by Paolo Icban Cablay
One of the flagship launch titles for PS4, Killzone Shadow Fall offers a lot compared to the previous Killzone installments. You play as Lucas Kellan, a former occupant of the helghan-infested part of the planet who witnessed his father being murdered by helghan forces while trying to escape to Vekta.
In the first part of the campaign story mode, you start out in a facility only armed with a knife while you sneak past security drones and helghan forces. As you sneak past them, the game teaches you a variety of ways to kill the guards such as climbing on top of a platform and performing a mid-air stealth kill, etc. You can also perform knife kills when an enemy is alerted of your presence, as long as he didn’t shoot his gun to alert all of the enemies in the vicinity.
Once you have the OWL drone, you can hold L1 and swipe the Dual Shock 4’s touch pad in different directions to command the OWL to perform a few tasks such as attacking head on, hacking an alarm to deactivate it, deploying a zip line to safely transport you from an elevated place without the risk of dying from the fall, and reviving you with adrenaline when the heat of battle would overpower you.
As for the graphics, Killzone Shadow fall does not disappoint. In the first mission when you play Lucas as a kid, you and your father will converse with each other and at the same time, the game zooms in on his father’s face revealing face textures that can be comparable to the game, ‘Heavy Rain’. Glass, metal, and cloth really looks like as if they were taken in real life, and put into the game. The level design stole my attention as mountains, cliffs, rocks, and trees appear to have been made by mother nature herself.
All in all, Killzone Shadow Fall is one of the best flagship launch titles for the PS4. It offers innovative gameplay and visually-stunning graphics as any next-gen game should.