Killzone: Shadow Fall (PlayStation 4)

I don't play shooter campaigns, only the MP so after I got my PS4 I promptly inserted KZ disc and hopped onto multiplayer. Following is my impression. So ya this review is for MULTIPLAYER ONLY. * 60 FPS gameplay. Killzone SF Multiplayer has 60 FPS gameplay almost all the time. Sometimes the framerate dips below slightly for the smallest of intervals but its very hard to tell. * Eye popping graphics - Sometimes in the middle of my gameplay I would literally stop and gape at how beautiful the graphics look. Smoke comes out of gun after I spray it, particles explode from surface as bullets shatter. Realtime lighting and shadows illuminate and darken surfaces in a natural way. The best part is this is not mere eye candy as the incredible graphics mean you can always spot enemies as they shoot at you and no death feels cheap. * No AUTO AIM Because of 60 fps and 1080 graphics there is no auto aim because you don't need it. This means you get a lot of satisfaction out of shooting and it never feels cheap. Also the dual shock is so responsive that it helps in achieving this. * Maps. The maps are a lot of fun. Sometimes in some shooters the map sizes would be much larger for the number of players. So you would spend many agonizing minutes searching for something to shoot, only to be gunned down by a camper that you don't even see. No such thing in these maps, they are just the right size for 24 players and straight forward, so learning them is easy and it also means you start getting competitive much faster. * NO CAMPING: Because the maps are so good, it means that Shadowfall is very similar to Killzone 2 and there is no camping at all. Also they do not have any overpowered invisible sniper class this time (thank god) * Return of the spawn beacon. Killzone 2 multiplayer had this awesome feature that one could play with a class having the ability to activate a spawn beacon at ANY point on the map. This meant that really good players could turn around an entire match by intelligent position of spawn beacons. This awesome feature returns in Killzone SF. * NO overpowered vehicles: Everytime I see vehicles in a infantry shooter I goran inside. This is because I am a huge fan of classic gunplay and shooting mechanics, and it all goes out of the window if you have a single player who is a good pilot or vehicle driver. Once someone starts using that overpowered vehicle properly, every other player is either dying or just taken up perma camping, in other words the whole game goes for a toss. * Last but not least, the amazing feature of custom warzones.This means that anyone can create a Multiplayer game by tweaking a ton of parameters from game modes, victory conditions, available classes, weapons even the number of lives! Any player logging in can then take their time browsing through these warzones and choose the one they want to play and join! This might not seem big but the convenience of picking and choosing what game session you want to play instead of relying on the dumb ai to dump you into one is awesome!

exelente producto

Shadow Fall has an interesting campaign. Across ten long levels you have a variety of different gameplay styles from shooter history all sort of bundled together into a strange beast that never stops changing things up. One level will be a super linear cinematic fest, then the next will be a wide open Crysis style special operations mission with multiple objectives. After that you'll have a spooky puzzle filled trek through an abandoned station, then a flying section, then an endless wave based survival section, and so on. There's even a pure stealth level with a cloaking mechanic, and a section where you spot for a sniper while being armed only with a pistol. In short Shadow Fall has variety, and very little of it feels awkward. Some later sections feel a bit too hard as they throw endless enemies at you, and the stealth sections can feel a little unforgiving at times with how quickly you're noticed, but overall each level felt different and satisfying to me, rather than scattered or awkward, with very rare exception. The OWL mechanic adds some interesting gameplay. By the end of the game you'll really have to balance using it's overcharge ability to stun tough enemies, shielding yourself and distracting mobs with an attack command. It doesn't turn Shadow Fall into Rainbow Six levels of tactics by any means, but it's a solid mechanic that separates Shadow Fall in yet another way from your everyday linear shooting console FPS. The weapons all feel heavy and solid, a Killzone staple, and your main weapon can act as both a rifle and a sniper, leaving you feeling more free to carry a shotgun or RPG in slot two without hampering yourself. Graphics for the game can be a bit uneven at times, with some levels looking absolutely stunning and welcoming you to next-gen while others look a bit plain. Overall though when you're cruising above a massive city, land, then become surprised that you can walk around and look freely because you thought sure it was a cutscene, you're going to pretty happy with the visuals. On top of tech stuff it's just interesting sci-fi design at its core, which appeals to many people like myself. There's not enough sci-fi in the world. The story is decent, but probably a weak point. It sets up a nice cold war style narrative but by the end it all kind of falls apart in a muddled "what am I doing again?" kind of way. Weapon of mass destruction, changing allegiances, crazy politicians, etc... all the standard stuff is here. What I will say is the game ends on a satisfying set up for another title, if Sony decides to do one. I hope that promise is fulfilled, because I loved the idea of that final moment being made into a whole game. Overall Shadow Fall's campaign is good for an FPS campaign in 2013, no doubt. If the PS4 sticks around 8 years like the PS3 I wouldn't be surprised if this game is considered archaic by the end of that time, but for right now I think it's a good experience that feels improved due to the hardware and interesting compared to its peers. If you're an FPS fan with a PS4 in the next couple years I would call this a must play.

I've been a Killzone fan since the first one was announced circa summer 2003. Back then I was dying of Halo 2 anticipation, and the European press dubbing the newly announced Killzone a "Halo killer" instantly grabbed my attention. The moment I laid eyes on the first preview screenshots, the striking visual design hooked me and I kept a close eye on it from then on. A little over a year later it was in my hands. It clearly bit off more than the PS2 could chew and the game play suffered for it, the notion of it being a "Halo killer" was laughable. However I somehow managed to enjoy it enough to play through the campaign four times (once as each character) and a few times on top of that just because. Rather than running and gunning as a super soldier army-of-one, it pit you as a four-man strike team behind enemy lines on a secret mission. Killzone 2 outdid the first game in almost every way and is easily the top Playstation exclusive FPS, period. It played more like a classic WW2 game, with two large armies duking it out one battle field at a time... but in a surreal futuristic setting. Killzone 3 felt somewhat like a Killzone 2 expansion pack. It fell short in a few ways, most notably length. It did at least introduce some new environments, and it generally looked great. I enjoyed it a lot, while it lasted. Which brings us to Killzone Shadow Fall. Let's get the most obvious thing out of the way first: This game is a dazzling graphics showcase. Sweet, sweet eye candy. Even some hardcore PC gamers are able to admit this. Out of all of the next gen games I've seen this year, this is the one that screams "NEXT GEN" the loudest. It doesn't run at 60fps all the time, but it sure seems close to it a lot of the time. It certainly runs at more than 30, no doubt about that. The game play has changed, yet it still feels like Killzone to me. The pendulum has swung back from the "WW2 in teh future vs. the Space Nazis" and closer to the feel of the original Killzone. It's a futuristic cold war secret agent mission, where you're a one-man infiltration unit using some fancy gadgets. There are a few big battle set pieces where you're fighting along side a squad of allies, but they're few and far between. There are a few issues with the designers being typically stingy and thoughtless with checkpoints, and there's a particular section towards the end of the game that is one of the most frustrating sequences I've played through in many, many years. I have honest serious doubts that they even showed it to play testers, because if they had I simply cannot fathom how they could have approved it to be in the game. I'm not kidding, it made me fantasize about kidnapping and torturing some Guerrilla Games staff so that I could cause them the same amount of pain they caused me. (EDIT: this section was patched several weeks after the US launch, just in time for the EU launch... lucky bastards.) Still, a few rough bits aside, it's a very good single player campaign that, while very different, is on par with Killzone 2 in terms of length (about 10 hours, if you're not some freak who plays as if you're being judged on time) and fun. Even the aforementioned rage-inducing free fall sequence wasn't bad enough to merit taking off a whole star. Seriously, I would love for anyone to come up with any Playstation launch title since the console debuted in 1995 that's as strong as this one. I honestly can't think of any.

Its a few decades after the events in the previous Killzone and you play as Lucas Kellan, a Vektan shadow marshal caught up in the cold war like tension between the Helghast and Vektans. You will use a wide variety of weapons and abilities as you make your way through the games gorgeous, varied, and detailed environments. The weapons include assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, pistols, mines, grenades, and more. Many of the weapons serve double functions in that they have a primary mode of fire as well as a secondary. For instance a rifle may have a grenade launching attachment as its secondary ability. You also are equipped throughout the game with a robot drone called the OWL. The OWL has a number of different functions and can attack, shield, and stun enemies, as well as zip line you around the environments. Speaking of the environments, they are absolutely beautiful on the PS4. You can just walk around taking in the environments as they are really works of art in and of themselves in their level of detail, lighting, and ambience. The environments are varied. You will explore a range of settings from the bright cheery Vektan areas, to dark slum like areas of New Helghan, to war ravaged rubble areas of Helghan, to space ship areas and even a few zero gravity areas. The music and sound effects are well done, complementing the areas of the game and adding to the mood and ambience. The controls once learned offer a high degree of command over your character. Controlling the OWL with the touch pad is new at first but becomes second nature after awhile. You're able to adjust sensitivity settings in the menu screen for your analog sticks from low to high sensitivity. The multiplayer portion of the game is a blast to play. You will play as a character on either a Vektan or Helghast team. You have three classes of characters to choose from, scout, assault, and support. Each class is customizable with different loadouts of weapons, abilities, and sidearms. Each class has it's strengths and weaknesses. There are a number of different game types to play, the two main ones being deathmatch and warzone. Warzone is objective based while the deathmatch is just straight team based shoot em up. Everthing feels balanced and none of the classes or loadouts seem to have an unfair advantage. Everything has it's counter attack. The maps in the multiplayer are inspired from locations in the campaign and are just as gorgeous. Most of the maps are roughly symeterical, and are very detailed. There are a lot of different areas for cover and a lot of areas setting up for different combat styles. Some areas and levels may favor close combat, others mid range, and there are a few sniper positions as well. Finding a match is easy. There's never much of a wait, and the range of skill of the players is varied. It's very fun and gets addicting. In short this is a great sci fi style FPS shooter for the PS4.

Killzone Shadow Fall, the latest in the long running Killzone series from Guerilla Games, is being promoted as the showcase game for the new Playstation 4. For the most part, the game does a good job of introducing the capabilities of Sony’s new console. It checks off all of the requisite boxes on the first person shooter checklist, but it never really manages to achieve anything great. The story takes place many years after the previous three games, where after repelling a Helghast invasion of Vekta, the Vektans followed the Helgast to their home planet and basically ended up annihilating their planet. The Vektans, in a terrible act of judgement, decide to let the remaining Helgast come back to Vekta with them. The Helgast are given half the planet, allowed to militarize, and a giant wall is built between them. That, more or less, is the completely unbelievable setup to Shadow Fall: the Helgast are right on the other side of that wall and are plotting revenge. The story is told primarily through cutscenes that set up each mission and occasional radio messages sent to you during gameplay. There are also audio logs that you can find in the levels, but they tend to contain secondary information that is not very important. The audio logs play out of the new speaker on the Playstation controller. I found this to be rather obnoxious for a couple of reasons: the audio quality of this speaker is not great, you cannot adjust the volume of it from in-game, and it’s awkward to have audio come from my controller when I am using headphones for everything else. The narrative tries to add some moral ambiguity over who the “bad” guys really are, but it is hard to care when none of the characters are particularly likeable and everyone is in a bad in a situation of their own making. The actual shooting mechanics feel tight and responsive, and there is a good selection of weapons to use with some of them offering secondary fire modes. The highlight of the gameplay is a little hovering drone you have called the OWL. You can send it out to attack enemies and provide covering fire, deploy a one way shield in front of you that allows you to shoot out of it, and EMP strike an area disorienting enemies and removing shields. It also has an ability to deploy a zip line allowing you to reach areas you otherwise would not be able to, but this sees limited use in mostly pre-determined areas. It can also heal you if you die, given that it’s not currently recharging and that you have medical supplies available. You have to swipe in various directions on the touch pad to change which mode the OWL is in. It is a bit inconvenient as you have to take a hand off of a thumbstick to do what basically amounts to a button press. Hopefully developers will come up for more creative uses for the touch pad later on. Speaking of controls, the game only has two control layouts to pick from and both of them only swap what the triggers and shoulder buttons do. There is absolutely no way to change what the face buttons on the controller are assigned to. This seems sloppy, as it should be pretty trivial to allow remapping of buttons. It is a bit disappointing that you are required to hold on to your primary weapon at all times. Since you can only hold two weapons at a time, this really limits the number of loadout configurations you can have. Want to have a sniper rifle and a shotgun? Sorry, you have to hold on to that Assault rifle you started with that has no ammo left. The enemy AI is not particularly smart. They will run around corners into your line of fire one after another, decide to climb ladders in the middle of a gunfight, and don’t really make much of an effort to flank you or seem to work together in any meaningful way. The game tries to make up for this by either sending large amounts of them at you at once, or giving them energy shields that turn them into bullet sponges. It can make for frantic fights at times, but for the most part they are not particularly interesting opponents. Repetition also becomes a problem later in the game, as there is just not a lot of variety to what you fight. They do add some robots in towards the later stages, but they are used sparingly and don’t really do enough to keep the combat feeling fresh. The game has a fairly limited cover system that allows you to crouch behind cover, but it feels really unfinished. There is no button to go into cover, but if you crouch behind cover of the right height you will automatically peak over when you aim down the sights. It is often hard to tell if the cover you are hiding behind is actually tall enough, and when you aim down sights you get anchored to that cover preventing you from moving. The cover also only works vertically, so you cannot take cover around corners or at doorways. What really kept me playing the game was the level design that included a number of cool setpiece moments. You are constantly on the move from one area to the next. Some of the more interesting highlights include a ship that is flying into the sun, where you can shoot out windows to burn enemies and melt parts of the ship, and a floating train yard where high speed trains are flying all around you as you jump from platform to platform. Killzone earns its highest marks in presentation. The graphics are undeniably better than last generation consoles, although anyone with a high end PC has been seeing graphics as good as this for a few years now. The biggest improvement is that is it actually rendering natively in 1080p at 60 frames per second. The game has a nice artistic style that unfortunately often goes overboard with the lens flare and reflective surfaces because apparently almost nothing on Vekta absorbs light. Texture quality and lighting is impressive, although the lighting is completely static. You cannot shoot out lights or otherwise effect the lighting in the environment. Characters are a bit mixed. In the pre-rendered cutscenes they look pretty great and are expressive. During actual gameplay they tend to look a bit stiff with faces that don’t move much and eyes that don’t blink. There also seems to be some issues with lip syncing at times as well. It is also worth noting that the graphics quality seems to have been turned down a bit for the multiplayer, perhaps to provide a more reliable framerate in the unpredictable online modes. A lot of people are going to be picking up Killzone for the multiplayer, and I am happy to say that I can recommend it for that without any reservations. Pretty much everything you need for a good multiplayer experience is here: fast matchmaking, unlocks and customizable loadouts, solid map design, lots of game modes, and the ability to customize to your satisfaction. When you set up a lobby you can determine everything from which weapons and abilities are allowed to which game modes pop up. The highlight of multiplayer is the Warzone mode, which consists of a variety of different game types that change during the match. For example, a match might start out as team deathmatch, change to a capture and hold mode, before finally switching to a defend and destroy mode. The side that completed the most objectives by the end wins. Overall, Killzone Shadow Fall is a by the numbers first person shooter whose main draw is its graphics and multiplayer. The single player is a mostly repetitive and forgettable experience that only occasionally reaches greatness during certain setpiece scenes, while its multiplayer offers enough depth to keep people playing for a while. As a launch title it does a decent job at introducing us to the new capabilities of the Playstation 4 and is worth picking up. A year from now though, Killzone Shadow Fall probably won’t be worth your time.

Am I weird? I really like this game. I had a ton of fun. I've played through it several times. It's just fun to play. My biggest complaint is that there wasn't much level design for the slidey-rope thing. There was that early outdoors level where you HAD to use it, but then the rest of the game it was like they forgot. I'm certain they just didn't have the time to think all that out since it was a launch title. I really freaking love the sound design in this game. I play with a surround sound system, with high-end headphones plugged into my controller, or the virtual 7.1 PS3 wireless headset. My favorite level for sound is the derelict space ship. So cool. The 3D audio was so good. Whenever the womans voice came over the ship's intercom I could hear it reverberating down the halls. I loved those slower isolated levels a lot. Reminded me of Dead Space. It's my favorite Killzone by far. I really liked the first Killzone, even with all of it's bugs and performance problems. There was such a good game idea there that they never realized. Then KZ2 came, and that was alright, it was cool and "nextgen" but they dropped all the cool alternate paths, different characters stuff. KZ3.... I hate KZ3. It's probably just me, but I didn't have fun and it was so frustrating. KZ4? Love it. Feels so good. Fun to play. Lots of different levels. I think it's a great launch title too. I'm not into multiplayer. I love single player campaigns. I really like campaigns like the Half Life series and Dead Space, among others. Co-Op is great as long as it doesn't diminish the campaign. I LOVED Halo 1&2 for co-op. Played so many hours on all difficulties. So many hours.

.