E3 2013: Killzone: Shadow Fall Has Made Me A Believer
Killzone meets Crysis? Kind of.
by Colin Moriarty JUNE 12, 2013
I’ve been critical of Killzone in the past. I’ve always thought PlayStation 3’s two franchise entries in particular are mechanically stellar, but presentationally vapid. The games’ graphics are undeniably gorgeous, but the very setting of both titles – the war-torn planet Helghan – forced Sony-owned Guerrilla Games to use a lot of browns and grays that feel admittedly realistic and true-to-form, but also monotonous and worn. This resulted in campaigns that were fun, but vastly overshadowed for most players by a deep and engaging multiplayer suite that didn’t hinge on the setting.
So when Killzone: Shadow Fall was revealed back at the PlayStation 4 event in New York City in February, I was surprised by how colorful and outright different it looked compared to its predecessors. Shadow Fall was bleak and dangerous in its own way, but it wasn’t tethered to a limited color palette or the sort of sameness that held back Killzone 2 and 3’s presentation from reaching the same heights as its gameplay. Shadow Fall no doubt has its own deep multiplayer options – we don’t know anything about that yet – but what was clear to me when I played this upcoming PlayStation 4 launch title was that this
isn’t any old Killzone campaign.
Guerrilla Games is crafting what, to me, is most reminiscent of what a game would look like if Killzone collided with something more akin to Crysis.
No, Shadow Fall doesn’t take place on a single wide open map that can be explored at will, but it does take place on a series of large, non-linear maps that encourage you – and outright require you – to tackle concurrent objectives in any order of your choosing. As a result, Shadow Fall is immediately deeper and more tactical than any of the core Killzone titles that came before it. And yes, if the map I saw and played on is any indication, the game’s bright aesthetic carries over from what we first witnessed back in February.
I was immediately intrigued when I started playing. There was nothing forced about Shadow Fall’s approach; it was thoughtful and calculated. One of the developers from Guerrilla noted to me that Shadow Fall, unlike the Killzone trilogy on PS2 and PS3, is about using your brain in addition to your brawn. And it didn’t take long for me to learn exactly what he was talking about.
Killzone: Shadow Fall takes place three decades after the events of Killzone 3, and much has changed. Helghan has been effectively destroyed, stranding the Helghast and forcing them onto Vekta, a planet long occupied by the ISA. The ISA and the Helghast thus split the planet in two, and a massive, crude wall is erected between the two sides of the planet. It wraps around the entire circumference of Vekta and keeps the two once-warring factions apart. But obviously, the wall doesn’t ultimately do much good.
The forested map I played on showed the wall in the near distance. But gamers are still cast as the ISA in Shadow Fall, and at this point in the campaign, I found myself stranded with the Helghast. It was up to me to find a way back to the safe side of Vekta, which required me to accomplish a few tasks, including disabling the alarm system in the area, obliterating the anti-aircraft guns that destroyed by ship and left me in the forest in the first place, and seizing a Helghan dropship to make my great escape.
There appeared to be other optional tasks, too, and all of this – save the actual escape – could be accomplished in any order.
Immediately, Shadow Fall felt unlike any Killzone game that came before it, not only because of its non-linear mission structure and wide-open, fully explorable maps, but because it’s also a technically deeper experience from a gameplay perspective.
This isn’t just a shooter anymore; it’s far more complex, so much so that I handed the DualShock 4 over to a guy from Guerrilla after being ruthlessly massacred several times so I could at least see the proper experience.
What was so difficult? Well, there’s a lot to keep track of if you don’t have the luxury of a tutorial. You have your two weapons, which can be switched between via the triangle button, but you also have control of an all-new device called OWL. OWL, as it quickly became clear, is absolutely essential in Shadow Fall, and if you don’t know how to use it effectively – which I didn’t -- you’ll quickly be victimized by the game’s cunning and rather smart enemy AI.
OWL is mapped to both the directional pad and DualShock 4’s touch pad. By swiping on the touch pad in certain directions, specific OWL skills – such as a shock attack, a zipline, or a shield – can be selected, and then activated with the directional pad. The shock attack stuns an enemy (or a group of enemies, if they’re close to one another), leaving them vulnerable to firearm-based and melee assaults. The zipline allows for quick travel between areas of the map, letting you scale up to 50 in-game meters at a single go, so long as you have an object to attach to and a clear path to that object. The shield reminded me most of the Auger’s secondary functionality in Resistance. Simply stand behind it to absorb enemy attacks with impunity.
Using OWL gives you a much-needed break in an otherwise brutally difficult game. Shadow Fall was set on normal difficulty, and for someone like me that beat Killzone 3 on hard, it was certainly a step up in that respect. It even claimed the digital life of the developer playing on several occasions. The good news is that, while health is regenerative, you can still use health packs on the fly that will heal you quickly and slow down time for a limited period, too, giving you an edge against incoming hordes of aggressive foes.
It was especially fun – and quite novel – to effectively use stealth in Shadow Fall. The Helghast are smart and fully aware of their surroundings, but you can get the jump on them, using silent melee attacks to strike quickly without being seen. Of course, once seen, all bets are off.
The Helghast will beeline to the nearest alarm – a good reason to centrally disable those alarms before doing any other part of the mission – once they see you. It’s at this point that you get a taste of what the Helghast are packing in Killzone: Shadow Fall, as well as the more conventional weapons, apart from OWL, that you have at your disposal.
Like Resistance, weapons in Killzone now have secondary functionality. The rifle I started out the mission with can be turned into a longer-range rifle that, when charged, will blow your target to smithereens with a single strike.
But the Helghast will come at you with everything they have, too. Some have long-range sniper rifles of their own, complete with red laser sights. Others have stealth camouflage that they can activate at will, including when they’re under attack and near death. And others yet have bright lights to search a map’s dark crevasses and corners. These are especially obnoxious, since they obscure your vision in a burst of brightness if you look directly at them.
Unfortunately, I never got to take a look at any of Shadow Fall’s cinematics apart from what’s already readily available on the Internet. As someone who was most recently extremely impressed by some of Killzone 3’s cinematics, yet disappointed by how underdeveloped the story was, I hope that Guerrilla Games doesn’t only get to replicate similar high-quality cutscenes, but gets to more fully investigate and flesh-out the Killzone series’ underdeveloped plot that would act as a wonderful complement to a game that’s already shaping up to be so markedly different from what came before it.
I’ve always been fascinated by the potential of Killzone’s story, and Shadow Fall might finally be the game that lets it shine.
Yes, Killzone: Shadow Fall is still a first-person shooter, and yes, it’s as technically fine as its predecessors. But it’s the game’s fresh approach and its emphasis on strategy and patience that really makes it stand apart. Like PS Vita’s upcoming Killzone game called Mercenary, Shadow Fall is a deviation from the traditional formula, and it looks and feels new. Guerrilla Games may very well have something special on their hands, and as a Killzone skeptic turned could-be believer, I can’t wait to see and play more.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/12/e3-2013-killzone-shadow-fall-has-made-me-a-believer
y'all don't even want killzone that much but you will dikkride it cause its the only ps exclusive worth talking about.
and didn't killzone have a bundle system?
