This review contains spoilers
Killzone: Shadowfall is a game developed by Guerilla Games and the last title in the entire Killzone series, released for Playstation 4 as a launch title (including the likes of Knack, and thatgamecompany’s Flower). The game ended up getting a mixed reception and effectively killed the franchise, with Guerilla later moving onto the hit Horizon series of third person action RPGs (one of which was a VERY impressive transition). My feeling on the series have kind of been mixed so far, the first Killzone, while decent, had its fair share of jank and frustration; while Liberation is something that I’d rather fucking shoot myself then ever play again in my life. Killzone 2 was a mass improvement in most ways though the story/characters were less interesting; Killzone 3 kept the improvements in, added more stuff, but also had some glitches that made it less stable than 2. Mercenary was fantastic (from what I played) though attempting to get the platinum pissed me off when the Vita corrupted my save file (from what I don’t know) so I’m not even going to attempt to review/platinum that game until next year; so I was expecting this to be as others would call “The worst of the worst” in the franchise. It’s not, it has its issues but I argue it’s actually one of the better titles for what it’s worth.
So the story is one that I feel is the most polarizing part; and I totally understand where people are coming from. My experience was this: I really liked the first half, and where it was leading up to, but the second half is where the game falters a bit. The game takes place decades after the ending of Killzone 3, an event now called “The Terracide” which wiped out the entirety of the Helghast Race off of Helghan. Since then, Vekta has immigrated as many Helghans as possible to their planet and split the entire planet; Vekta is still Vekta but the other half is New Helghan. In a parallel to the Cold War and the Berlin Wall, the Vektans (under the VSA, Vekta Security Agency) and the Helghast perform covert operations so they can one up each other, and this is where the game starts. You play as Lucas Kellan, who (in the first mission) as a kid had his father die while they tried to escape to Vekta City, with Shadow Marshall Augustus Sinclair rescuing him and raising him to be a shadow marshall as well. I don’t hate this introduction but I feel the whole slideshow way of showing him through the years is cheap and doesn’t help build character development between you or Sinclair. In fact, I’m going to throw this out there now, most of the characters are kind of one note in their appearance: your main protagonist is generic white guy number 9 and you have no real personality. Other characters are like this too (another good example is future antagonist Vladko Tyran, a terrorist for the “Black Hand” who basically is the stereotypical “crazy” terrorist who reminds me of the base template for this kind of character: Vaas from Far Cry 3, again boring as hell). Regardless you undertake several missions through the game that seem unrelated at first but involve a biological weapon created by Dr. Hillary Massar, an extremely hateable scientist who believes in “racial purity” who I really wanted to put a fuckin hole in her skull; both the Helghast and the VSA are fighting over her as this biological virus is to be weaponized to wipe out the other race by each side, and you also meet up again with a Helghast operative named Echo (whom you see in the end of Mission 1 during a prisoner swap).
This goes on while pressure is mounted against the VSA by the Black Hand terrorist group, led by Vladko Tyran with numerous terrorist attacks, and after attempting to capture and then assassinate him he ends up escaping to New Helghan. Kellen infiltrates New Helghan to assassinate Tyran and after finding him and blowing up his house (with his boss revealed to be Jorhan Stahl from Killzone 3, in a breathing machine and strapped to a chair, sadly not played by Malcolm McDowell but he sounds decently close) he gets captured by Helghast forces, after which Echo breaks him out of this prison and gets him over the wall in exchange for him trying to convince Sinclair to stop this battle as this war will lead to everyone dying. Tensions flare up as Kellan is unable to convince Sinclair to stand down and he is accused of being a traitor before sending him again to a mining vessel in space to capture Massar after she defected to the Helghast regime. This goes awry, it’s learned that Stahl has the biological weapon and Echo arrives to murder Massar, in which is a success. Echo and Kellan team up to go to the ruins of planet Helghan to find and stop Stahl. Here you explore these ruins to find more facilities and you learn that Tyran is actually alive…for a little bit before you kill him with Echo. The ISA then invade as well, and Echo/Kellan invade Stahl’s base. Kellan confronts Stahl in his breathing machine before Sinclair comes and not only kills Stahl but you as well. You then play as Echo in the final mission as you sneak your way through a populated mall area before sniping Sinclair and ending his threat once and for all.
So here are my thoughts on the story overall: I think that the set pieces are cool and that this game kind of operated more from set piece to set piece than actually having something really cohesive. The story and characters take a backseat for the most part, some are more prominent than others while some just kind of appear and then are never seen again. One example is Helghast commander Anton Saric, a guy whose name I only know due to the Killzone Wiki but plenty of other things are learned, such as Echo being a half Vektan/half Helghast as well as the daughter of Hera Visari, the heir to the Visari throne. Kellan as I said is boring as hell, while Echo has some interesting ideas I could roll with, and Sinclair is cool I guess. You can also learn about bits and pieces of the Killzone lore through collectibles, of which it’s learned that Rico and Sev from the previous games have gone MIA, and the Helghast want them dead for the Terracide. I remember watching a review a long time ago by a guy named Jarekthegamingdragon, and he made an interesting point: the story ends in a thud and doesn’t mean anything in the greater universe. I agree for the most part, though the extent is something I’m not sure but I guess it’s kind of the point considering it’s inspired by the Cold War so I suppose having a status quo would make sense, but if that’s the case also why have the game to begin with if nothing changes? Again, this is a game about set pieces; of which my favorites are in Mission 2, Mission 5 and the last mission; of which I will tell you why in the next paragraph.
The gameplay as were most of the other games except Liberation, were first person shooters. The huge difference this time is that compared to Killzone 2 and 3, it feels WAY better; the gunplay almost feels Call of Duty-like and say whatever you want but Call of Duty at least FEELS good. Shooting feels punchy for the most part, as does melee (which by god feels fucking great, I swear I’m normal lol) and for the most part it all feels great. You even have a drone that you can use during the game which can stun enemies, shoot a grapple line to traverse the environment, shoot soldiers (though this wasn’t as useful because it was kind of spongy and only worked for a bit), and put a shield in front of you (which I didn’t really use that much if at all) as well as hack certain terminals and the most important feature: Reviving you if you die which is fucking fantastic cause it makes the “Don’t die throughout the game once” trophy a lot easier to deal with. I guess the only thing I can really criticize about the gunplay is that the minigun sometimes feels a bit unreliable due to the swaying time though I guess because it’s a giant bulky minigun that’s not too much of a surprise. Also the jumping is fuckin awkward and I don’t like how it feels, like every gap I jump across I’m always about to fall off
The level design in the missions above are a lot more open ended too, feeling almost like Far Cry in a sense with how open it is and how you can tackle certain objectives in numerous ways; for example in Mission 2 you land in a forest after ziplining from a Dam to find multiple objectives for finding survivors, turning off the alarm, etc. and there’s also a stealth system for the game. It’s the same for Mission 5, where you infiltrate New Helghan in an open area as you can either choose to go loud, stay stealthy and choose your way to do objectives (and optional objectives sometimes that doesn’t really change the story in any way and you can choose whether to do them or not) as well as Mission 10, which is a little bit more limited as you have to do certain objectives to perform an assassination but same thing, but with different abilities such as the one to go invisible to sneak past enemies. I feel like this is the natural evolution the series could take before it could become stale from the usual Call of Duty shooting gallery formula and the truth be told, while it doesn’t TOTALLY follow the Far Cry open world formula it shows potential. Other highlights that really pop out to talk about is that in Mission 3, you sneak aboard a space station and towards the end you can shoot nearby windows to burn Helghast soldiers and Mission 6 you can have Echo snipe enemies so you can sneak your way through certain areas. If there were any frustrating moments I’d say there were three: Mission 4 has you turning off bombs at a train station and there were a couple of times I’d have to reload the section due to the “Don’t die” trophy because of moving trains, but I could pass it off as “it is what it is”. The worst parts however happen sequentially in the beginnings of Mission 7 and 8: in Mission 7 you have to jump down a giant hole and maneuver past giant rotors before landing in a SPECIFIC spot which was kind of annoying, and one where I died multiple times trying to figure it all out. If you want a tip, I’d say fall towards one of the rotors, they’re all going a certain direction and if you move towards the rotors you will end up going through the holes (heh) instead of hitting the blade. I have no tips for Mission 8, in which you glide through Old Helghan ruins as you make your way through the ruined city, the controls are fuckin weird, overshoot and often times I’d die because I couldn’t figure out how to move in a way that made sense; it doesn’t feel good and I just wanted this section to end.
Final section to mention is multiplayer: I can’t say much about it but when I learned that the servers for this and Mercenary would be shutting down in August of 2022, I decided to get cranking out the multiplayer trophies. Now while this was a grind, and working to get these trophies sometimes felt monotonous especially since I was racing against the clock (I still feel that there should either be no multiplayer trophies or that they should be on a separate list or better yet just auto unlock them for people who actually want to get the platinum later on) what I can say is that the game’s multiplayer in its last leg was actually kind of fun. It’s the usual affair, the usual CoD styled game modes but it was a nice bit of fun and sometimes I go and play the Botzone if I feel like doing something with it.
Now what can I say about the other stuff; meaning the sound design, voice acting, art design, music, etc? Well for starters, again graphically Guerilla like always has outdone itself; in fact I’d say that this is their number one strength as a game studio is that they know how to make their games look fucking beautiful and top everything else; for example Mission 2, The Shadow, the forest is looks amazing with it’s use of lighting and forest textures. Vekta City is beautiful as a cyberpunk-like dystopia, with light colors contrasting New Helghan’s darker and more oppressive atmosphere; the Decima is an amazing engine and there’s no wonder it’s been used in all of Guerilla’s titles, Until Dawn and Death Stranding (along with it’s in development sequel). Legitimately, you could mistake this for a Playstation 5 title sometimes and if you were to play this on Playstation 5 you’d probably agree. The voice acting is decent for the most part; David Harewood does a decent job playing Sinclair (side note: The dude looks like Sylen’s (Horizon series) voice actor Lance Reddick, rest in peace) but there aren’t really too many standouts here, but sometimes that’s ok as they all fit in the game and make it sound believable. The sound design is good for the most part, and it fits almost everything that it intends to (though some of the guns, I forget which one could be a little more punchy). Last thing I can mention is the soundtrack; done by Tyler Bates (who did God of War: Ascension and later Far Cry: New Dawn) along with Lorn (whose contributed tracks to the likes of Sleeping Dogs, LittleBigPlanet 2 and Gran Turismo 5); the music can sound a bit tense sometimes in it’s moments and honestly, sort of slaps. Granted I don’t remember much of anything in the way of actual tracks but it works well with its purpose. As with most things in the Killzone franchise, they don’t have much in the way of standout stuff but they’re good at making stuff immersive for the most part and as long as it doesn’t sound misplaced or awful (like Resident Evil 1’s Mansion Basement), for the most part I’m satisfied or won’t bat an eye to it.
So what exactly are my thoughts on Killzone: Shadowfall? I understand why people feel like it’s average. It isn’t exactly pulled off the best plot wise, almost everyone is forgettable in terms of characters, and the truth is it does end on a thud. And to be honest, I’m kind of sad about that; because the truth is between Killzone and Horizon, I feel like Killzone even in shoulder shrugging genericness has a lot of potential for more than what it had. It had a lot of cool ideas, I really liked the more open ended level design, the improvements to the combat compared to the previous Killzone games, it’s just a lot of things around it weren’t pulled off the best and with how it ended it didn’t feel like a satisfying finish to the series. In essence it reminds me of The Order: 1886, another game I got the platinum trophy for; not pulled off the best but it has a lot of things around it that really boost it up for me.
For my final bit on this, here me out; I know Guerilla has moved onto Horizon. But I feel like with the natural progression of Shadow Fall’s game design that there could be something in the way of one last game I feel they should do to end the series off on a good note. Have it be an open world RPG (minus the Ubisoft formula), since the Killzone series has its stuff parallel to real world events and so if Sinclair’s assassination is the parallel to JFK’s assassination then I feel like the next (and last) game should be set in their version of Vietnam. Have it be an entirely different planet, the VSA are invading to re-establish a dictatorship while the Helghast are using the opportunity to fund guerillas while having seedy intentions, pull aspects from Killzone: Mercenary in terms of doing mercenary work for everyone, don’t have the world be this super huge thing as much as it is dense and full of stuff to do, make it dynamic; like there’s a lot of stuff you could do with an open world Killzone, a lot of thematic “War is Hell'' stuff you could do and say with it. Hell I have so many ideas that if I was able to do graphic design work, I’d write up my own PDF and release it just so y'all would know what I’m talking about. Alas though, like many others, the series has kind of stagnated and fell behind in importance for Playstation history, and understandably so. But there’s no reason you can’t end things off on a good note. Oh, and again I’m going to be annoying here: PORT THE GAMES TO PC. In fact, port all the old games to PC, and make them good please (no one wants a repeat of The Last of Us Part I’s port).
So the story is one that I feel is the most polarizing part; and I totally understand where people are coming from. My experience was this: I really liked the first half, and where it was leading up to, but the second half is where the game falters a bit. The game takes place decades after the ending of Killzone 3, an event now called “The Terracide” which wiped out the entirety of the Helghast Race off of Helghan. Since then, Vekta has immigrated as many Helghans as possible to their planet and split the entire planet; Vekta is still Vekta but the other half is New Helghan. In a parallel to the Cold War and the Berlin Wall, the Vektans (under the VSA, Vekta Security Agency) and the Helghast perform covert operations so they can one up each other, and this is where the game starts. You play as Lucas Kellan, who (in the first mission) as a kid had his father die while they tried to escape to Vekta City, with Shadow Marshall Augustus Sinclair rescuing him and raising him to be a shadow marshall as well. I don’t hate this introduction but I feel the whole slideshow way of showing him through the years is cheap and doesn’t help build character development between you or Sinclair. In fact, I’m going to throw this out there now, most of the characters are kind of one note in their appearance: your main protagonist is generic white guy number 9 and you have no real personality. Other characters are like this too (another good example is future antagonist Vladko Tyran, a terrorist for the “Black Hand” who basically is the stereotypical “crazy” terrorist who reminds me of the base template for this kind of character: Vaas from Far Cry 3, again boring as hell). Regardless you undertake several missions through the game that seem unrelated at first but involve a biological weapon created by Dr. Hillary Massar, an extremely hateable scientist who believes in “racial purity” who I really wanted to put a fuckin hole in her skull; both the Helghast and the VSA are fighting over her as this biological virus is to be weaponized to wipe out the other race by each side, and you also meet up again with a Helghast operative named Echo (whom you see in the end of Mission 1 during a prisoner swap).
This goes on while pressure is mounted against the VSA by the Black Hand terrorist group, led by Vladko Tyran with numerous terrorist attacks, and after attempting to capture and then assassinate him he ends up escaping to New Helghan. Kellen infiltrates New Helghan to assassinate Tyran and after finding him and blowing up his house (with his boss revealed to be Jorhan Stahl from Killzone 3, in a breathing machine and strapped to a chair, sadly not played by Malcolm McDowell but he sounds decently close) he gets captured by Helghast forces, after which Echo breaks him out of this prison and gets him over the wall in exchange for him trying to convince Sinclair to stop this battle as this war will lead to everyone dying. Tensions flare up as Kellan is unable to convince Sinclair to stand down and he is accused of being a traitor before sending him again to a mining vessel in space to capture Massar after she defected to the Helghast regime. This goes awry, it’s learned that Stahl has the biological weapon and Echo arrives to murder Massar, in which is a success. Echo and Kellan team up to go to the ruins of planet Helghan to find and stop Stahl. Here you explore these ruins to find more facilities and you learn that Tyran is actually alive…for a little bit before you kill him with Echo. The ISA then invade as well, and Echo/Kellan invade Stahl’s base. Kellan confronts Stahl in his breathing machine before Sinclair comes and not only kills Stahl but you as well. You then play as Echo in the final mission as you sneak your way through a populated mall area before sniping Sinclair and ending his threat once and for all.
So here are my thoughts on the story overall: I think that the set pieces are cool and that this game kind of operated more from set piece to set piece than actually having something really cohesive. The story and characters take a backseat for the most part, some are more prominent than others while some just kind of appear and then are never seen again. One example is Helghast commander Anton Saric, a guy whose name I only know due to the Killzone Wiki but plenty of other things are learned, such as Echo being a half Vektan/half Helghast as well as the daughter of Hera Visari, the heir to the Visari throne. Kellan as I said is boring as hell, while Echo has some interesting ideas I could roll with, and Sinclair is cool I guess. You can also learn about bits and pieces of the Killzone lore through collectibles, of which it’s learned that Rico and Sev from the previous games have gone MIA, and the Helghast want them dead for the Terracide. I remember watching a review a long time ago by a guy named Jarekthegamingdragon, and he made an interesting point: the story ends in a thud and doesn’t mean anything in the greater universe. I agree for the most part, though the extent is something I’m not sure but I guess it’s kind of the point considering it’s inspired by the Cold War so I suppose having a status quo would make sense, but if that’s the case also why have the game to begin with if nothing changes? Again, this is a game about set pieces; of which my favorites are in Mission 2, Mission 5 and the last mission; of which I will tell you why in the next paragraph.
The gameplay as were most of the other games except Liberation, were first person shooters. The huge difference this time is that compared to Killzone 2 and 3, it feels WAY better; the gunplay almost feels Call of Duty-like and say whatever you want but Call of Duty at least FEELS good. Shooting feels punchy for the most part, as does melee (which by god feels fucking great, I swear I’m normal lol) and for the most part it all feels great. You even have a drone that you can use during the game which can stun enemies, shoot a grapple line to traverse the environment, shoot soldiers (though this wasn’t as useful because it was kind of spongy and only worked for a bit), and put a shield in front of you (which I didn’t really use that much if at all) as well as hack certain terminals and the most important feature: Reviving you if you die which is fucking fantastic cause it makes the “Don’t die throughout the game once” trophy a lot easier to deal with. I guess the only thing I can really criticize about the gunplay is that the minigun sometimes feels a bit unreliable due to the swaying time though I guess because it’s a giant bulky minigun that’s not too much of a surprise. Also the jumping is fuckin awkward and I don’t like how it feels, like every gap I jump across I’m always about to fall off
The level design in the missions above are a lot more open ended too, feeling almost like Far Cry in a sense with how open it is and how you can tackle certain objectives in numerous ways; for example in Mission 2 you land in a forest after ziplining from a Dam to find multiple objectives for finding survivors, turning off the alarm, etc. and there’s also a stealth system for the game. It’s the same for Mission 5, where you infiltrate New Helghan in an open area as you can either choose to go loud, stay stealthy and choose your way to do objectives (and optional objectives sometimes that doesn’t really change the story in any way and you can choose whether to do them or not) as well as Mission 10, which is a little bit more limited as you have to do certain objectives to perform an assassination but same thing, but with different abilities such as the one to go invisible to sneak past enemies. I feel like this is the natural evolution the series could take before it could become stale from the usual Call of Duty shooting gallery formula and the truth be told, while it doesn’t TOTALLY follow the Far Cry open world formula it shows potential. Other highlights that really pop out to talk about is that in Mission 3, you sneak aboard a space station and towards the end you can shoot nearby windows to burn Helghast soldiers and Mission 6 you can have Echo snipe enemies so you can sneak your way through certain areas. If there were any frustrating moments I’d say there were three: Mission 4 has you turning off bombs at a train station and there were a couple of times I’d have to reload the section due to the “Don’t die” trophy because of moving trains, but I could pass it off as “it is what it is”. The worst parts however happen sequentially in the beginnings of Mission 7 and 8: in Mission 7 you have to jump down a giant hole and maneuver past giant rotors before landing in a SPECIFIC spot which was kind of annoying, and one where I died multiple times trying to figure it all out. If you want a tip, I’d say fall towards one of the rotors, they’re all going a certain direction and if you move towards the rotors you will end up going through the holes (heh) instead of hitting the blade. I have no tips for Mission 8, in which you glide through Old Helghan ruins as you make your way through the ruined city, the controls are fuckin weird, overshoot and often times I’d die because I couldn’t figure out how to move in a way that made sense; it doesn’t feel good and I just wanted this section to end.
Final section to mention is multiplayer: I can’t say much about it but when I learned that the servers for this and Mercenary would be shutting down in August of 2022, I decided to get cranking out the multiplayer trophies. Now while this was a grind, and working to get these trophies sometimes felt monotonous especially since I was racing against the clock (I still feel that there should either be no multiplayer trophies or that they should be on a separate list or better yet just auto unlock them for people who actually want to get the platinum later on) what I can say is that the game’s multiplayer in its last leg was actually kind of fun. It’s the usual affair, the usual CoD styled game modes but it was a nice bit of fun and sometimes I go and play the Botzone if I feel like doing something with it.
Now what can I say about the other stuff; meaning the sound design, voice acting, art design, music, etc? Well for starters, again graphically Guerilla like always has outdone itself; in fact I’d say that this is their number one strength as a game studio is that they know how to make their games look fucking beautiful and top everything else; for example Mission 2, The Shadow, the forest is looks amazing with it’s use of lighting and forest textures. Vekta City is beautiful as a cyberpunk-like dystopia, with light colors contrasting New Helghan’s darker and more oppressive atmosphere; the Decima is an amazing engine and there’s no wonder it’s been used in all of Guerilla’s titles, Until Dawn and Death Stranding (along with it’s in development sequel). Legitimately, you could mistake this for a Playstation 5 title sometimes and if you were to play this on Playstation 5 you’d probably agree. The voice acting is decent for the most part; David Harewood does a decent job playing Sinclair (side note: The dude looks like Sylen’s (Horizon series) voice actor Lance Reddick, rest in peace) but there aren’t really too many standouts here, but sometimes that’s ok as they all fit in the game and make it sound believable. The sound design is good for the most part, and it fits almost everything that it intends to (though some of the guns, I forget which one could be a little more punchy). Last thing I can mention is the soundtrack; done by Tyler Bates (who did God of War: Ascension and later Far Cry: New Dawn) along with Lorn (whose contributed tracks to the likes of Sleeping Dogs, LittleBigPlanet 2 and Gran Turismo 5); the music can sound a bit tense sometimes in it’s moments and honestly, sort of slaps. Granted I don’t remember much of anything in the way of actual tracks but it works well with its purpose. As with most things in the Killzone franchise, they don’t have much in the way of standout stuff but they’re good at making stuff immersive for the most part and as long as it doesn’t sound misplaced or awful (like Resident Evil 1’s Mansion Basement), for the most part I’m satisfied or won’t bat an eye to it.
So what exactly are my thoughts on Killzone: Shadowfall? I understand why people feel like it’s average. It isn’t exactly pulled off the best plot wise, almost everyone is forgettable in terms of characters, and the truth is it does end on a thud. And to be honest, I’m kind of sad about that; because the truth is between Killzone and Horizon, I feel like Killzone even in shoulder shrugging genericness has a lot of potential for more than what it had. It had a lot of cool ideas, I really liked the more open ended level design, the improvements to the combat compared to the previous Killzone games, it’s just a lot of things around it weren’t pulled off the best and with how it ended it didn’t feel like a satisfying finish to the series. In essence it reminds me of The Order: 1886, another game I got the platinum trophy for; not pulled off the best but it has a lot of things around it that really boost it up for me.
For my final bit on this, here me out; I know Guerilla has moved onto Horizon. But I feel like with the natural progression of Shadow Fall’s game design that there could be something in the way of one last game I feel they should do to end the series off on a good note. Have it be an open world RPG (minus the Ubisoft formula), since the Killzone series has its stuff parallel to real world events and so if Sinclair’s assassination is the parallel to JFK’s assassination then I feel like the next (and last) game should be set in their version of Vietnam. Have it be an entirely different planet, the VSA are invading to re-establish a dictatorship while the Helghast are using the opportunity to fund guerillas while having seedy intentions, pull aspects from Killzone: Mercenary in terms of doing mercenary work for everyone, don’t have the world be this super huge thing as much as it is dense and full of stuff to do, make it dynamic; like there’s a lot of stuff you could do with an open world Killzone, a lot of thematic “War is Hell'' stuff you could do and say with it. Hell I have so many ideas that if I was able to do graphic design work, I’d write up my own PDF and release it just so y'all would know what I’m talking about. Alas though, like many others, the series has kind of stagnated and fell behind in importance for Playstation history, and understandably so. But there’s no reason you can’t end things off on a good note. Oh, and again I’m going to be annoying here: PORT THE GAMES TO PC. In fact, port all the old games to PC, and make them good please (no one wants a repeat of The Last of Us Part I’s port).