impressions by a writer who played the game at e3 IGN.com
I was immediately intrigued when I started playing. There was nothing forced about Shadow Fall’s approach; it was thoughtful and calculated. One of the developers from Guerrilla noted to me that Shadow Fall, unlike the Killzone trilogy on PS2 and PS3, is about using your brain in addition to your brawn. And it didn’t take long for me to learn exactly what he was talking about.Immediately, Shadow Fall felt unlike any Killzone game that came before it, not only because of its non-linear mission structure and wide-open, fully explorable maps, but because it’s also a technically deeper experience from a gameplay perspective. This isn’t just a shooter anymore; it’s far more complex, so much so that I handed the DualShock 4 over to a guy from Guerrilla after being ruthlessly massacred several times so I could at least see the proper experience.
What was so difficult? Well, there’s a lot to keep track of if you don’t have the luxury of a tutorial. You have your two weapons, which can be switched between via the triangle button, but you also have control of an all-new device called OWL. OWL, as it quickly became clear, is absolutely essential in Shadow Fall, and if you don’t know how to use it effectively – which I didn’t -- you’ll quickly be victimized by the game’s cunning and rather smart enemy AI.
Sounding like an FPS worth playing. Not the usualIt was especially fun – and quite novel – to effectively use stealth in Shadow Fall. The Helghast are smart and fully aware of their surroundings, but you can get the jump on them, using silent melee attacks to strike quickly without being seen. Of course, once seen, all bets are off. The Helghast will beeline to the nearest alarm – a good reason to centrally disable those alarms before doing any other part of the mission – once they see you. It’s at this point that you get a taste of what the Helghast are packing in Killzone: Shadow Fall, as well as the more conventional weapons, apart from OWL, that you have at your disposal.