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!

Twitch, eSports, and Orion: Dino Horde

Twitch.tv, an internet streaming service, isn't the only site on the net for streaming games, but it is quickly becoming the most popular. Through a Twitch account, users can stream live video onto the site for anyone to see. Streams can also be recorded and re-watched later. Similar to the "Let's Play..." style videos on YouTube, Twitch's service is providing a platform for players to connect, communicate, and learn from one another. But beyond this, the service enables gamers to watch their favorite e-sports in much the same way as they watch more traditional sports. In short, gaming livestreams are making e-sports more accessible and that enables them to grow.

Previously, Major League Gaming (www.majorleaguegaming.com) was the place for watching live streams of big-money gaming tournaments. But this limited fans to only popular franchises like Halo, Call of Duty, and Starcraft, while less popular gaming communities were left out. The rise of Twitch and similar services is an opportunity for the gaming industry in many ways, and I'm hopeful for the changes that are coming.

Currently, Twitch is streaming content from League of Legends, Dota 2, Starcraft 2, which are games you could have found elsewhere, but they are also streaming games like Diablo 3, Minecraft, DayZ, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, and Super Smash Bros. which would have been much harder to find in the past.

In my own experience, streaming to Twitch has been difficult for online games. I wanted to stream some Smite, but the lag I experience while doing so makes the game unplayable. In concession, I went to find another game I could stream and share my thoughts on. So, here it is, in all of its anachronistic glory, Orion: Dino Horde!

Watch live video from zzSandman on TwitchTV

Loadout

Loadout is a new free-to-play, over-the-top, third-person action shooter. In addition to being a magnet for compound adjectives, Loadout is being touted on the virtues of its in-game customizablity. The game's developers, a company called Edge of Reality, have been in the game industry for over a decade, but this game isn't like most of the work they have done in the past.

Gameplay: Loadout doesn't innovate. You've played it's gametypes, you've fired it's weapons, and you've traversed it's maps. If I was going to forgive that, I'd say so about now, but I'm not. The biggest problem with Loadout is that it fails to stand out and try new ideas. When I think about the gameplay I'm reminded of another F2P game from last year called Renaissance Heroes that closed down last December. The games had a lot in common in terms of how they feel to play, and that was enough to keep me entertained for at least a few weeks. What sank Renaissance Heroes, in my opinion, was the exorbitant costs of the "micro" transactions. Loadout shouldn't have this same problem, but the fact remains that the gameplay has been tried and has failed.

If the customization options were truly deep, or if there was really much of an option at all, there would be more to say for this game. While the options are there for higher level or premium players, for most the game doesn't live up to its promise. Between a tech tree for new weapon options and experience points to spend upgrading and customizing your loadouts, the game has a capacity for depth that isn't realized until days and hours have already been sunk into playing it. The customization options should bemore readily accessible to new players if that's what this game is going to seel itself on. Without something special, without something to tell your friends about, Loadout doesn't stand a chance against the superior gameplay of its competitors. 7/10

Graphics: The graphical style of the game (reminiscent of Borderlands' "concept art style") is supposed contribute to that "over-the-top" sensation. Effectively, I've seen few players with the premium items and so much of the game looks repetitive. The maps are nice, but nothing special, and, while the projectiles are okay, the explosions don't make much of a visual impact. The animations are good and the way that damage shows on your character is downright admirable--easily one of the best parts of the game. 7/10

Sound: Loadout doesn't fail to utilize sound, but it does fall short of gaining anything form it. The clips of music and the beeping response you hear when you get a hit are effective at giving feedback, but they fail to add much to the experience. Sound hasn't been ignored in this game, but it has again failed to innovate in any way. 7/10

Value: As a free-to-play game, value is usually an easy win. Something for nothing is always worth it, and in Loadout you won't be overwhelmed by pay-to-win players (there just aren't very many of them). The premium currency reasonably priced, unlike it was in Renaissance Heroes, the F2P game I mentioned above, where a new weapon cost around $20. Moreover, daily rewards offer a chance at unlocking some of those premium items for free which is great. 8/10

Playing Time: Daily rewards area  great way to get players into a game day after day, but once you've gotten it there is little reason to stick around. For me, Loadout is a game I'll play for two or three matches (fifteen or twenty minutes) before I move on to something I enjoy more. I play a couple of matches, spend my experience, and move on. This is a game I'll play for a few weeks, and when I find something else I'll move on. While a game like SolForge has kept me playing with it's dailies, Loadout doesn't lend itself to quick sessions quite as well. All in all, I'll be done with this game before I really get a chance to enjoy it's customization options. 5/10

Overall: I'm not impressed with Loadout. The game is fun, but lacks anything to keep me hooked or to tell my friends about. There are no cool gimmicks or refined systems. It is too easily put down and too easily forgotten. I'm disappointed that I didn't have more customization options available to me at the start, and I feel that to be the first and foremost failure of the game. 68/100 F