The Hero Shooter Genre Is Booming—Does ‘Shatterline’ Stand Out?

Shatterline is a fast-paced, first-person hero shooter with a satisfying movement system and solid gunplay. But aside from integrating crypto elements, it’s hard to see how the game stands out from the swarms of other popular hero shooters on the market.

Originally launched as a non-crypto game in 2022 on Steam, Shatterline eventually shut down its early access servers to gear up for a full-fledged launch. In this process, Faraway—a gaming startup that works closely with Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs and purchased the HV-MTL and Legends of the Mara IP last year—took over as Shatterline’s publisher to offer NFT companions in the player-versus-environment (PvE) mode.

Escort the truck. Image: Shatterline

However, it appears that most of its community is found in the PvP modes of team deathmatch, escort, and conquest—the last of which is like headquarters mode in Call of Duty. Here, the game’s fun movement system really thrives. Players can dash, sprint, slide, and climb across the map to create quick ways to outmaneuver the enemy.

The gunplay is also pretty tight, although nothing to write home about. I found that only a few of the weapons available off the bat actually felt effective, with most feeling either too clunky or simply underpowered. For a game with such great movement, it’s a shame that looking down the scope of a weapon seems to root you in place, slowing down the general play.

As it’s a hero shooter, each character has its own unique abilities. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like any of these heroes stood out in terms of ability or personality. On top of that, none of the abilities even feel particularly enjoyable, outside of the ultimate moves that you can only use sparingly.

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The PvE mode is where crypto elements come into play. This mode puts the player on a mission to find resources, kill aliens, and safely extract out of there, and holders of HV-MTL NFTs can use their mechs as in-game comparisons in this mode. Again, it’s a solid experience, but didn’t leave me hungry for more.

Clear sectors of aliens in the PvE game mode. Image: Shatterline

According to the Faraway site, there are some other crypto elements that could keep players around—such as a planned play-to-airdrop campaign using HV-MTL tokens, or leaderboards paying out USDC rewards. Both of those could provide substantial incentive to play Shatterline above other genre heavyweights.

Otherwise, Shatterline feels like a solid offering with a few standout elements—like the nimble movement—but not quite enough to make it memorable. It’s a fun game to pick up and test out for a few hours. But after that, it’s likely to be forgotten about as genre giants like Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, and Apex Legends continue to command massive audiences.

Edited by Andrew Hayward