Space Engineers

There's nothing wrong with loving space, so I'm going to follow up my post on Shattered Horizon with another on a game which I expected would be similar, Space Engineers. The game is still under development by Keen Software House, but is available for early access through Steam for the hefty sum of $19.99. Now, generally, such a price on something that isn't done yet would deter me, but after thoroughly enjoying the concept I found in Shattered Horizon, I was eager for a more satisfying game with the same "lost in space" feel to it. So, before doing any of the appropriate research, I bought Space Engineers. To say that I regret buying it and that the only good thing I'll be getting out of the game is this blog post might be too harsh so early on, but at the moment I'm a bit sensitive about getting someone's hopes up before they're utterly dashed.

And now that I've set your expectations as low as I can, let me expound on the good aspects of Space Engineers. It has multiplayer. You can swap between first- and third-person camera views. You can build things and then look at them. So, now that that is done...

The game manages to be reminiscent of Minecraft, Robocraft, Shattered Horizon, and Kerbal Space Program all at the same time. It refers to itself as a sandbox game about engineering, construction and maintenance, yet it is, in essence, merely game about blocks (at this stage in development). If you've played Minecraft in creative mode then you've played Space Engineers, except that this game is in space which apparently means you inevitably float away from whatever you are working on (Oh, and don't bump into things or those will float away, too!).

I do think there is a market for games like this one, but I am sure that I am not a part of that demographic. Minecraft is quite popular among some groups and to fans of that game I'd recommend taking a look at Space Engineers, but if you're like me then those games lose your interest astonishingly fast. Don't get me wrong, I like to build things, I used to play with Legos for hours, I found construction to be the best part of Robocraft, but this game feels aimless. The trouble is that I don't enjoy the building process. For one thing, it's infuriating just trying to stand still as you can never quite get your inertia back to zero. True, you can stand on a platform while you work for some stability, but then you move like an over-encumbered dragonborn. I understand that these things are part of a realistic space simulation, but Space Engineers is a block-building game (at the moment) that is only made more frustrating and less fun for all the realism in it. I'm supposed to be frolicking through my imagination, not struggling to get close (but not too close!) to the slab of bricks I built to take me back to the space station.

Still, Space Engineers isn't a game without hope, it's just a game that they shouldn't be selling yet. I'm hopeful for the engineering and maintenance aspects which I have yet to see added to the game, and I do believe there are gamers out there who would enjoy this game as it is more than I do. If Space Engineers can find that audience it stands a chance of entertaining some folks, but it would also be wise to avoid a more massive market unless the game has a good deal more to offer in regards to narrative and variety than is currently available.

Shattered Horizon

"Shattered Horizon" is a first-person zero-gravity space shooter by a Finnish software development company called Futuremark Studios. As a leading producer of computer benchmark software, one might expect that Futuremark's "Shattered Horizon" is a game designed for cutting-edge PCs but it seems that they've elected a safer, simpler approach to their game design.

Gameplay: The first hurdle the player faces in Shattered Horizon is the control scheme.  The game's tutorial consists of four images explaining the keybindings, the HUD, and the game modes, which altogether does little to prepare the player for the experience. It takes a game, maybe two, to adjust to the spinning and rotating which make this game special. Unfortunately, that is typically about as long as you'll be playing this game unless the number of players online picks up dramatically. Single player is simply a match versus bots and, since I have never seen another player playing online, the multiplayer mode is virtually identical. This might be related to the fact that there is no clear means of creating a multiplayer lobby. Beyond this, the game itself includes just five generic classes ranging from shotgunner to sniper.

The zero-gravity element, however, adds flavor to all of this blandness. Once you've learned to land, roll, lift-off, and boost the maps become playgrounds of skill and strategy. The first time I encountered an upside-down AI bot firing away I was convinced that the concept of this game was its strength. Not only is the zero-gravity element exciting and refreshing to a genre that is beyond stale at this point, it invites a gamer to imagine how awesome first-person zero-gravity games could be. The experience of this game is one that does not entirely serve the game because the best parts have nothing to do with the objectives. There is an undeniable joy and an immutable sense of freedom in jetpacking around structures in space which overshadows the combat-centric game modes. The fundamental flaw in Shattered Horizon is that winning the game asks the player to ignore the most enjoyable part of the game's experience--the atmosphere.

"There is an undeniable joy and an immutable sense of freedom in jetpacking around structures in space which overshadows the combat-centric game modes."

Visual Effects / Art Style: Shattered Horizon relies on the atmosphere it creates to deserve your playing time. To this end, it is important that the game's visuals serve both as interesting spectacles and entertaining battlegrounds. Satellites, shipping containers, and asteroids create an environment which is desolate, eerie and captivating. The cold silence of the final frontier can be felt best when the player deactivates their HUD (purportedly to make them harder to detect for enemy sensors) leaving them in the soundless vacuum of space. The environments themselves are highly satisfying and provide an engaging backdrop to the task at hand, but the backgrounds beyond are less adept at maintaining the ambiance as they tend to be mere star maps. As for the visual effects specifically, the HUD is hard to read and the maps are entirely static. It would be nice to have a chance to blow up a few things or start a fire here and there in order to make the environments a more engrossing place in which to play. As it is, the map textures are pleasing, but the game lacks a deeper attention to details.

"As it is, the map textures are pleasing, but the game lacks a deeper attention to details."

Sound Effects / Music: The most powerful sound in space is silence. The darkness is vast and bleak and the game should capitalize on the opportunity to make the player feel lonely. While deactivating the HUD and drifting near your team's spawnpoint demonstrates that Shattered Horizon is capable of this, the objectives and endless respawns of AI bots counter this effect a great deal. Given the space-faring concept of this game, it is subject to the principle of 'less is more',  and yet it seems the developers did not keep this well enough in mind. It's nice that deactivating the HUD gives the player that deep-space feeling, but the game's design makes this an unreasonable strategy. Between the gunfire and audio messages a great deal of the ambient satisfaction is lost, and that's a real shame in a game which has demonstrated that it is capable of it.

"Between the gunfire and audio messages a great deal of the ambient satisfaction is lost, and that's a real shame in a game which has demonstrated that it is capable of it."

Story and Narrative: I wish there was more to say here. The simple fact is that the majority of the story that Shattered Horizon provides comes in blurbs tucked away in loading screens. While long loads makes for ample time to peruse these tidbits, they do little more than explain the motives for each teams presence. The teams themselves aren't any different, so the games have nothing beyond a simple "red vs. blue" setup. I mentioned above that the game invites the player to imagine ways that the game's concept could be employed elsewhere, as in an FPS-RPG à la Mass Effect. In short, it feels like there is a lot of potential here that's being squandered by a tired game model.

Entertainment Value: There are a few things worth experiencing in Shattered Horizons. For one, there is the atmosphere that a zero-gravity first-person game creates. For another, there is the joy of exploring the space-scape, dodging behind asteroids and peeking over solar panels. And yet for all the promise held in the game's concept, the execution leaves much to be desired. They started with a great idea and they made that first idea work, but then they followed a formula for everything else. Couple that with empty multiplayer lobbies and you've got a dud on your hands. A pretty dud, mind you, but a waste of $9.99 all the same. If this were a F2P game, I'd say download it and experience the atmosphere, but instead you're better off waiting for a better developer to pick up the idea and do something worthwhile with it.

"...you're better off waiting for a bigger developer to pick up the idea and do something worthwhile with it."

Lastly, I've got a couple 3-day passes for the game. Leave a comment if you're interested!