Ideas and concepts usually arrive at the most inopportune moments. Over the years we’ve heard countless tales of movies and even games being inked on the back of restaurant napkins, cigarette packets and even toilet paper. We can’t help but wonder what the initial plan for Shattered Horizon looked like in its most infant form because, even at its most fleshed out, on paper it doesn’t sound like the kind of game any right-minded gamer would want to rush out and buy.

As we explained in our preview in the last issue of Total PC Gaming, Shattered Horizon is essentially Moonraker minus the terrible hairdos and sexist one-liners. It basically entails you and a bunch of online buddies shooting at each other over a few rounds of space-suited zero-G death matches with just one gun and four maps to keep you busy. We know what you’re thinking: that might get you somewhere in an internet cafe in the backstreets of Finland (where they clearly put something in the water near Futuremark’s offices), but we can’t imagine that kind of pitch would stick to the wall of any of the usual publishing suspects, especially when they’re so tied up with the invention of the next £100-plus plastic peripherals.

It’s lucky for us then that Futuremark Game Studios self-publish, because if the company hadn’t already banked ten squillion pounds making the world’s most renowned and respected 3D benchmarking software to fund it, there’s no way we would have the astounding pleasure of Shattered Horizon. Despite its rather chilling vital statistics, it’s actually one of our top picks of the year and a game any FPS fan would be crazy to ignore.

The way zero-G movement is dealt with in the game is simplicity itself. Beyond the usual WASD and mouse control setup, players need only hit an up and down button to move in full 3D. Coupled with a button to roll your orientation and one final button to latch onto any solid surface for sneaking and an improved aim, you’ve got 360 degrees of movement without the massive learning curve you’re probably expecting to find.

Yes, it will take a bit of getting used to, but it certainly isn’t rocket science. Shattered Horizon also pushes the technical envelope, and it will come as no surprise to fans of 3DMark Vantage that the game requires a fully fledged DirectX 10 rig, meaning Windows 7 or Vista and a graphics card that’s capable of churning out DX 10 instructions at a decent rate of knots. The official definition of this, straight from the horse’s mouth, is either an Nvidia GeForce 8800GT or an ATI HD3870 with 256MB of RAM. Although this will get you running, if you’re gaming at a high resolution then you’re going to want at least an Nvidia GTX260 or ATI HD4870 with 512MB of RAM and a quad-core processor.

Fast and smooth frame rates are much more important in an online FPS than in other genres, so if you want to enjoy the game as Futuremark intended without compromising your chances online, you’re going to need some pretty tasty hardware. While this might discount a fair portion of the casual gaming community, the vast majority of hardcore FPS fans should already be well enough equipped (or at least dying for a real excuse to let rip with their credit card and upgrade their hardware).

… continued