Shattered Galaxy

"Intergalactic Domination was Never this Fun... or Free"

Finding any video game that is free to play and is a good game is a hard thing to do. Finding a massive multiplayer game that is free is also a hard thing to do, yet Shattered Galaxy has both these qualities. If you head over to www.shatteredgalaxy.com you will be able to download this game and play it totally free. Everyone says no one will give you something for nothing, but there is quite a lot of quality to this game for absolutely no cost.

Plot – 5/10 This game does not really have a lot of plot, but I could not give it a terrible score. Instead of trying to make a plot and having a really horrible one, they just kind of skipped this step so I give them credit for at that. Basically, the plot is you are in one of three armies on the planet of Relic (you can later go to other armies on other planets). The three armies are battling for control of the planet so you have to deploy the units under your control, go to the battlefield and fight. There is not really anything more than that, but this lack of plot does not hurt the game at all. You are constantly motivated to go into more battles by the game play not the plot.

Graphics – 7/10 For a totally free game the graphics are pretty good, of course that does not mean they can not be critiqued. Many of the maps feel like the same map, but perhaps this is because battles mainly take place on the same ten maps of the possible 90. There are many different maps, but players just seem to converge and battle in the same areas, so it is not really the game's fault. Also what can get annoying is your men take damage as soon at the enemy fires their weapon. With quick firing lasers this is not a problem, but it gets weird when the enemy fires slow moving missiles only to have your men die then get hit seconds later. Overall, the graphics are good, but you should not be expecting refined beauty from a totally free game.

Music/Sound – 4/10 Music is not this games strong point, basically there are three tracks. Battle, non-battle and on your way to battle. When you are in your base there is one track, when you have assigned what battle to go to you hear another, and when you are in any battle you hear the last one. Not much of a selection, but as I keep saying, its free. The sound is also alright. There are very few sound effects and the few are often repeated in many situations. Overall, the Music/Sound was so lacking I put the game on silent and would run windows media player to listen to music. This one section of the game that is lacking should not deter you from downloading it though.

Game Play – 9/10 This is where the game really shines. First off there is no single player. If you play this game it is on-line with tons of other people, one of the best aspects are the huge battles. To sum the game up in a sentence, you control a small amount of men (you start with 6) on a battlefield that can be as large as more than 40 other players. Of course, there is more to this game. There are four types of units: infantry, air, mobile and organic. Infantry is straight up soldiers. Air is anything that flies. Mobile is anything in machines on the ground. Organic is alien creatures. You buy a bunch from the different classes on use them in battle against other people and over time they gain experience and levels. These levels give you points, which you can use on your character's stats. There are four stats you have: tactics, education, mech app, and clout. I will get to education and mech app later. Tactics refers to how many men you are allowed to have on the field at once. If you put enough points in tactics instead of six men, you can bring seven. More clout allows you to get more advanced types of units quicker. Depending on what your level in a certain type of unit is you will be allowed access to new soldiers, but adding clout will allow you to have access quicker.

One of the coolest aspects is that you can build your men anyway. There may only be about ten types of units in each classification (so about 40 all together), but everyone can build their units in their own way. You can upgrade the weapon, fuel supply, engine, armor, CPU, and not to mention a lot of bonus stuff. This basically means that everyone can build their units in their own special way. You can have a weak attacking, slow moving air fleet, but put massive armor on them so they can take a beating. Or you could have a long distance attacking, super fast air fleet, with no armor at all. The attribute of education allows you get access to new technologies faster while mech app allows you to have more space to put more and bigger things on/in your units. What all this means is that though many other people will have the same unit types as you; the chance of someone actually upgrading them the exact same way and having the exact same unit is almost impossible.

Now, I have spent a lot of time talking about how the units work, but what about the battle system. Basically, the battle system is a giant “king of the hill” battle. There are little spots called POCs on the battle maps and if you keep units on it for a minute straight your team gets ownership of it; if you get them all you win, but your opponents can just as easily steal them from you. Capturing/holding these POCs is not as easy as it sounds, especially when two teams of about 20 people are throwing everything they have at the POC. Teams can be as big as 25 people on both sides, so the battles can get intense. It may seem trivial to be controlling six men in such a large battle, but that is where all the fun lies. Brining the right men at the right time, helping a teammate in need and saving the last POC from being captured at the very last second are a few of the great aspects that this battle system creates.

Playtime – 10/10 If you want to keep going, there is almost nothing stopping you. You can keep leveling up in the four different categories of units and move on to new planets and keep on fighting. The battles will also never get tedious since they are always going to be different. The playtime on this game may be longer than many games that I have paid to buy.

Overall – 8/10 Generally, I add the other categories together and whatever that comes out to is the overall. The average of the categories is seven, but I felt like this game was an 8. The categories that I rated very low did not have as big of an aspect as the categories I rated very high. The bottom line of this game is that it was worth buying and now that it is totally free to download and totally free to play there should be nothing holding you back from making a character and starting your quest for intergalactic domination.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/13/06, Updated 06/23/06