Killzone: Shadow Fall, brought to us by Guerrilla Games, is the sixth installment in the ten-year-old Killzone franchise. While it’s still not the transcendent shooter that Guerrilla is clearly capable of producing, the team has taken a lot of feedback on the previous titles and incorporated it into Shadow Fall to create the best game in the series.
Platforms: PS4
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer: Guerrilla Games
Genre: SFFPS (Sci-Fi First Person Shooter)
Release Date: November 15, 2013
ESRB Rating: Mature
In the single-player campaign, you take on the role of Lucas Kellan, Shadow Marshall for the Vektans. If you don’t know your Killzone lore, they are the good guys… kinda. After nuking the living hell out of the Helgan home planet at the end of Killzone 3, the Vektans decide to give half of their homeworld to the Helgast who survived. Because, you know, that’s the thing that makes the most sense. A few years later and, surprise surprise, some rogue Helgast decide they don’t like living beside their mortal enemies and decide to start attacking.
Insert Kellan, who goes back and forth across the wall that separates the two halves of Vekta, fighting the Helgast threat. Take a pinch of rogue soldiers, a maniacal matriarch, and the impending threat of genocide, and you have a solid story that does well to frame the action sequences but, at the end of the day, does not really matter and can, for the most part, be ignored.
The biggest achievement of Killzone: Shadow Fall is the stunning visuals and art design. Pushing the power of the PlayStation 4, hardly a minute goes by when the game isn’t gorgeous. Much of the title is incredibly colourful, a design choice that is incredibly far removed from its predecessors, especially Killzone 2. Even the indoor levels, which account for maybe 40 percent of the 12-hour campaign, are beautiful. The graphics and art place this latest Killzone far above it’s first-person shooter contemporaries, as recent titles like Battlefield 4 and Call of Duty: Ghosts are either just plain ugly or visually uninteresting. It’s a shame the sound design does not impress on the same level.
The moment-to-moment gameplay also pushes Shadow Fall above many of the other entries in the FPS genre, as well. Rather than just corridor-upon-corridor and endless waves of respawning bad guys, Shadow Fall gives you open-ended areas with multiple objectives and patrolling enemies. It allows the player more freedom in the way they take on single objectives and entire missions. However, this can be to the game’s detriment. While I appreciated the liberty I was granted, I did, multiple times throughout the story, end up wandering around looking for the smallest hint at what button to press in order to continue.
Like many PS4 launch games, Shadow Fall is home to several DualShock 4 gimmicks. However, they do not feel shoved in just for the sake of it. The light bar on the DualShock changes color from green all the way down to red, depending on the status of your health which is sometimes handy but rarely used. The clicky touchpad on the DualShock is used far more often and to much greater effect. Swiping in different directions gives you various types of control over your Owl, a drone fella who follows you around until you press the L1 button to tell it to attack or stun. Your companion can also hack enemy terminals, create shields, or launch a zipline for a quick escape. It’s incredibly handy and can get you out of a bad situation in a pinch.
Shadow Fall’s multiplayer experience is also pretty fun. While it doesn’t reach the dizzying heights of Battlefield 4’s 64-player mayhem, the game’s 24-player matches are fast-paced and explosive affairs. Classic Warzone is my preferred gametype, offering plenty of multiplayer game styles in one long team battle. You’ll play through capture the flag, map domination, and an assault mode in all but name, in one streamlined battle. You also have the option of creating a Custom Warzone, which allows for a more customized multiplayer experience by limiting player options or setting modes and maps.
Judging games that were originally released as part of a console’s launch lineup is a tricky affair as the games are, more often than not, rather disappointing. Killzone: Shadow Fall has its disappointing moments, however, the experience is far more positive than negative. It is still not the Halo-killer that PS fans originally wished it to be, but it is the best entry in the Killzone franchise and probably the best first-person shooter out at the moment on a PlayStation platform.
Review Disclosure: A retail copy of Killzone: Shadow Fall was purchased by Warp Zoned for the purposes of this review.
