Series veterans will know exactly what they're getting into and, as with most Killzones, the difficulty level here is punishingly hard (there are different levels, but none are a picnic). Maybe it's just us, but we found it fairly unintuitive with another set of controls to remember. This two-step control is no doubt so you don't send your Owl off by mistake, but in a tense firefight can be over-convoluted in having to swipe for what you want it to do and then point it in the right direction and then fire. This is also where the DualShock 4's Touch Panel is put to its most noticeable use so far, as it acts like a second D-pad, a swipe in any of the four directions assigning a mode before you unleash it with the bumper, be it defend, attack, hack or zipline. R1 cooks and throws grenades, while L1 activates The Owl, your mini-drone sidekick. Options interacts with comics scattered strangely about the environment as collectibles and audio logs, which play rather startlingly from the DualShock 4 controller's speaker, though you can turn it off. The D-pad shows you your objectives, of which there can be many, sets off a tactical echo to scope your locale out (or feedback if you time it wrong and alert guards) or chooses the secondary attack option from some weapons (such as long-range power sniping, which are powerful but cumbersome in battle). Shooters is as shooters does, and Killzone Shadow Fall doesn't rock the FPS basics boat, the usual walking and aiming with dual sticks, L2 and R2 for looking down the sights and firing respectively, and the actions buttons a raft of jumps, reloads and crouches (annoyingly the same button as sends you up ladders, leading to many a mistimed interchange). More notably, though, what was once a tunnel shooter has been tweaked once again, with more open environments to explore now – which make the most of the graphical fidelity on offer, as well as the processing power – and a handy array of new abilities for your travels.Īlongside the usual futuristic firearms, Shadow Marshalls now have the power to see through walls (another nod to The Last of Us, though at least this time it makes sort of technical sense) and slow down time for brief periods, as well as harness a personal drone called The Owl like a bird of prey. Gamers wrapped up in the franchise's mythology may well get a kick off the in-universe referencing and political allegories, but we have to admit we've become lost and bogged down in a murky back story that never seems to transmit its intergalactic Second World War into much emotional heft it's at least balanced. Players take on the role of Lucas Kellen, a Shadow Marshall (that's an elite black ops agent of the future, y'all) who is tasked with keeping the familiarly fire-eyed Nazi-tinged forces of Helghast in check as the ongoing war between them and the Vektans (that's your lot) intensifies.ĭavid Estes of Homeland fame voices the surrogate father and military superior Sinclair, giving you authoritative updates in what equate to a series of rather elongated, po-faced search and destroy missions around intergalactic substitutes for real-world wars. Killzone Shadow Fall: PlotĪfter what we'll politely call a homage to The Last of Us's opening, in which our immediate story expectations may be subverted but it feels so familiar it's lost its punch, the latest Killzone thrusts us quickly into the future and a familiar role of skilled gunman (skilled, at least, in the cut scenes) waiting for despatch. If Knack is the family crowd-pleaser, Resogun manna for the retro-arcade crowd and Contrast the quirky art-house effort for the indie fraternity, Killzone: Shadow Fall is for those who live and breathe head shots. Known for being dark, dingy and hard as hell, it makes for a stridently uncompromising introduction into Sony's next-gen console. If Halo comparisons may have hobbled it slightly, it's certainly carved out its own niche among the PlayStation die-hards. Guerrilla Games' Killzone franchise of first-person shooters have become the hardcore flagpole for Sony-friendly gun fans, spanning six entries in a carnage-heavy series sometimes subtitled 'Nazis in space'.
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