Overview

Shattered and how

A year ago, Firingsquad reviewed a little game called Shattered Galaxy. Shattered Galaxy was one of the first of its kind, a massively multiplayer real time strategy game, and for being such an ambitious project, it was being put on by one of the smallest development companies in the business. The track record for the massively multiplayer market at the time wasn’t looking all too great, 10six was on its last legs despite being backed by one of the largest companies in the business. Sovereign, Sony’s contribution to the massively multiplayer strategy market, was well over a year behind schedule (and Sony/Verant have been quiet like the dead on it since a bad E3 2000 showing –ed.) Even some roleplaying games like Shadowbane had no publisher and no release date.


However, for every critic, market analyst, network administrator and consumer that said Nexon couldn’t do it, there were just as many eager fans ready to subscribe away study time and moments with the girlfriend if Nexon brought Shattered Galaxy to the table. Not only did Nexon deliver Shattered Galaxy, they published a game that blew people away. The Independent Games Festival lauded nearly every award on Shattered Galaxy, including the grand prize. GameSpot tossed Nexon the multiplayer strategy game of the yearas well as the most innovative game of the year. Of course, Shattered Galaxy also earned the legendary crème de la crème FiringSquad Editor’s Choice Award.

All lined up

Alien attack

Command sniper taking a shot

Shattered Galaxy brought players their first real experience with a MMORTS. Players engaged in battles fighting for their faction with other teammates, attempting to control points of contention (POCs) with artillery or ground to air batteries to push back encroaching enemies. Players not only engaged in this online warfare with their fellows, but were also rewarded as they did so, with experience, wealth and watching their units turn from tiny footmen firing peashooters to launching IRBM Nuclear weapons that laid waste to a whole screen’s worth of units. Shattered Galaxy merged the level production and advancement paradigm of games like Everquest and Asheron’s Call with a gameplay-centric game model that followed in the footsteps of legends in the strategy genre, such as StarCraft. The result was a game that was not only incredible from a design perspective, but appealed to the average player enough to have them charging POCs with their infantry until the wee hours of the morn.

Condors spanking some arbalests

Clustering a POC.

Let the barrages begin

That’s not all she wrote

It didn’t end there. Shattered Galaxy not only met Nexon’s expected results, but continued to draw in players by the hundreds. As a result Nexon has continued to support Shattered Galaxy, not satisfied with simply running the servers, but adding content and continuing to balance and create. Shattered Galaxy went through one major patch in their 1.3 update and with interest in SG beginning to wane a bit, a few days ago SG went through their 1.5 update bearing hordes of new units, changes, tweaks, new items and a new interface. The game has undergone so many changes that the minimum system requirements listed on the Shattered Galaxy site have almost doubled since the game’s first release.

We sat down to re-examine Shattered Galaxy 1.5, and see if the radically changed game still maintained its revolutionary and addictive gameplay that earned it an Editor’s Choice Award over a year ago.