Shattered Horizon, what a joke.

Ok, so I gave Futuremark the benefit of the doubt and bought Shattered Horizon. It was fun for a bit. I bought it about a month ago, and when I join now, there's only like two servers populated. One in Europe with like 20 people and ones in USA with about 12 people. Sorry, but stick with benchmarks. The game was fun, but obviously was lacking in a lot of areas, not to mention steep system requirements, to make it a one trick pony that people grew tired of quickly. It has a great concept, and could be so much more, but it just isn't. Don't waste your money.

 

i never brought it, but it looks great in screenshots

 

It's already out? haha musta missed something

 

i was on the closed and open beta and there were lots of server problems.once they got ironed out and as like htwingnut mentioned above its sadly a one trick pony. great for a few hours and then it gets boring.

 

Oh yeah, Futuremark was making a game.

 

After you gave me that guest pass I played for about 30 mins and deemed it a waste of time

 

I had fun, but for one, not even worth $20, I spend $18 through pre-order. I'd say $10 it's fun for a few hours of gameplay. I probably put in about 10-12 hours, and don't care to put in any more.

 

I liked the concept, but playing on my 3 day guest pass I could tell it was not a game I would buy.

Graphics were OK but not superb, the gameplay just felt meh.

If it had more variety, more weapons, and some tighter more action packed gameplay it could have done a lot better.

 

I agree.. I gave it the benefit of the doubt too. Unfortunately they relied too much on the zero-g aspect, and while neat, it can't carry the game. Hopefully they'll release an update/patches and add some more interest to the game, because right now it's pretty boring.

Not to mention the insane system requirements for what you end up with. Calling it unoptimized would be a compliment.

Keep trying Futuremark!

 

I nver liked it.. the trailer didn't look good and the graphics were crap...good thing i didn't buy it..

 

Its crazy system requirements and nearly zero marketing dont really help.
I never seen one advertisment of it, and the only reason why i know it is because its been discussed here.

 

I thought the graphics were amazing -_-. But yeah, I got tired after a week.

 

The only thing that will make it better is if they significantly lower system requirements for one, and make different character classes. Everyone having the same weapon (yes only one) makes for a kinda boring game too.

 

Never fooled me. I think their benchmarking product is ridiculous as well.

 

well it was a first attempt - maybe their next game will be better now they made a little money off this perhaps?

 

I have my fingers crossed that they made money (I'm worried about that), and that they continue to improve SH and/or make a new game!.

I agree. No excuse to release a FPS game with a single weapon choice. Absolute nonsense. I have no idea how that got past whomever was in charge at Futuremark.

 

The game is DX10 only, what do you want for minimum? I agree a 8800GT sounds a lot, but by today's standard it's like having a FX 5800 being the minimum card in the time the first DX10 cards appeared on the market.

 

You have a good point, but I think the idea here is that they could've made the exact same game with DX9. There's nothing groundbreaking in SH that requires DX10 (at least from what I saw).

 

There is nothing groundbreaking. It could have been done with the Source or Unreal engine and run on much lesser system requirements. I didn't see anything special about it at all.

 

Shattered Horizon was built off of the 3DMark Vantage engine/tech, which means DX9 was a no go

Anyway, it looks fun. Hopefully they expand it, and it gets popular. I'd really like to check it out. Anyone want to PM me a 3 day guest pass?

 

The whole point is that for the requirements it offers nothing spectacular. Even Crysis for its poor coding at least somewhat justified its steep system requirements by rewarding us with some spectacular visuals. Heck, even Crysis doesn't require a dual core CPU to play.

Shattered Horizon offers bland and more or less solid colored textures, character models that are static and simple but even if you look beyond that, the gameplay is fun for a few hours, but gets bland very quickly.

 

I want to try it out. It's got lots of potential indeed, but it does look like it needs some stuff added in like maybe new weapons and vehicles. I really hope they made their money back, we need all the PC developers we can these days. There is a huge potential for the environments to be home to some really crazy battles with the addition of offensive/defensive armaments, as well as possibly movable defenses like armored walls and what not. If I was the creative director of the game, I'd be pushing all sorts of ideas.

 

From the very beginning I thought it existed only as a program to show off how powerful one's computer was (read: benchmarking with some entertaining extras).

[Pro-gamer:] Hey look! My uber-1337-haxxor custom setup with 4 AMD Opteron hexacores and 4 HD5970s.
[Friend:] So what can it do?
[Pro-gamer:] (Fires up Shattered Horizon) Dude... It runs 4 of these at once, maxxed out, at like 200FPS.
[Friend:] Whoah...
[Pro-gamer:] Yeah... (Promptly exits game and plays CS 1.6 in all its blocky glory).

 

LOL @ MGS2392. Too funny, and probably true. When I was in game so many people were like, "whoa, this game looks awesome" or "unbelievable graphics", etc. People would get pissed if you told them it looks like crap.

One thing I'm surprised at is that there IS no benchmark within the game. I thought they'd at least have a benchmark included.

 

Why include one for free when they sell one?

 

Well, the game isn't free though. You pay $20 for $10 worth of content.

 

@htwingnut I think the engine is justified in its requirements and that the graphics are superior, but the ball was dropped by the modelers. As with any engine/rendering tool, you can spend literally hours and infinite resource rendering a near-perfect circle, but without textures people won't really care or notice. I could be wrong, but from some of the HD videos I can tell the objects that exist in the game are rendered in very high detail - the problem is the objects that exist are only bland metal structures and rocks.

Their engine is getting a bad rap when it really should be the content. I just hope someone proves this by making a mod with delicious textures/props.

 

I never said the game was free. I said why include a benchmark for free, when they already sell one (a benchmark)

 

I heard (or read) your cynicsm, and I agree. But my point is that why no benchmark considering (a) it's from a benchmarking company and (b) you hardly get your money's worth. Either way, point taken.

I think it is silly that you have to buy their benchmark, or get a new keycode every time you want to run it. Thankfully I won a key from some video card promotion for 3DMark Vantage.

 

Very good point, @nthony. I'm hoping this is the "Zune" equivalent for Futuremark. They just put it out there to get some brand recognition and experience, and hopefully they'll use it as a platform to grow from.

 

Yes, that may be, then they need to fire whoever let this thing go the way it was and redo it. That's part of the issue, it's all black and gray for 90% of the screen, and even the existing structures and models are bland single tone textures. I guess for space that's what you'd expect, but it is a very bad design decision then.

Even so, the gameplay sucks. It is fun, I'll admit, for the first few hours, but once the novelty wears off, there's nothing left.

 

So far I'm enjoying the game. It's to keep me going when I get burned out from MW2.

 

No doubt the simple mechanics of the game, and 3D aspect make it interesting, but it loses its appeal. Just look at the number of users online the first few weeks of launch, and now it's abysmal. This is also what I hate about so many games that concentrate on multiplayer any more. If the multiplayer aspect doesn't attract a crowd, then if you actually enjoy it, you get no value out of it.

 

It brings me back to the old Tribes days where physics actually existed. I hate how in present games, the guns don't factor in the momentum from the movement of the vehicle.

 

I called this one as a failure shortly after it was announced.

I'd say go back to benchmarks programs Futuremark, but they fail at that now too.

 

People putting way too high expectation on the game. It's a multiplayer only game adding a strong twist to a old fashion genre.

Did you really expect something ground breaking like the first CoD?

 

I expected more than 1 gun. If it had that it might be worth $15

 

I am planning to get this game, hows is the performance of this game on laptops?

 

bit late now but it was in the steam sale 2 days ago for £3.75 wich is roughly $5-6

 

IMO not worth it still... looks boring and too demanding ... even GTA 4 is better optimised and better game overall...

 

For $5 it's worth a spin. But there's nobody on the servers last I checked. Maybe the Steam sale will spawn some interest again for a little bit.

 

I got it while it was $5 and I'm enjoying it. It isn't the best thing since sliced bread but I do think there is more to it than meets the eye. The more I play it the more I like it. 3 degrees of freedom may seem gimmicky but it really does change the typical FPS dynamic.

Plenty of people playing btw.

 

this game flew clear over my head and I didnt even hear it buzz by. doesnt sound like I missed anything though

 

Same here, bought it for $5 and I have to say it is pretty good. Plays really well on the Sager 9850 as well. I think it may even have been worth the $19... The servers where pretty full the past few days, I hope it stays that way.

 

One can hope, but less than four weeks after initial launch there were only like two populated servers.

 

pretty popular at the moment after a 1/2 price weekend. The more i play the more i like it. and once everything is maxed out it looks great to boot.

 

It always is popular for a couple weeks after a sale, then it's dead until the next sale.

 

I am interested in trying this, but it's clear that there was not buzz around this. AvP in comparrison has already sold like 2 Million Units, and that game got average reviews many places.

I might buy it when it's like 2€ or 5€

 

Like I've said, It's not a bad deal for $10 or less (so approx 8€) because you can get a good 10-12 hours of entertainment out of it. It is a bit refreshing, but it gets old very quickly.

 

Like Section 8. I got about that much entertainment for that much payment.

I might try it when the next sale rolls around, since I'm knee-deep in other games I want to finish.