Killzone Shadow Fall Review

                  

I never really played Killzone until now. I only picked it up since it was the only ps4 exclusive at launch. I tried Killzone 3 and was not really impressed. Then I got Killzone mercenaries for Vita for the same reason I got Shadowfall. And that game gave me a new hope for the series. It may be my favorite Vita game besides Tearaway. So I needed a game to play for my next gen system and with Mercenaries giving me hope I picked it up.



The first thing that I noticed was how fast it is. The next gen systems are fast but right when I pressed play it went straight to the main menu. Playing Battlefield 4 and Black Flag (my other 2 next gen games) there is a very short loading time, but with Shadow Fall there is no loading at all. That continues into the gameplay: almost no loading. The next thing I noticed was the graphics. And this is the game you want to so off. If you want to so the power of the ps4 play this game. Everything is perfect in terms of graphics. Every facial expression to every building. You will be blown away when you gaze onto the city. Put together with amazing graphics and no loading times the game flows great with nearly no glitches. This is definitely a technical marvel.

The story was a little different for me since it was the first Killzone game I actually paid attention too. For someone that had no idea what was going on it was pretty easy to follow. The whole idea of a wall separating the Helghast from the VSA is an interesting concept. The Helghast side being dark and violent while the VSA has a bright colorful city. Even with this interesting concept the story is still not anything special. It's just a normal FPS story line based in the future with more focus on politics. The ending also happened pretty fast and I was hoping for a more epic confrontation before the credits started rolling. The story is not that bad but it's definitely no Bioshock Infinite. The voice acting is ,at times, a little bad. I found myself laughing at the protagonist's voice a couple times as while as Tyran's, the leader of The Black Hand. But overall the acting is about the same as the story: good but not anything special. The villains are your typical bad guys but your allies are more diverse. Sinclair is a father figure but he changes throughout the story and you see what is really running through his head. But I found him pretty annoying throughout the whole game. Your main ally is Echo, a intelligence operative for the Helghast who is also a half breed- she has both Helghast and Vektan blood. She is my favorite character because she will stop at nothing to get the job done which corresponds with Luca Kellan(your character) She is a great ally except for that time you have to protect her while she hacks a computer. You have to defend her while 100 guys attack all while she nags. But that's beside the point.

This is basically a first person shooter but there are still some unique features. Your character is armed with a owl, a little robot that you will come to love. This is because it will save your life multiple times and be a huge help in combat. It has four abilities: a shield that enemies can't shoot through but you can, an attack mode which will go after any enemy, a stun mode that's pretty self explanatory, and a zip line that provides many different options when in combat or exploring. And it is all accessed with the new touchpad on the ps4 controller. This touchpad is very smooth and works well; you will be surprised how easy it is. Each mission is different with a variety of environments. Some are your same old call of duty style and some are your open area crisis style. There are also some anti gravity sections that try to give you a break from the combat. I did not see a problem with these sections but many people did. It does seems to drag along while you are waiting to kill someone. The guns are your normal Fps weapons with the addition of a few unique ones. One of those is your really cool primary gun. It's a assault rifle that can be switched to a sniper rifle. The only problem is that you can't get rid of it! Yes, you are stuck with it for the whole game!

Now for the multiplayer which I have come to love. Since this was my only ps4 game for a while, I got a lot of time with the multiplayer. The first thing that you will notice is that you start out with every gun. That means no people carrying around the best assault rifle with a missile attached while you have a pistol. There is still a ranking system to get attachments for those guns and new gear like grenades. This ranking system is unique because it goes by how many challenges you complete. There are thousands of challenges so if you see a guy that's rank 1,520 now you know why. These are your normal challenges from a multiplayer game like getting so many kills, and healing so many people. Each class has different abilities like shields, healing, turrets, and owls. There are several game modes but the most unique is warzone where the objective will change in the middle of the match. What's also unique is that people can make their own modes so you get interesting ones like shotguns only. I like this multiplayer so much because it is just fun. It's not anything special but you will have fun playing it and that's all that matters. At times your will encounter some crazy moments that makes me call it a FPS version of Uncharted except you don't have to shoot people 1,000,000,000 times!

Killzone Shadow Fall gets a 8.5 out of 10