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Killzone shadow fall shadow marshal12/30/2023 Seeing trains whiz by faster than anything ever should introduces a great gameplay mechanic, as well as hits home the technological advances of this SciFi society over our own. One notable exception to the rather dull gameplay is a fight along high speed monorail tracks (with all the train deaths that would imply). Higher difficulty levels require a more subtle touch, but on the standard difficulty level there is really no reason to not just play this like a standard shooter, other than a couple of fights against miniboss-like robot enemies. There's just no point in sneaking around when you're armed to the teeth and bullets are plentiful. This is a positive change, but the minute-to-minute gunplay is often dull and that's probably because the designers are always trying to force you to play stealthily to no avail. Instead of being the perfect example of the modern corridor shooter that its predecessors were, Killzone: Shadow Fall quite often places you in larger areas with multiple objectives that you can take on in an order of your choosing. Killzone: Shadow Fall features probably one of the biggest departures in terms of gameplay for the series, but not always for the best. I even got one character to snap her head back and forth as I came in and out of her very oddly specific peripheral eyesight. I also experienced a strange bug where NPCs that were talking to me wouldn't recognize where I was and would just stare off into the distance when addressing me. The music fits well, with a notable song here or there, but some of the voice acting is particularly bad. ![]() I noticed some instances of pop-in during multiplayer matches, as well as a bug with a barrel jittering out of place and one instance of slowdown during single player that I have to assume was during a quicksave, but other than those minor problems the presentation was pretty immaculate, if somewhat uninspired in terms of locales. I loved seeing the draw distance on display in some of the city scenes, with skyscrapers covering the ground off into the distance and The Wall that separates the two cultures looming ahead. That's not to say the presentation is bad overall the visuals can certainly attest to that. This large motivational issue in the narrative, together with some of the usual video game story science flubs (why is a doctor surprised to see that the Helghast and Vektan have similar DNA after “decades” of separation? Does he have no idea how evolution works!?) made it a forgettable storyline which has little impact. It's to the game's credit that it shows you starving Helghan civilians but they make up about 1% of the Helghast you'll see and are vastly outnumbered by the army members who seem perfectly happy subjugating everyone they meet if they don't kill them outright first. They develop and become more nuanced as time moves on throughout the narrative, but not in a significant way. One major problem with the story is that you're expected to start to see the Helghast as fellow human beings, but they're all too often shown to be the “space Nazis” that their visage suggests. This was probably meant as a bid for peace but it turns out the Helghast are kind of jerks (huge surprise there) and decided that they'd forcefully deport everyone out of their half of the planet and kill anyone left behind. This is spoiler territory for Killzone 3 here, but after you blew up the planet Helghan into a giant uninhabitable ball of glowing rock, for some reason the Vektans decided that in penance they would give half their planet over to the Helghast. Killzone: Shadow Fall is the story of a Vektan Shadow Marshal who was traumatized during the deportation of half of Vekta. ![]() It's not a terrible game, just not exceptional in any way. ![]() Obviously it's a pretty adventure, as all Killzone titles are, but sadly the gameplay and story don't match up with the exceptional visuals. No, Resogundoesn't count because it's not a retail release! Duh! Anyway, ignoring that one great game, many pinned their hopes on Killzone: Shadow Fall as the best hope for the PlayStation 4 launch. The PlayStation 4 is finally here and everyone is wondering what that one exclusive title is that'll make it worth the purchase. By Karl Koebke, posted on 26 November 2013 / 8,927 Views
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