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Video Game / Shattered Horizon

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Shattered Horizon is a multiplayer First-Person Shooter, created by FutureMark and published on PC through Steam in 2009. It is about a war between Earth and the Moon, with space infantry engaging each other in zero G environments. It is notably hard sci-fi for an FPS, and could very well be compared to Planetes but with guns — or Moonlight Mile.

40 years into the future, a mining accident on the moon has caused a substantially huge chunk of it to dislocate, with the debris settling into various orbits around the Moon and Earth - the ring around Earth being referred to as the "arc". This has made supply lines into and out of space difficult, and the scant few survivors who remain hail from one of two factions; the International Space Agency (ISA) and the Moon Mining Cooperative (MMC). The ISA believes the MMC to be responsible for the catastrophe, and with the last large shipment to space being essentially a big stockpile of weaponry the two sides begin war against one another, fighting for their very survival over the last available resources.

The game launched with 8 maps that could be played in either team deathmatch or objective-based. In 2011, a "Last Stand" update had also added a single player, and a co-op mode. Unfortunately, the game was pulled from Steam in 2014, as the developer, which was bought by Rovio Entertainment two years earlier, had to refocus on other projects.

Compare to 2016's Call Of Duty Infinite Warfare.

Tropes present in this game:

  • 2-D Space: You can attack from above and below, however the lack of a single horizontal plane means that 'above' and 'below' are extremely subjective. Ender's Game fans will tell you that the enemy's gate is down.
  • Abandonware: This game is no longer available to purchase on any major storefront, and the servers are now disabled. A single-player bot mode can still be played, but only if the game is already in your library.
  • Bloodless Carnage: The dead fighters float limp in space but do not really bleed, since simulating blood pooling in zero-gravity was ultimately beyond the hardware's capabilities.
  • Boom, Headshot!: Like in most FPS games, headshots deal bonus damage.
  • Detonation Moon: An explosion on the moon powerful enough to create an Asteroid Thicket around the Earth. With bits of lunar infrastructure in it.
  • Enemy-Detecting Radar: Every player has one enabled by the technology in their space suit. However, it relies on the energy emissions from the rivals' suits, so going into a low-power mode will effectively render the player invisible to these radars.
  • Pop-Star Composer: Finnish Alternative Rock group Poets of the Fall's Markus "Captain" Kaarlonen did the soundtrack.
  • Quick Melee: A pickaxe will be swung when the melee weapon is pressed. Early versions of the game had a retractable bayonet in the gun.
  • Space Is Noisy: Played with. The player's space suit will generate relevant to assist in situational awareness. Should you go to low power mode or get hit by an EMP, all you can hear is your heart beating and the bass from your gun firing.
  • Standard FPS Guns: You have pistols, SMGs, shotguns, etc.
  • Zero-G Spot: Invoked, as one map has a strip club with the same name as the trope.

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