Killzone: Shadow Fall is a futuristic shooter, a launch title exclusive to the PlayStation 4. It’s one of the first games of a (very) new era, a generation of new sights and sounds, graphics and processors and p’s – all 1080 of them – with promises of New and Bigger and Better, experiences like we’ve never had before! Does Killzone: Shadow Fall live up to the hype? Not quite. It’s definitely a pretty game, and it tries very hard to make sure you know it, with long, sweeping presentations of areas, and great detail in the environments. Sometimes the game made me feel like it was trying to show off. “Look at me”, in a tech demo sort of way. Action is fast, and plentiful for the most part. There are things to shoot, places to see, and objectives to fulfill, as you’d expect. But “as you’d expect” is a good description of Killzone.

Earlier, I almost described Killzone: Shadow Fall as a “typical” futuristic shooter. That’s because it reminds me of most shooters I’ve played in almost every way. The single-player campaign is a series of missions glued together by a pretty thin layer of story. You’re given an objective, you carry it out. You take on entire armies on your own. You run around varying environments, like futuristic cities, satellite laboratories, or open fields with buildings cropping up now and then, shooting anything that moves, pick up the guns and ammo that the things you shot dropped, and you carry on. This time, you’re joined by a companion drone called an OWL that you can command to attack enemies, set up a shield for you, hack alarms and computers, and create a zipline for you to get to other, hard-to-reach areas of the map. The utilization of a helper companion drone does help Killzone: Shadow Fall stand out a little, and keeps it from being a totally “typical” shooter. But with the zipline it now feels a little more like Tomb Raider, too.

The game looks pretty great, with some areas being bright, sunny, and natural, and some very cold, being almost devoid of light, except for the glow of some instrument panels. It’s all pretty convincing. The campaign maps are large, and give you plenty of room to run and shoot. But this became one of my biggest issues. Many times the areas were too big, and too open. I felt like I actually had too much freedom, and too much to explore. You’re given a vague mission like “program the ship to fly into the sun” and dropped into the level. You can call up an objective indicator and a list of objectives at any time you wish. Unfortunately, the list also tells you to “program the ship to fly into the sun”. The indicator more often than not is really hard to see through the background. It’s small, and gets lost in the shuffle, especially if the action is hectic. And if you’ve reached the area the marker was indicating, it disappears, leaving you to fend for yourself in finding what it was pointing you to. I spent a lot of time lost, searching for precisely where I was meant to be once I reached an area where an objective was located. And – again, typically – If your objective seems to be straight ahead of you, expect a lot of locked doors, debris, and mazes in your way. Sorry, you’ll need to go around.

The save system is pretty maddening. There are checkpoints throughout levels, but if you exit the game, you are often sent way back to an earlier save point at the beginning of the level, requiring you to spend a lot of time repeating things you have already done. I probably spent one-third of my time playing retracing my steps, or getting re-lost in a place that was hard to find the first time.

The sound is good, generally, but I must note that I’d often be receiving mission information only to have it drown out by a sudden attack, and I’d totally miss what was being said to me, which made things more difficult than they should have been.

Killzone: Shadow Fall multiplayer is – say it with me now – typical, with variations of deathmatch, co-op, and capture the flag. Nothing surprising here. Reportedly voice chat may be implemented soon.

Something I enjoyed was the Killzone’s use of the Dual Shock 4 in some new and novel ways. Maybe it is only novel because it is new, but the way the light bar becomes your health meter was cool. When it is glowing green, obviously you are okay, but as it gradually changes, you know you’re creeping closer to fatal injury and eventually bright-red death. Changing OWL modes – shield, attack, etc. – was accomplished by swiping the touch pad, which was interesting, but sometimes difficult to get to in the middle of battle. The controller’s speaker is used to play audio logs found in the game to great effect. They are unexpectedly loud and clear, and I’d find myself standing somewhere safe so that I could listen to them. One log was especially sad and spooky, and had me a little unsettled, and that was pretty nice.

As a side note, it would have been great to disable the head motion in the game. Numerous times, I got motion sick and had to quit playing. This isn’t the game’s fault, but the option would have been nice, and let it be a warning if you have issues with motion sickness from games.

Overall, though there are some negative issues pointed out here, it’s not game-breaking. There’s not a whole lot wrong with Killzone: Shadow Fall. It’s a competent shooter, with great graphics, and is a reasonably enjoyable game. It’s just that it doesn’t really stand out, and does nothing spectacular to raise it above many similarly-themed games out there.

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