Do you remember when Call of Duty had an identity crisis during 2014-2018, before eventually returning to its roots with Modern Warfare (2019)? If you do, welcome to the game that it became.
Picking up 30 years after the end of the third game, we return to Vekta for the first time since the original game, but it looks a lot different. Now it's a bustling Sci-Fi utopia, except it's split down the middle. Half of the capital city is Vektan and the other half, the Helghast. Why? Well, that's all to do with how the last game ended.
Gone are the aesthetics of Helghan and hell, even the diverse biomes of Vekta from the first game, replaced by generic sterile futuristic cityscapes. As a launch title for the PS4, the game is impressive to look at, a jump graphically from the last game which only came out 2 years prior and a showcase of what the base PS4 could achieve with textures and lighting. However, the aesthetic design doesn't inspire anything in me as far as emotions go. It doesn't look like a Killzone game.
Nor does it feel like one either. Everything about the previous games' various gameplay systems that made the series feel unique are gone and now it plays like every other generic FPS. On some level, it at least means the game has no issues on the technical side of things. But it leaves a lot to be desired. The time to kill has been reduced so much that the enemies feel like paper dolls. For most run of the mill enemies in the game, I think this is the quickest TTK of any game I've played, it's much faster than even Call of Duty. This makes the combat fairly unsatisfying to muddle through as encounters are fairly quick affairs for around three quarters of the game. The last quarter is padded by the introduction of an enemy with shields that can only be taken out in a couple of specific ways, making every combat encounter of the last quarter of the game painfully drawn out.
As this is a launch title, that means it has to have some gimmick relating to the Dual Shock 4 touchpad. This is one of the most useless mechanics the game has, a drone that you command with the L1 button and use the touchpad to switch between 4 different modes. Left is an EMP pulse that stuns enemies and takes out shields, up is a general attack mode, right is a zipline mode that you'll use maybe three times in your playthrough and down is a shield that I never once used in the entire campaign. Largely, the drone will be used to hack various objects in the environment to further progression, this is a context dependent interaction. You simply look at it and the prompt on screen will change from whatever you have currently selected to one that indicates you can hack the device, so all you have to do is press L1. And yes, the radial UI element that appears to show which mode you're selecting... never actually full goes away. Leaving whichever mode you've selected displayed as it's segment of the radial, basically in the centre of your screen at all times.
Narratively, the game attempts to be a political thriller without the thrills and the politics is barely high school level in its depth. Seeing you play as a security agent for the Vektans, tasked with doing shadowy things to protect the state, your commander being your surrogate father, played by David Harewood, whose performance absolutely carries the game. It turns out he's a bit of an asshole, which you find out once you meet Echo, who's a half-breed (hey, it's only taken them 3 games to bring another one into the story.) She's dedicated to Helghan but wants you to help her stop another war breaking out. You might think this is interesting but it's really not. It's the most surface level storytelling. While the game doesn't tease a sequel, it doesn't really have a conclusive ending. So, even the end of the game is unsatisfying.
The sonic identity, carved out in the second and third games, has also been stripped away to be replaced with generic and overbearing orchestral or electronic pieces. More often than not, these are either unremarkable to the point that I didn't notice music was playing or so intensely dramatic and loud that I wished it would stop.
Killzone is a series that started out low and rose to some decent heights, nothing super high but at least a series roundly enjoyed by fans and respected amongst the community. It offered something that very few shooters were offering at the time, an interesting world and enemy. It's just a shame the series never fully capitalised on that in a meaningful way. Rather, going out on a bit of a wet fart instead of any sort of low point. The game is the most technically polished in the series, offers the most variety in gameplay but with a stripped back aesthetic, it feels soulless. With how high Guerrilla have soared with the Horizon series, I'd love to see them return to Killzone at some point to see what they could accomplish now as their storytelling has vastly improved. Alas, for now, Killzone has been relegated to the annals of history.
Picking up 30 years after the end of the third game, we return to Vekta for the first time since the original game, but it looks a lot different. Now it's a bustling Sci-Fi utopia, except it's split down the middle. Half of the capital city is Vektan and the other half, the Helghast. Why? Well, that's all to do with how the last game ended.
Gone are the aesthetics of Helghan and hell, even the diverse biomes of Vekta from the first game, replaced by generic sterile futuristic cityscapes. As a launch title for the PS4, the game is impressive to look at, a jump graphically from the last game which only came out 2 years prior and a showcase of what the base PS4 could achieve with textures and lighting. However, the aesthetic design doesn't inspire anything in me as far as emotions go. It doesn't look like a Killzone game.
Nor does it feel like one either. Everything about the previous games' various gameplay systems that made the series feel unique are gone and now it plays like every other generic FPS. On some level, it at least means the game has no issues on the technical side of things. But it leaves a lot to be desired. The time to kill has been reduced so much that the enemies feel like paper dolls. For most run of the mill enemies in the game, I think this is the quickest TTK of any game I've played, it's much faster than even Call of Duty. This makes the combat fairly unsatisfying to muddle through as encounters are fairly quick affairs for around three quarters of the game. The last quarter is padded by the introduction of an enemy with shields that can only be taken out in a couple of specific ways, making every combat encounter of the last quarter of the game painfully drawn out.
As this is a launch title, that means it has to have some gimmick relating to the Dual Shock 4 touchpad. This is one of the most useless mechanics the game has, a drone that you command with the L1 button and use the touchpad to switch between 4 different modes. Left is an EMP pulse that stuns enemies and takes out shields, up is a general attack mode, right is a zipline mode that you'll use maybe three times in your playthrough and down is a shield that I never once used in the entire campaign. Largely, the drone will be used to hack various objects in the environment to further progression, this is a context dependent interaction. You simply look at it and the prompt on screen will change from whatever you have currently selected to one that indicates you can hack the device, so all you have to do is press L1. And yes, the radial UI element that appears to show which mode you're selecting... never actually full goes away. Leaving whichever mode you've selected displayed as it's segment of the radial, basically in the centre of your screen at all times.
Narratively, the game attempts to be a political thriller without the thrills and the politics is barely high school level in its depth. Seeing you play as a security agent for the Vektans, tasked with doing shadowy things to protect the state, your commander being your surrogate father, played by David Harewood, whose performance absolutely carries the game. It turns out he's a bit of an asshole, which you find out once you meet Echo, who's a half-breed (hey, it's only taken them 3 games to bring another one into the story.) She's dedicated to Helghan but wants you to help her stop another war breaking out. You might think this is interesting but it's really not. It's the most surface level storytelling. While the game doesn't tease a sequel, it doesn't really have a conclusive ending. So, even the end of the game is unsatisfying.
The sonic identity, carved out in the second and third games, has also been stripped away to be replaced with generic and overbearing orchestral or electronic pieces. More often than not, these are either unremarkable to the point that I didn't notice music was playing or so intensely dramatic and loud that I wished it would stop.
Killzone is a series that started out low and rose to some decent heights, nothing super high but at least a series roundly enjoyed by fans and respected amongst the community. It offered something that very few shooters were offering at the time, an interesting world and enemy. It's just a shame the series never fully capitalised on that in a meaningful way. Rather, going out on a bit of a wet fart instead of any sort of low point. The game is the most technically polished in the series, offers the most variety in gameplay but with a stripped back aesthetic, it feels soulless. With how high Guerrilla have soared with the Horizon series, I'd love to see them return to Killzone at some point to see what they could accomplish now as their storytelling has vastly improved. Alas, for now, Killzone has been relegated to the annals of history.