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!

Smite's Official Release!

Today, Smite is officially out of its beta testing phase! This game is one which I have posted about multiple times in the past, and a game which I play almost every day. Most of the changes the game has seen over the last few months have brought it closer to a League of Legends clone, and yet, while that's not typically a compliment, I believe it has helped guide this game. Even their new cinematic teaser (below) is reminiscent of LoL's trailers in style and mood.

Recent changes to the item store in particular have made this game feel even more like League of Legends. LoL's popularity has been growing and the realm of e-sports has been growing around it, so hitching their wagon to LoL's train isn't a bad strategy. Still, it is becoming more difficult to describe Smite in its own terms. If the abilities become known by their LoL counterpart, and gods which should feel unique become amalgamations of LoL's champions (who are themselves amalgamations of DotA characters), then it becomes difficult to bring new players into the game--something I dearly hope for.

They're newest addition to their roster of gods, Ullr, doesn't add much to the game creatively. While I'm interested to explore his strengths and weaknesses, I would hope that future god releases include characters with a little more imagination in their abilities. It does compensate, somewhat, that his skin, "Strider", makes reference to  J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings", but I would prefer that the skin itself was more than just a change of color. The other skin they added recently, Dark Lord Sun Wukong, is clearly "inspired" by Star Wars, and if they're willing to run the risk of copyright infringement, why not an Assassin's Creed "inspired" skin for Ullr?

Now, before Hi-Rez has a chance to make major changes to their game again, I would like to share a quick gameplay video I recorded a few days ago. This match was over after only about 10 minutes, but most matches are between 15 and 25. The gametype is Assault (ARAM) and I play as Ra, a relatively basic god and one of the several available to new players for free. More than anything, though, my goal here was to give you some idea of what this game is like and, at the very least, this video can accomplish that.

If you haven't heard of Smite before or would like to give the game a try, check out it's page here

The Feel of the Game: War of the Roses vs. Chivalry: Medieval Warfare

Last night, I got to thinking about how "feeling" makes a game into what it is moreso than the mere facts of its description. To illustrate this, I present the examples of War of the Roses and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. These are two games which look very similar on the outside, but feel quite different to the player playing them. While WotR feels rooted in history, Chivalry is really all about the action.

On it's Steam store page, Chivalry is described as "a fast-paced medieval first-person slasher with a focus on multiplayer battles" and it's most popular user-defined tags are "Medieval", "Multiplayer", "Action", "Melee" and "Gore".

User-defined tags for War of the Roses are very similar: "Action", "Free to Play", "Medieval", and "Multiplayer". But the game's description is less focused on describing the gameplay than it is on the historical aspects: "Battle online with up to 64 players through 7 historically inspired war zones as you experience the conflict between Lancaster & York first hand!"

But trying to describe their differences is inherently difficult. In both games you take on the role of a soldier. In both you choose between a variety of weapons, whether long-ranged or close, heavy or light. And in both games your ultimate goal is to slaughter the other team with superior skill and tactics. Getting more specific, both games ask the player to rely heavily on timing blocks and attacks, both try to inspire the player to see the match as a battle in a much larger war and world, and both use similar control and camera schemes. But the games become different as soon as you actually play them--once you actually feel them.

So, let me show you what I'm talking about.  Below are two videos of me playing each game. In Chivalry, there is a sense that buffoonery and ridiculous ideas have a place. It is more light-hearted than WotR, wherein a serious sense of historical accuracy is made dominant. Both games feature a wider variety of game types and weapons than I can demonstrate here, so my goal is to focus on what it is like to play an average match rather than explore the potential depth of the experiences.

What cannot be imparted through video or words is the way a game responds to the players inputs. This is an important part of the feel of a game, but short of putting the game in your hands it is not something I can show you. How well you are able to control a game makes a significant contribution to how you feel while playing it--are you in control or out of control?

What you are able to see in these videos is how pace and style develop the atmosphere, community, and sensations of these games. While WotR is slow and serious, Chivalry is fast and frenetic, and yet both games are trying to accomplish the same thing--an enjoyable, medieval experience.

In parting, I would be remiss not to mention "War of the Vikings", the next game from Fatshark and spiritual successor to WotR. I had a chance to play the game in its alpha-stage and, while avoiding saying anything specific, the game does a better job of accomplishing what it sets out to do. It has more in common with Chivalry in ways that don't make it unlike WotR and I feel that it will represent a step forward.