A Hero Emerges From the Shadows: Killzone: Shadow Fall (Review)

January 16, 2014

First person shooters have been a popular choice for most gamers, from Call of Duty to the Battlefield series, gamers have been drawn into the shooting genre of games making “FPS” not only the most popular game genre, but the wealthiest genre. Killzone: Shadow Fall gives games like Call of Duty and Battlefield a run for their money with new graphics, new ideas, and a new gaming experience.

Graphics and Sounds

In Killzone 3 the graphics surround the player with a dark environment, making the feel of the game that of pain, misery, and revenge. In Killzone: Shadow Fall it surrounds the player with beautiful and bright lighting, giving the game the feel of hope and strength. The game also provides the environment seen in Killzone 3 multiple times throughout the game. Guerrilla games really perfected the environment of a game to reflect the character’s feelings.

The sound of the game is just as wonderful as the graphics, from the sci-fi sounds of nano shields to the bullets flying past your head, the game sounds absolutely great. During a mission where Lucas must climb up a mountain I was very impressed as the sounds immerse the player in the fear of crackling rocks. Companies such as Infinity Ward attempted to do this in games such as Modern Warfare 3, however I feel like Guerrilla games really mastered the sounds and graphics of this game to the tee.

Story

Warning this brief summary may contain spoilers

In the year 2370, the Helghasts’ planet Helghan is destroyed, forcing the Helghasts to move onto a neighbor planet Vekta. A treaty between the Helghasts and the Vektans is formed that forces half of Vekta to belong to the Helghasts and another half is left for the Vektans, the division of land is separated with a giant wall. Even though a peace treaty is formed during the Helghasts arrival, the Helghasts still believed that the Vektans destroyed their home Helghan; they seek to acquire revenge by killing innocent Vektan civilians that are on their side of the wall. In efforts to flee the city safely, the main character, Lucas Kellan (age: 12), and his father sneak out in the middle of the night to escape the guards, watch towers, and drones of the Helghasts. Shortly after meeting Thomas Sinclair, a special operative military unit known as a Shadow Marshal, the father and son run into trouble with Helghasts troops, leaving Lucas’ father dead and leaving Lucas an orphan. Sinclair adopts Lucas after his father’s tragic death and enrolls him into the Shadow Marshal academy, many years after his father’s death Lucas graduates from the Shadow Marshal Academy and seeks to avenge his father and take back the side of the wall he used to call home.

Multiplayer

Classes:

Assault:

The Assault class in most first person shooter is referring to the healer, however in Killzone: Shadow Fall the assault class is based upon speeding up and flanking your enemies. For the main assault loadout the player is granted two different abilities. 1.) The ability to spawn an energy shield that protects your teammates and yourself from enemy fire. 2.) The ability to speed up, which is great for flanking, but while running your accuracy is extremely downgraded — in my personal experience excessive speeding up gives away the players positions to the enemy, thus giving you another potential downfall.

List of Assault Abilities:

Nano Shield: An energy shield to protect against enemy bullets, this also benefits the user because it gives the player the ability to shoot at enemies through the nano shield, while still remaining protected from enemies’ bullets.

Speed Dash: Speed dash increases player’s movement. Great for flanking enemies.

Note: The Speed dash leaves the player more vulnerable to enemy attacks/grenades.

Stun Blast: The stun blast is great for surprising enemy players, by flanking behind enemies and stunning them, you have an upper hand of killing them, as well as providing great crowd control.

Drone Buddy: The Drone buddy gives the player the ability to summon a drone to help attack enemies. This drone is great for covering your back, or attacking multiple enemies.

Support:

The Support class is based upon reviving teammates and providing spawn beacons for incoming troops, making sure your teammates have a safe and tactical spawn advantage is the main role for the Support. The Support also has the ability to use an attack drone; in campaign this drone is called: “OWL”. The OWL has the ability to provide covering fire, stun enemies, spawn a shield, and allows you to get to locations with the “Zip Line” ability. In multiplayer however, the Drone has only the ability to provide covering fire against enemy troops. The Support may also lay down turrets, which are good for holding an enemy in a narrow hallway, the turrets do not have a maximum firing capacity, and they have a decently high life.

Note: The best way to take out a Support’s turret is to flank the backside of the turret and disassemble it using the “triangle” button, but watch out for camping support guards.

The Support’s main objective in firefights is to get the enemies’ attention and to allow Assault classes to sneak behind the enemy and grab the kill. In an effort to do this the Support is supplied with heavy guns from a variety of high magazine assault rifles to 500 rounds turrets.

List of Support Abilities:

Air Support Drone: The support drone spawns next to the player providing covering fire with an attached machine gun, this provides the support to give a greater amount of covering fire to other players.

Supply Box: The supply box will regenerate player’s ammo and grenades. In Killzone: Shadow Fall I do not see this being a much-needed ability, due to the fact that the high amount of deaths and the high amount of ammo in the game. I have never needed to resupply on ammo from a supply box in-game. I suggest using a class that gives the support more crowd control abilities.

Turret: The Turret provides the players the ability to control a certain area with a grounded machine gun. This machine gun allows the user to flank behind enemies while the machine gun keeps the enemies’ attention.

Support Teleport: The “support teleport” allows the Support to teleport to a player in need of ammo or covering fire. This is great for capturing objectives/flags as multiple players can spawn as Support and teleport to an individual player.

Scout:

The Scout class is based upon finding enemies and using the cloak as a tactical surprise. The proximity scanner is introduced as a feature heavily used in the campaign. The scanner can detect enemies in approximately 50 meters in diameter around your location. Contrary to what you may think, this can be a disadvantage to players that are not used to the scanner: this is because if you overload the scanner, static shock is produced, thus giving away your position to your enemies. The cloak ability was introduced in Killzone 3; it gives the player the ability to go incognito to grab a kill using their knife,. The cloak ability is lost once the player gets a kill, fires a gun, or if the player is shot by an enemy’s bullet.

Note:The cloak ability works for turrets as long as the player does not reach a close vicinity of the turret.

In combat, the main role of a scout is to either provide covering fire from a distance or flanking the opponents with the cloak ability.

Helpful Hint: When using your cloaking ability, if the player runs into a large amount of enemies, throw a grenade and then start firing your gun; as you throw your grenade your cloak will not be unveiled until the grenade is released and exploded. This gives you a great opportunity to charge your grenade for more accurate kills.

List of Scout Abilities:

Tactical Echo: Used in the campaign “tactical echo” provides the Scout with the ability to see enemies, even through walls. This gives the Scout an extreme tactical advantage, as a player that does not use the tactical echo right may be a downfall for the team’s efficiency, due to if the player overloads the tactical echo it gives off a static shock giving away their position, and positions of teammates near to them.

Emergency Teleport: Much like the Support’s ability to teleport to teammates, the “emergency teleport” allows players to teleport to ‘safety’. This may also introduce a disadvantage, due to the possibility that an enemy may be close to the teleporters’ spawn.

Game Types:

Team Deathmatch:

Team Deathmatch, much like in other games, is simply to kill as many enemy soldiers as possible. The team deathmatch in Killzone provides the players with the ability of not playing the objective, and instead the objective is just purely to kill. This game type appeals to many players; from the campers to the “try-hards” you will find a large variety of gamers here.

Beacon Thief:

[Ed: I definitely did not read, then reread this as “Bacon Thief”. Nope.]
Beacon Thief is much like Capture the Flag in games like Halo, Call of Duty, and World of Warcraft: the enemy has one beacon, and you have the other beacon. Players must find safe ways to grab beacons and return the beacon to the base. The player and his team will not gain any points for capturing the beacon unless the player has their friendly beacon at base.

Beacon Retrieval:

Beacon Retrieval spawns beacons randomly all around the map; your objective is to grab the beacons and return them into your base; this will get you a point. The most points whenever the time runs out wins the match.

Capture and Move:

In Capture and Move, the objective randomly spawns; as it spawns the two teams must fight each other in an effort to capture the objective. After capturing the objective the players must defend the objective for 30 seconds. After objective is captured the objective randomly spawns in the map and players repeat the struggle in an effort to capture the most objectives by the time the match is over.

Note: While capturing objectives, the amount of players on the platform does not change the time of capturing the objective.

Final Score

The game shows off the power of the PlayStation 4 with its amazing and beautiful graphics. This game would be a tough game for any PlayStation player to pass up. The multiplayer is fun for a little bit, but overtime gets repetitive and boring.

4.5 out of 5

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rBAkj5Egok]

[SlideDeck2 id=9271]

Joshua Tarka

I first started my life as a gamer on the Christmas of 2001- that was when my father purchased the first Playstation for me- throughout the years the gaming industry evolved and so did my love for gaming, for me gaming was not just a past time—it turned into a passion. Currently I am in college for game design and business in efforts that one day I can change the world of gaming forever.