Just like Killzone Mercenary I was here day one, well almost. I was hyped for the PlayStation 4 and this game. I pre ordered a PlayStation 4 bundle that came with Killzone Shadow Fall, an extra controller and the camera but those bundles wouldn’t make it on launch day so I got mine a couple of weeks late. When I got the call that it was in I was pumped and dropped everything to go pick it up. I don’t have this experience anymore, this felt like the last time. Yeah I still try to buy consoles I want at launch and some games day one. I still have some hope and excitement. I still love videogames. But modern gaming has beaten so much of that out of me and this was around the time period when it really started setting in. I remember Killzone Shadow Fall being disappointing and forgettable but holy crap I didn’t really remember or understand how bad it was, playing it right after the other Killzone games made it very clear. There are at least a few redeeming things about it though.

Killzone Shadow Fall starts off with you playing as a child that can only walk around and crouch. Yes that is correct I didn’t accidently put the wrong disc in but I wish I had. It is fitting that you are playing as a child because that’s how players are going to be treated in so many games, including the start of this one. Not even just the start, there are control instructions well into the later part of the game. God this section is annoying, unskippable and too long. The reason for this section is to set up the new character and show that Vektan families have to move after the events of Killzone 3 because the solution they came up with was to give a huge chunk of Vekta to the surviving Helghast. Then separate the two sides with a big wall. An interesting idea with obvious real world inspiration but something about it just seems really stupid here and not well explained. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, not my fault this game is fucking dull, or maybe it was buried in the excessive number of collectibles. Maybe there are some other interesting bits of lore in those collectables too and maybe there is some interesting political stuff going on. Dehumanisation and peace by genocide are on the menu and there were some cold war vibes. I have to be honest and just say I was too bored by it all. Anyway it jumps way ahead in time and now that kid has become a perfect little ISA soldier guy. Great now we can start shooting some Helghast right? Haha, no.

This game takes such a long time to get going properly. After some boring cut scenes with people talking at you, because this game is all in first person for some reason, things finally get started around chapter 2.2. You get a little drone friend and finally get into it, but it isn’t good. I can’t believe how much I complained about Killzone 3 and its changes in my review. Killzone 3 is a masterpiece compared to this. Chapter 2 has you in an open-ish area that gives you some freedom and space to move around because who needs density right when we can just drag things out to double or triple the length. This adds nothing but boredom. Hey game developers just because more powerful hardware allows you to do things like this that doesn’t mean you should. The new drone friend has four different abilities; shock, attack, shield and zip line. It can also hack things and will revive you if you have adrenaline. This adrenaline health also gives a slow mo effect after use. I kept forgetting that I was meant to use the drone even with the icon for it being dead centre in the screen. It just feels like an addition that was needed as a substitute for actually good gameplay. They added a ping thing to highlight all the enemies and important things around you for a while. The game has made a massive shift towards focusing on stealth. There are so many sections were it feels like you are just walking around and it is so frequently strongly scripted. Chapter 3 is up next and it has you literally floating about sometimes and moving Petrusite canisters around. It is one of the most dull first person shooter missions ever. Killzone Shadow Fall has multiple moments where you are floating in no gravity and free falling sections and parts where you need to mess around with canisters. They are all shit. What the hell have they done to Killzone?

They reached inside of it and ripped its fucking heart out is what they did. The old grounded, gritty and weighty feel and tone of Killzone isn’t diluted here, they just threw it out the fucking window. Killzone Shadow Fall feels stiff and light. Standard first person shooter controls are now the default, at least you can change back though. Guns look worse, sound worse and feel worse. The selection available throughout the campaign is crap and you often feel forced into sticking to the main one. The Helghast look worse, sound worse, the way they react to getting shot is worse, the way they react vocally is worse and their AI is worse. How the hell do things like this go backwards? There is a real lack of good shoot outs in the game and just action in general. The soundtrack is a huge downgrade, so are the menus and the shitty HUD. The violence and gore got toned down. The whole thing just lacks energy. There is nothing visceral. It’s so lifeless and dull.

The way Killzone Shadow Fall looks is the same. They threw out the old style completely. It is way brighter and more colourful. It is not hard sci-fi at all anymore and has become too over the top. It tries to deliver on spectacle but Killzone 3 tops it easily because in that game the player is more involved and Killzone 3 has better art direction and cut scenes too. Blood on the screen has been replaced by red indicators that don’t even seem that accurate and it was harder to tell how close you were to death than in previous games. So it is not just the big changes but so many smaller ones too. Like even the Helghast walking animation looks worse. This big budget game has moments that look jank or unnatural. It impacts the gameplay and how the whole thing feels to be in. It looks impressive yeah but artificial and uninteresting like I’m walking through a dead tech demo. Things do get a little more interesting in chapter 5 when you go over to the Helghast side of the wall for a while but it still pales in comparison to Killzone 2 and 3, even Killzone Mercenary feels more alive. They didn’t just rip Killzone’s heart out but with the downgrades to visuals, music and sound its soul was taken too.

I remember a bit in chapter 7 where you are under pressure defending a position against heavy enemy numbers and then it flips when you jump in a large gun. This should make you feel something as the pressure is lifted and you turn the tables raining down heavy fire but there’s nothing. The gun sounds so limp, the Heghast don’t react as well as they used too, the environments are more static with less moving parts and destruction. Limp is the right word or flaccid or flat or dogshit. There is a moment in chapter 6 when you are just running through a battlefield doing nothing, just running and it finally clicked for me. This is one of those look but don’t touch type games. They sneak at least one or two forced walking sections in there that I remember too. Yeah we are deep in modern gaming territory here, which is a weird thing to say about a game from 2013 that is on the verge of being called retro. This probably sounds even weirder to younger people but things have really been bad for that long.

As the game comes to an end there is an actually decent shootout but then it just ends too soon. I was left sitting there, controller in hand, like ‘that’s fucking it.’ There was another good engagement earlier in the chapter as well but it culminated in a lame boss fight with a character I can’t even remember the name of. Stahl from Killzone 3 is the big bad guy of the game but he has almost no presence and they didn’t get Malcolm McDowell back to voice him. Visari’s daughter (I think) and some other guy that tortured you popped up for a moment during the game but I don’t know what happened with them. What happened to the surviving characters from Killzone 3? I can’t believe Killzone Shadow Fall has me missing Rico. Echo is the most interesting one here. She is half Vektan, half Helghast and just wants both sides to not destroy each other. Why didn’t we just play as her the whole game. There is a little fake ending but then there is a bit more to play. After that I was still left with ‘really, that’s fucking it.’

So it is pretty clear I don’t like this but I have not given it the lowest score I possibly could. There are a few reasons for this. First of all there is moment where you are floating above Helghan and you do get to go back to that now destroyed planet as well. It’s not in the same visual style as older games and the whole first section of it was shit to play but it was nice to go back and be briefly reminded of Killzone 2. As I have said already it is extremely visually technically impressive. I believe it pioneered some things still used now and it was the first Decima Engine game. Most of all though it is the multiplayer that completely saves this game. I put quite a lot of hours into it. Okay maybe it being a launch title and me not having much else to play on my new console played a part in that. But I did genuinely enjoy the multiplayer offering. It may have been one of the last big first person shooter multiplayer games to still feel like the previous generation before so much bullshit fully took over. It was much better than the campaign and the Botzone is still there at least. Yeah, if you’re going to try Killzone Shadow Fall then check out the Botzone. I guess it fleshed out the Killzone lore a bit more too. Also this game did add some kind of co op later but I never tried it.

Killzone Shadow Fall is an insult to everyone that enjoyed the previous Killzone games and an insult to everyone that worked hard on those previous games too. What even happened here? Was this some kind of weaponised incompetence because Guerrilla didn’t want to keep working on Killzone? Were there big changes to the team? Not enough development time? I have seen people comment that this game killed the franchise but that isn’t true. It was already dead. Killzone Shadow Fall is just Killzone’s corpse that has been propped up and paraded in front of us with a new and impressive but boring, superficial coat of paint. There are a few small redeeming qualities and it had the multiplayer which saved it but that’s gone now. Don’t bother playing this. Killzone Shadow Fall is a poor first person shooter and an awful Killzone game.

This brings me to the end of my Killzone series play through, thank you to anyone that read all the reviews. Sadly the series goes out with a whimper not a bang. Fuck Killzone Shadow Fall and fuck what started happening to videogames during the 7th generation that fully took hold in the 8th and continued. I will write something lengthy on this at some point but in short, videogames are in a bad place now. Why is it so hard for people to understand this statement and viewpoint as intended instead of choosing to interpret it in the most completely simplistic, literal way possible? Also just because we still get some good games and some good indie games it doesn’t invalidate that and no I’m not just playing live service stuff and AAA. I have been playing all sorts of games for around three decades without taking a break and I have working eyes and ears and an at least decently functional brain. Killzone Shadow Fall and its campaign have actually pissed me off.

Guerrilla went on after this to make the open world Horizon games that I don’t give a shit about. I don’t want to see any Killzone sequels and definitely no bloody remakes. All I want from this series is a remaster collection. Killzone Liberation is available to buy and download currently and if you want to inflict Killzone Shadow Fall upon yourself you can play it on current hardware too. Killzone Mercenary is a trickier one because the Vita features are so baked into it but I’d like to see it brought over like Liberation. What I would like to see most is a remaster collection with Killzone 1, 2 and 3, that doesn’t mess up how they look or play, in a complete physical release.