Shattered Horizon

[MrPopo]

Anyone try this out yet? I noticed it on Steam when I was picking up TF2 for a LAN party. $20 for a multiplayer-only shooter with an interesting gimmick; the maps are in orbit around the Earth, and each map is something like an asteroid or a space station. You fight in a space suit that has attitude thrusters so you can move up, down, left, right, and spin. You also can adhere to any surface, which includes the ceiling. It takes a bit of time to get used to the handling, but once you do it's quite fun. Games are team based, either deathmatch or capture point. There's only one weapon, a 40-round rifle (or is it 60?) that has a snipe function. You zoom in and it will fire 10 shots at once (which generates WICKED recoil). It also has a stock of 5 grenades on a launcher, and each grenade can be individually programmed with the warhead. There's the standard explosive, there's ice (smoke), and then there's EMP, which shuts down the suit of anyone in the blast radius. What this does is prevents you from firing manuevering thrusters, you lose your HUD, and you lose the sound simulation (in space, no one can hear you scream). It's quite disabling, but it's easy to get caught in the blast.

The only caveat is that you need to be running Vista or Windows 7, as it is a DirectX 10 only game. That said, I've been having a lot of fun with it so far. It's a really interesting twist on the standard FPS fight and the single weapon means that it comes down to how well you can use your weapon, and not just if you know the respawn timer on all the good guns. You also have to be concious of how you move. When you fire your thursters to move up/down/left/right while floating it lights you up, so you need to use your interia. Also, you cannot snipe while floating. Technically you can, but the head bob is so bad that you'd have a better chance with a real rifle while you're drunk. When you're anchored on the ground you move slower (apparently you move slower than a rocket) but it stabilizes your aim, which is key. Plus, you can put yourself in interesting angles to throw people off.

Anyone else tried this yet?

[J T]

I saw this on Steam too. I would love to play it, but early accounts said the game requires really good hardware. I don't think my laptop would be able to run it, even though I have Vista and Direct X 10:

CPU: AMD Turion(tm) X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile ZM-80
CPU Speed: 2.09 GHz processor
OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, 64-bit (Build Service Pack 16001)
Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450

If I'm wrong, let me know. I'd love to try this game. I also want to buy Crysis while it's on sale right now, but I don't think my system can handle that either.

[t0yrobo]

I'm really interested in it, at the least it's a really great idea. The implementation looks pretty good too. I just wish there was a demo, I don't want to spend $20 on a multiplayer only game my laptop can barely run.

[Xonticus]

Hello all,

I actually got into the beta test for this game, and it has relatively simple concept as you've heard, but really well executed. The only reason I haven't picked this up is because of lack of funds. /this game is great and is a ton of fun.

I have a quad core at home that had vista 32bit on it (now 7 64bit) with 4 gigs ram and an Ati 4850 gfx card. The game ran smoothly, but i you meet the minimum requirements, it shouldn't be too big of a problem to play. In the end I'd play it safe, though.