Killzone: Shadow Fall

This is more of a quick walkthrough of my thoughts on the game rather than an official review.

SPOILERS BELOW!

Shadow Fall offers amazing visuals (by far the best on consoles that I've seen) along with some really great controls due to the dualshock 4 feeling fantastic. The game also has a lot of fun going on with the OWL, secondary fire mode, slow-mo ability and so forth. The AI feels pretty damn tough and I died several times despite playing on Easy. The soundtrack was also pretty damn awesome and really brought up the atmosphere that certain levels portrayed.

However the whole thing goes down drastically due to mainly the following remarks:

Game design.

Guerrilla were not able to create a well designed "wide linear" game. It leads to spamming up on the d-pad to see where you are going, along with enemies coming from all over the place. Combine that with the AI being able to flank you along with droids flying above you: We're talking multiple enemies from all over the place with your destination being unknown. It does not help that the game on a couple of occasions decides to spawn waves of enemies that ultimately feels like a cheap way to increase the length of the game. This increased the closer you got to the end and it only prolonged the story which ultimately ended very weak.

Story and Characters.

I enjoyed the ending and I applaud Guerrilla for doing something different. However it also made me realize just how little I care for the characters. When Lucas (our main character) was shot by Sinclar (the leader of the Shadow Marshals), I felt absolutely nothing. I was also really saddened by the fact that Jorhan Stahl had such a little role in the game and that his voice actor had changed and overall character suddenly had a different perspective (even if it is 30 years after Killzone 3).

Then the game ends and we play as Echo and once again the game design feels poor which leads to the whole ending feeling underwhelming. After killing Sinclair with Echo the game just ends and you do not get any feeling of resolve regarding the Vektans and the Helghasts. It is just about the characters and the issue lies within the story being so far greater than the characters are.

If you want to make a game about people, you need to make sure your writing team is up for the task. Because I did not care about anything that happenend to our characters. I am surprised at the fact that they had a chance to do so much and were able to accomplish nothing. Echo to me, is the only character in the game that actually had the potential to be something more.

Multiplayer.

It is not a "killzone" like the previous entries. I found myself running and gunning similar to the Call of Duty games and this is a true shame. Where Killzone 2 had amazingly long firefights with many players fighting at certain areas, Killzone 3 downed this a notch but I felt those moments were still there. In Shadow Fall however, this is completely gone. Perhaps it is due to the oddly populated matches. Nevermind the fact that it just does not feel the way I was hoping it would but it feels rather boring and dull. I do not see myself spending too much time here really.

Overall, I would say the game is above mediocre but not by much. It is a decent game.

6/10