Title: Killzone: Shadow Fall
Developer: Guerrilla Games
Publisher: Sony
Release Date: November 15th, 2013(U.S.)
Game Engine: Umbra 3
Number of Players: Single/Multi(Optional)
Gene: Sub-linear FPS
I got this game from a local DVD store for $15.99. Pretty cheap for a PS4 game. I got it due to this video Dan made last year. I remember how I really, really liked what I saw(even though he said there were quite a few flaws). I sooo badly wanted to see this popup on PC. Sadly, that never happened.
Anyway, I got it now. Time to have a sit down and play this thing for myself (as he only did the forth level).
So, from what I can make out as the plot of this game (which I heard from Dan that it doesn’t make sense). This is the 6th game in the Killzone series.
These aliens, in the last game (that I never played), their homeworld was destroyed. Yet for some odd reason, these humans decided to do a truce by allowing them to live on another planet (wtf?!). They did. (again.. WTF?!) However, the planet is already inhabited by another… race of humans. What’s worse? They’re the ones that destroyed the aliens’ homeworld! Hilarity ensues…
Anyway, instead of sharing the planet with the humans, the aliens are trying to kick the humans off the planet.. by force if need be.
As I said, you start as a kid. Your father (who looks like one of the rebels from City 17 in Half-Life 2. Even has the hat) claims they were promised safe passage. The only way to get there is to get beyond ‘the Wall'(and no, not the one in Pink Floyd). You and your father are trying to get to the Wall to be safe, but have to sneak past several of the aliens.
To make a long story short, your father dies (SPOI– ehh, it’s obvious) and you’re raised up by this group of rebel fighters who are trying to make sure the planet isn’t taken from them. You get the training you need as you grow up (with seeing these weird cutscenes of someone punching you while you’re in a bag).
And then there’s this scene, where you’re captured by the aliens and it looks like you’re about to be killed, and all it turns into some kind of prisoner trade with you being traded with a woman. Suddenly you see someone being shot, an RPG goes by you.. and I’m freakin’ confused.
But the most hilarious part is where it tells me “Square – Grab weapon!”. I do it, and then see one of the aliens staring at me. Then I see “R2 – Shoot him!” Hahahaha… just wow. Feels like something out of Borderlands’ comedy parts.
The rest, wasn’t as funny. As the woman grabs the gun from you and prepares to shoot you with it… then decides to run off and spares your life. Odd. Who was that woman? Whatever, as you’re rescued.
After that, shows a flyby of the city (and the title screen popping up). Pretty cool, if I must say for an intro! Yet also a bit confusing at the same time.
Finally, I get to do my first mission, which is to get this intel. I also got to “deal with” my first enemy. The game says to ‘jump on’ the enemy, and I literally jump onto his head… died instantly due to the guy looking up and filling me full of lead. 😛
Did it again, trying to jump on the enemy. Ended up jumping beside him instead. So much FAIL. Eventually I just said “Fuck it!” and melee’d him to death. The fact I’m on Easy, it seems a stab wound is fucking deadly. One stab, one kill (and we’re not talking a backstab here). Who the hell needs a sniper rifle, when I can stab someone and they instantly die?
Eventually I got my weapons, and met ‘OWL’. OWL (aka “Jeffery” to Dan), is a multi-purpose robot companion (and an FPS’ best friend). It can assist you in providing covering fire(or just kill the baddies for me as the aiming is shit(to me) on a controller), stun your enemies instead of killing them for stealth, shield you against attackers. And in certain areas, you can use it to rappel down to pretty much anywhere (literally a mobile rappel line). Just be aware that there’s certain places, can lead to your hilarious demise. Watch were you rappel down to. 🙂
You can control your OWL by using that big-ass button above your HAT sticks. The direction you swipe it tells the robot what mode to go into. Hitting L2 summons the OWL. Holding down L2 tells it to go back.
In combat, if the OWL takes a lot of damage, it will automatically go back to you to heal up. So it cannot be destroyed. The OWL can also be used to revive you if you die, given if you have an Adrenaline pack or two on you.
You also have abilities of your own, like a device called a ‘Tactical Echo’. It can pick up points of interest, and enemy locations. The longer you hold the button down, the further the sonar will go and the longer the objects will stay. However, it comes with a risk (that I do like). If you hold it down too long, you’ll end up overloading it and causing a ping sound, alerting nearby enemies to your location. Good balancing here.
There’s also no cooldown timer… unless you overload it. Very nice.
You can also heal yourself with those Adrenaline Packs. Doing so gives you a temporary bullet-time affect, allowing you to time your shots right.
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Review time;
Good:
-The OWL helps by killing your enemies. Plus it can teleport.
-Beautiful, jaw-dropping landscape and art styles.
-Quick reload times for when you die.
-Able to choose which objective you wish to tackle first. It all leads up in the end.
-Awesome, interesting weapons. Especially the standard issue Sniper/Assault Rifle.
Bad:
-Enemies don’t eventually go back to what they were doing if they saw you. They keep waiting for you.. forever.
-Easy difficulty is TOO easy(at times). Enemies instantly die if I stab them (not talking a takedown or a backstab) just once, however it takes several rounds of the OWL to kill one enemy.
-Confusing plot.
-Why is it when I pick up a weapon, it replaces my secondary weapon instead of my primary?
-Checkpoints are few and far in-between. Try not to screw up too much (like instantly dying of an area that you shouldn’t be)…
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Final Thoughts: I’ll be honest. The plot so far just continues to baffle me. Why… why is the human race so STUPID?! They eliminate the alien homeworld… yet make a truce, only for these aliens to come to the planet the SAME group of humans that killed the alien homeworld, and now they’re living on the planet (to do questionable (to me) things). Personally, I expected them to wipe everyone out, or use them as slave labor. Like the Combine did in Half-Life 2.
Thinking about the reason why they suddenly “felt sorry” about making the aliens’ homeworld a lifeless rock floating in space, this truce was to get the survivors out of there. There are always beings caught in wars, that never wanted to be in it. This was their way of helping these guys out. Makes sense.
What doesn’t…WHY in the fuck did they lead them to to the planet, that had the race of the SAME fucking people who did the bomb?! Who was in charge of this truce? Did they not see the possible repercussions of this happening? Or did they just not care?
So they let them live with the humans, by resurrecting a humongous wall to separate them and the humans. Yet, skirmishes still happen. And these have evolved into the aliens wanting the planet all to themselves. Yet can you not blame them? The humans, destroyed their world. Don’t you think they want a new one (and rather piss off the ones that caused this mess)?
So why are we at war? Because we want the planet back. We feel like, we don’t have to move.. yet it’s OUR fucking fault they’re here!! Someone needs to fucking WAKE UP!! I don’t even know where the irony starts.
Who’s really the “good guy” in this mess? Obviously, there are no “good guys”. Not even this guy I play as.
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Final Review: Even with the confusing plot and characters I don’t know anything about as I never played the previous Killzone games, the game is really pretty. But it also feels like a ‘next gen tech demo’.
This game feels like it was supposed to set the bar, of how good the PS4’s graphics would look. But as most know, graphics don’t always make an awesome game. The plot and the mechanics, are what make it awesome. This… suffers from that. At least it isn’t shit, and that’s OK in my book.
Surprised I found a copy that’s so, so much cheaper than the $40 price tag on the Playstation Store.