Shattered Suns - PC

Didn't get into it much, just wasn't my thing. Graphics look kinda oldschool and user interface needs work.

This is a very different game, but if you can spend a little time in the beginning getting used to flying ships in three dimensions, and if you love sci fi and space ships like me, this game is well worth the time it takes to ramp up. Just don't expect to be up to speed in five minutes. You'll need to get the hang of the controls first and play the first few scenarios in the campaign, but once you get the controls down the three dimensional battles can get pretty awesome.Most space games I've played have their ships move in two dimensions. In this game, everything moves in three dimensions. It took me a little while to get the hang of controlling the ships in three dimensions, but once you get it it's actually pretty easy. A word to the wise, just right click on the things you want to follow or attack and don't worry about flying ships to points in space by yourself. I got caught up learning to fly them myself, but that can get tricky and you really don't need to do that since you can just give them commands to follow other things.The whole three dimensional thing affects how you control the camera too. Basically, the camera is just like any camera in any realtime strategy game. Moving the mouse to the edges of the screen moves the camera left, right, forward and backward. The mouse wheel lets you move the camera up and down. The only difference in this game is that this game also lets you focus the camera. You double click on anything (planet, moon, ship, whatever) to focus the camera on it and keep it in the center of the screen at all times. That way instead of moving the camera left or right you can pivot the camera around a planet or ship you're attacking. Sometimes if it gets disorienting (especially in deep space dogfights) I just go back to the usual controls and stop focusing the camera.The graphics leave something to be desired. They're not horrible, but they're not great either. The ship engine trails are just yellow streaks. The autoemitter weapons have a sort of lightning effect that could be really cool if done better, but it falls flat. The company's customer support site says they'll be releasing "free upgrades" so hopefully they might fix some of the graphics in one of those.Another thing is that it takes a while for the campaign to get going. You don't get into combat with your own fleet of ships until you're a few missions into the campaign, but once you do it gets a lot more fun and the fighting gets a lot more intense.Overall I give this game a 4/5 because I've never played a game with this kind of intense three dimensional fighting before. And yes, I've played Homeworld. If you love space and you don't mind spending some time to learn to fight in three dimensions, this game is definitely a keeper.

a

I guess I'm going to be going against the grain here, but I really liked this game. I think that it's getting fairly negative reviews because a lot of people are just turned off by the graphics, and I suspect that others just don't get the controls. It takes a bit of getting used to, but after some learning how to deal with objects that are constantly moving I find that the game has a lot to offer.I really like the huge range of customization that the ships in the game afford the player. Rather than the standard one or two different versions of a unit that most other games in the genre have, this game really lets you customize a ship to a great degree. There are literally hundreds of different combinations you can make to a ship, and that customization is accurately represented on the ship model in the game. It's pretty impressive how many different units you can have flying around, all with a specialized ability or task that they are equipped to handle.the use of moving planets is a cool part of the game, and it really makes this different from most RTSes that give you a standard playing field to wander about in. Depending on if you're a run-and-gun type of player, or a careful "turtle" who holes up to build your forces before attacking, you face a vastly different battlefield due to other planets rotating into close range. Since I'm a turtle, it kind of keeps me on my toes because I never know if I'm safe or not.Most people out there aren't going to go crazy over the graphics, but I'm not one of those people that really cares too much about these things. I think a lot of people like to claim that "it's not about the graphics", but I think that if this game had a bunch of whiz-bang effects they would have rated it higher (I'm not just talking about here on Amazon, but on the gaming sites as well). The graphics were fine to me, but my computer isn't a tricked-out rig so I don't really go for the graphics-heavy titles anyway.All-in-all I really like the risks that this game took, and I think that it offered a good path away from the same-old stuff like other games in the genre. It seems that a lot of people aren't willing to give it a chance, but if you're into an RTS with a deep customization scheme and a lot of different offensive tactics, you should give it a try.

Well I have to say right out of the box it did not work. I had to get vista servive pack 1 from Microsoft. Then it worked. Well dont really care now the game is just not for me. the user interface a little messed up.graphics are not that good. If you want a good game look at sins of a solar empire that has a great user interface and is very well layed out and has a little learing cure but it still great and it also gone gold

This game is pretty good.

This game has been way overhyped. This game claims to be a great RTS, but it is really a horrible cross between a windows 95 game[with the graphics to match] and a text message RPG. The camera is impossible to control, they have no tech support on their home page, and the game has severe technical glitches. It crashed 10 minutes in. Unbelieveable! This game is nothing short of a rip-off. I AVOID AT ALL COSTS!