action; I just don’t like the assumption from many that this game couldn’t have been done perfectly well in DX9.

The game itself is great fun to play once you get the hang of the controls, indeed in many ways I felt like I was playing the game version of Moonraker and I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some influence drawn from the 007 movie for the game. Shattered Horizons biggest negative for me at the moment is its pricing. Whilst it isn’t breaking the bank at a penny under £15, we have to factor in that the game is only offering 4 maps and online multiplayer game play. There is no single player mode, and up until a few days ago there wasn’t even a way to practice outside of a live game (this has been partially rectified now with some training servers being hosted by Futuremark).

Compared to many offerings both on Steam and other digital distribution platforms such as XBLA and PSN, £15 is rather expensive although Futuremark have promised they will be adding content to the game in future, free of charge. I would certainly recommend the game to any FPS online player as its different and fun but its harder to recommend to those who don’t fall into this category; simply because the game is expensive and also partly because it is so unique. I hope in this regard Futuremark try and offer a demo version at some point in the future.

Shattered Horizon is however a welcome addition to the FPS online arena, its both fun and different despite the steep learning curve and high price. If Futuremark set out to make something visually striking and unique then they have certainly achieved their aims with some aplomb, and I look forward to sampling their future endeavours.

I also feel I should point out that the staff of Futuremark have been extremely active across many forums and in the game since the launch and this has earned them glowing and universal praise amongst the players. Other developers should take note.

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