Shattered Horizon Review (PC)

I’ve been playing multiplayer games since the mid nineties;  I would connect to my local BBS via modem, start MPlayer, and fire up Quake.  It was a lengthy process, but it was an experience like nothing else I’d ever played.  For the first time, I was able to battle friends from all over, some who I’d never met face-to-face.

Today’s gamers are spoiled.  Many of them were born into a multiplayer world, and take the phenomenon of batting people halfway ’round the world for granted.  This could be why I’m often being school by some 12-year old, with a southern accent, and a mouth like a sailor: they have no appreciation or respect for the marvel that multiplayer gaming is.  But I digress...

In my 13 years experience, there has been little change to the first person shooter.  They are often different flavors of the same Kool-Aid: modified version of the same sugary drink.  Sure, it’s okay, but it’s still the same thing you’ve been drinking since you were a kid.  Yes, there are space flavors, and war flavors, and a number of others, but it’s all the same after awhile.  Games like the Battlefield series have broken the mold by introducing vehicles, but when you break it down to the pure multiplayer first-person-shooters, little has changed.

Shattered Horizon, arrived on the scene with little fanfare, which is a terrible injustice since it may be the most innovative first person shooter in recent history.  Horizon is a first-person-shooter that exists in a 3-dimensional space - outer space to be specific.  "Shattered Horizon is set 40 years from now. Man is back on the Moon..." reads the background story section of the game’s manual.  Donned with a space suit that is equipped with  a jet pack allowing you to move in all three dimensions, a HUD that reminds me of the curved screen of Metroid Prime, and a slew of weapons, including EMP grenades capable of temporarily disabling opponents, you are ready to begin the battle in zero-gravity.