Shattered Horizon is developed and published by Futuremark Games Studio.

As you might expect from a game published by a company famous for their graphics benchmarking software, Shattered Horizon looks pretty good. The game has crafted a plausible space environment, complete with near-futuristic mining stations and lots of rocks (I do like the rocks). The textures are quite detailed across the board, and the models for the combatants are animated well and move plausibly through the weightless environment.

The game does suffer from a lot of repetition thanks to its setting: all of the levels feature the same metallic stations and same rocky rocks, but at least you have a very nice Earth to look at in the background.

The HUD also has some nice sci-fi realism touches, acting like a real computer system with boot-ups after being on the receiving end of an EMP grenade. Shattered Horizon requires DirectX 10, so you must have either Windows 7 or the Operating System That Shall Not Be Named. The game does have some steep-ish system requirements, and the game lacks support for my native screen resolution of 1280×1024. The sound design fits the game well, with an appropriate soundtrack and an in-suit sound simulation to substitute for the lack of air molecules to propagate sound waves in space. Overall, I was quite pleased with the graphics and the sound in Shattered Horizon, but make sure you have the operating system and hardware required to run it at an acceptable frame rate.

So mining workers accidentally blew up the Moon. Oopsy! The resulting fight for control between the workers themselves and the astronauts charged with apprehending those responsible is the crux of Shattered Horizon, a first person shooter that takes place in amongst the debris and wreckage. This is an exclusively online title, as there are no AI bots for single player action of filling up a less-than-capacity server. Shattered Horizon has three game modes borrowed (stolen) from other shooters: skirmish (team deathmatch), battle for control points, and assault (a one-way battle with attackers and defenders). One would hope that the unique setting for Shattered Horizon would result in at least one innovative game mode, but this is not the case. The game takes place across four maps, all of which are chaotic messes of rocks, metallic mining station parts, and more rocks. Persistent stat tracking records your performance in the game and new ranks can be earned, although they do not unlock any new abilities. For only $20, you get decent value, and the developers mention that future, free downloadable content will have more stuff.

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