Killzone Shadow Fall - What Went Wrong?

i think anyone who owned a playstation 3 or who was just into gaming back in the day can probably remember that infamous killzone 2 trailer with gorilla games claiming it was showing actual gameplay and using an in-game engine but as we all later found out the whole thing was just entirely pre-rendered it's gone down in history as one of the biggest gaming crocs of all time and is a great example of the bullshot trend of the mid-2000s but it also created an interesting premise making us wonder just how long it might be until games could get to that point where that actually looked that good i don't think they got there with killzone 2 or killzone 3. i mean don't get me wrong they sure looked good all things considered but i do think they hit the back of the net visually when killzone 4 was eventually released killzone shadow 4 was released as a launch title for the playstation 4 way back in 2013 and at the time it appeared to be a pretty good justification for buying out this new console i can scarcely believe it's a 10 year old game in terms of how good it looks but also how it plays because in that regard it really feels like it should be a 15 or 20 year old game instead you see for all of its bells and whistles and shiny dangling objects killzone shadowfall is just a complete dud of a shooter and honestly just a crappy game in general and that's a wound that goes even deeper when you realize it was the only fps exclusive release for the platform i mean not counting all those vr titles take this opportunity to reflect on your behavior and if you want to get even more depressed well how's about this fact it's the last fps exclusive for any sony console period in fairness the playstation 3 didn't do huge numbers either i mean you had the resistance games you had haze and we all know how that turned out it's gonna be a fun day as well as obviously kill zone two and three but still that's like half a dozen games all up i mean a hell of a lot better than just one yeah it doesn't make for much bragging rights when your only contender is clinging onto the corpse of a once great franchise i'm talking about the campaign of course not the multiplayer mode i'm not even remotely interested in trying to get into what's a 10 year old community at this point i mean i may as well just go outside and stand in the middle of the road dodging traffic because i think they'll be more forgiving than trying to get into that aspect of the game at this point but i mean according to what info i can find on the internet that side of things is pretty much dead anyway sadly too i couldn't even find much fun in the bot zone mode that because the bot ai is just ridiculously lethal even on the so called medium difficulty and at times it just seems to flat out cheat right so before we get too far into it i do need to thank expressvpn for sponsoring this video and actually realized today that i've been using these guys now for over two years i mean yikes that's two years i've been able to use my internet without worrying about people stealing my information but what's a vpn well i'm so glad you asked the vpn is a virtual private network and it rewrites all of your data through a secure encrypted server meaning people can't get access to it it's good for torrenting which is what i use it for the most but also keeping your activity hidden from your isp you can also use it to change your region so with streaming sites like netflix you can watch movies and tv shows that you wouldn't normally get like netflix japan for instance has a much bigger range of anime titles obviously which i know is something that a lot of my viewers are into yeah don't deny it all up you can choose from over 90 different countries and get rock solid connection speeds every time like i said i've been using these guys for over two years now and it's really just as easy as click and connect and then you're good to go but if you still don't believe me in which case i wonder why you're even watching well then there's still plenty of positive reviews from actual users along with bigger websites like tech radar and cnet so if you want to join the club and get three extra months for free well head over to expressvpn.com forward slash gman and get started [Music] coming back to the campaign though i don't know what it really is about shadowfall that makes it so forgettable but i think a big part of it is that it's probably a sequel that never needed to be made in the first place now gorilla games i think are really good at making better looking versions of games that people are already playing if that makes sense that's something i think you can see in the recent horizon games but also more importantly back to that first killzone game on the playstation 2. if you play killzone 1 and then go play whatever medal of honor or other console shooter was out around the same time well you're gonna see that they control very similarly much in the same vein it has an aiming mechanic where you have to stand still to be more precise along with manual health as opposed to regenerating health needing med kits to stay alive and it also has objective base level design lacking even the basic convenience of a mid-level checkpoint overall it's not inherently bad but it's really just the same as what everyone else was pretty much doing at that same point the only differing factor was the art style and the visuals which were admittedly pretty unique and looked a hell of a lot different to other games even if it did often run at a frame rate that felt like single digits it was not however any kind of new cornerstone for console shooters makes the whole thing even more hilarious when you think about how people used to say that this was going to be sony's halo killer and looking at gameplay of killzone side by side with halo 2 and the xbox is just laughable and i'm not even a huge halo guy but even i can admit that halo 2 just runs rings around it pun intended overall it didn't get much of a glowing reception i mean it scored all right but hardly the generation defining shooter i think people were hoping for as far as playstation 2 shooters go well look it's far from the worst but it's nowhere near the top of that heap either now if you look at killzone 2 though and compared to other shooters at the time of its release it's easier to see the same kind of design hallmarks from again other games at the same time too this time the call of duty series however this thing released to almost universal acclaim and you've gotta wonder why is that well i think the reason that killzone didn't make as much of a splash as the second game did was that the jump from fifth to sixth generation consoles was an actual pretty big deal and it was really the generation of gaming when ordinary people could look at a video game and start to get excited by it there was a much more higher level of detail than video game graphics now that meant you didn't have to use your imagination so much anymore to fill in the blanks games now looked cinematic they could pull off semi-realistic visuals have believable characters with fully motion captured cutscenes plus the scope of what could be created seemed almost limitless okay here we go hold on hold on killzone 2 was a game that was on the forefront of really being able to take advantage of that and hammer the whole thing home with its new improved graphics engine but more than that the characters and the environments could be fully realized and to this day i think it's a testament as just to how to make a really truly believable and lived in game world not only was it a visual spectacle but the world of hell gand was as hostile as its population was volatile violent and destructive like my stomach after a night at the curry house the entire planet was in the midst of a horrible storm that felt like the place was being ripped apart from the inside out again like my stomach after the night the curry house it's not hard to see why this game had a huge effect at the time when it came out and the reason is that there really was nothing like it at the time especially for the playstation 3 and especially as far as first person shooters went i mean resistance 2 had come out like a year or so prior and we'd had haze before that lol but kill zone 2 just shits all over both of those but now here's the thing about killzone 2 right when people look back on it i don't think they're going to be looking back and remembering how amazing the gun play was i don't think anyone's going to be looking back and saying to themselves oh man that one level in that street where i shot those 10 guys you know that was so awesome now son they're going to be talking about how unique it all felt and played they're going to be talking about those epic cinematics and those watershed moments or they're going to be talking about the absolutely awesome soundtrack i mean seriously listen to the main menu theme from this thing and tell me you don't get a boner from it the physical presence of the helghast could now be appreciated much more now due to the high fidelity offered by the playstation 3 and there was a definite visceral feel to the combat shooting these guys at point blank range you'd see them recoil back in pain as you gunned them down and it still impressive stuff to this day but again gameplay wise though it wasn't anything entirely new or groundbreaking and the combat just consisted of shooting constant waves of incoming enemies as you push down what's essentially a giant corridor until the whole level comes to an end i mean occasionally you'll pick up an rpg you'll hop into a tank but the whole thing plays out very safe and seemed to do what everyone else was doing at the same time and like i said before that's something that all of gorilla games games all have in common i don't know man it's kind of like their modus operandi they're really good at making these stunning looking worlds and they clearly have some super talented people working in their art departments but then when it comes to the gameplay loops well it's like they never know how to add in anything new that first horizon game for instance i think looks ridiculously good i mean even that first game on the playstation 4 still looks like good pass for a 2022 game easily but then you start to play it and it's like you know is this it and now finally getting onto shadowfall i think for me that's the same reason why the whole thing fell so short and you know i guess a bunch of other people too because once you get past how good the whole thing looks and yes it does look good it starts to dawn on you that you're really just playing a visually updated version of the same game you've played three times already you just can't get by on good looks anymore when everything else is for lack of a better word [ __ ] and i think gamers back at the time but starting to realize that this game surfer from all the problems a bad game is at its most poor level design poorly the history sucks just a freaking corridor like all linear games graphics are amazing but are graphics enough to be a good game no where are all the fun of games nowadays gunplay irritating sometimes and all in all is a frustrating game [ __ ] you girl and sony now i can't see any other reason for shadow 4 being made other than just to be an easy win for sony and a way to piggyback off the brand recognition and coincide with it being a launch title and i think it would have definitely stood out amongst the others considering the other games available at the time but pretty pissed weak yeah anyone else remember knack yeah that was a good one after this thing came out i remember there being all these articles about it selling a bazillion copies which i think isn't all that much of a brag considering the context i mean it was the only exclusive fps for the platform at the time and it still is it's like opening up a mcdonald's in a small town then bragging about how it outsells the local pie shop i mean if you give someone a glass of water in the desert they're not going to turn it down to diet first you know what i'm saying review scores however told the more interesting tale and it ended up being one of the lowest scoring games in the entire series almost as low as the first game sometimes there's a disconnect between the critic and the user scores with one being higher or lower than the other but this time around it seemed to be a universally lukewarm response from both sides so what exactly happened here well i can say one thing they sure didn't mess up the way the whole thing looks let me show you something i reckon you could show this game to someone who doesn't know any bet up so you know any current day sony fanboy be perfect tell them this was a 2022 release and they'd probably believe you i mean it looks that good there's an early cinematic where it flies over one of the main cities and it looks like it could pass itself off as being pre-rendered and unlike kill zone 2 or 3 it doesn't use all these visual effects to appear more cinematic it just gets by on how technically solid the whole thing looks this is all we have it does however come at the expense of the tone overall and it's just got this far more clean shiny and tidy look to it and when you take away the main thing that made the other game so memorable being that harsh uninviting backdrop of helgen as a planet then replace it with this bright new backdrop well then it does kind of end up looking like a bit of a tech demo as for the premise and the story the question i ask again is this a story that really needed to be told try it it won't be as easy as the last time it's kind of like the matrix resurrections of video game sequels or i guess maybe matrix resurrections is the kill zone shadowfall of sequels either way it's bad and it sure didn't need to be made now despite the issues i had with killzone 3 i always kind of felt like the ending for that fitted by the end of the third game the line between who were the good guys and who are the bad guys had truly been blurred through their actions the isa had pretty much wiped out most of the planet defeating the helghan but also killing countless innocent civilians in the process oh my god so it was kind of fitting that the characters who started out as typical dude bros going in to save the galaxy from the evil space nazis in some ways ended up doing more harmony good your king went down like a [ __ ] soldier the end twist of style escaping and surviving wasn't the be orlando it just kind of felt like a fun way to leave things open-ended but like a lightning bolt zapping through the neck of a corpse amalgamated together with the body parts of criminals and degenerates shadowfall takes the pieces of a dead story and tries to bring it back to life again it takes place 30 years after all of that stuff the surviving helghast now living on vector with a giant wall separating the two factions because yeah that's not going to cause dissent as a result into the surprise of absolutely no one both sides are constantly trying to [ __ ] around and a terrorist organization called black hand a real creative name by the way is formed and goes to war against the vsa which is kind of like an intelligence group working for the isa makes sense during the prologue you're playing as a kid named killen because apparently every sony game ever made has to have a sequence where you're playing as a little kid anyway after trying to sneak out of the city after it's under attack by helgen forces your dad is killed and you're saved in the nick of time by a shadow marshal named sinclair well looks like you're gonna have to stick with me kid who then during the most abrupt montage ever jumping years ahead with each jump cut trains kellen to become a shadow master himself all our people want is to be kept safe that means taking the fight to the hell guest 12 seconds later the shadow marshal program is honored to have you lucas the [ __ ] is that yeah and get used to interacting with this dollar store nick fury because it's about the only person you ever seem to talk to gone is the camaraderie between sevchenko and his buddies but the only person you ever really engage with is sinclair and then eventually a helgen agent named ekko who i imagine is going to be spending an absolute fortune on chapsticks because those lips i think are big enough to block out the god damn son you disgust me also the same actress who is voicing ekko plays a character in a similarly generic futuristic shooter with call of duty infinite warfare you talk about being typecast never call me that she definitely does a better job than the dude voicing kellen though and for someone who's supposed to be this badass special forces elite soldier he sure sounds like a bit of a wimp you're gonna let his death mean nothing they are innocent people no but it does make for a pretty cool dynamic i guess as both kellen and ekko have to figure out what the hell guys they're up to with this new buyer weapon and what it's going to be used for it's kind of sad though that it still portrays the helghast as being these cookie cutter villains you know there's almost comically over the top bad guys and the fact they're all still wearing those masks it covers 90 of their faces removes any humanity from them completely about the one thing i can praise though is that it doesn't have the atypical 15 minute long patented sony exclusive cinematics you know where every single character is very clearly mocapped and overacting video game dialogue as if they're reciting othello no now as for the shooting and the combat shadowfall did get praise at the time for offering up a more open-ended approach to the levels but i think what people are mostly referring to is whether or not you're gonna be using stealth or combat and you've really got to hand it to these guys for not even including any basic stealth mechanics here outside of just crashing to make yourself harder to spot you can perform scripted takedown animations too but there's not even any way to move or hide the bodies i mean you don't even get a weapon with a lousy silence up not at least until right up near the end of the game but i'll get to that bit soon enough don't worry there's no detection markers or bars that fill up to let you know when you're being seen there's none of that you just kind of crouch walk around staying at everyone's line of sight and then hoping for the best and when they see you well you might as well put a neon sign around your neck and start screaming out the lyrics to motley cruz kick start my heart occasionally there'll be a terminal you need to hack to stop reinforcements but it's got about as much depth as a foot bath of course it's also got that good old scan the area feature we can highlight enemies and objects through solid walls you know in lieu of expecting the player to listen to audio cues and to use the environment as to figure out where enemies actually are yet now let's not do that let's just make them [ __ ] glow through walls there's not even any kind of real punishment for being detected though so as a result you're probably gonna spend most of the time just shooting stuff which is fine i mean no one plays a killzone game expecting the pussyfoot around and it's a brand new playstation 4 fps game so you're expecting them to just pack this thing with heaps of new mechanics right except no they didn't do that shadowfall again uses the weapon limit approach from the previous games but it somehow makes it even worse to the point that it's more or less like a one weapon limit because you're always forced to hold on to this vsa assault rifle is a primary weapon and it almost never leaves your hands the entire campaign this thing's got two highly unique modes and are you sitting down right now because this thing might blow your socks off you ready okay the first one is a standard aim down the sights fire mode the second one wait for it is a sniper mode yeah where you can zoom in much more and charge up the rifle for more damaging shots how do they come up with this stuff the thing is though unlike the revolver in killzone 2 and 3 this thing doesn't have infinite ammo so it's not really possible to use as a fallback weapon which you know was kind of the point of the revolver in the first place to begin with the weird thing is how killzone 3 actually introduced the three weapon limit because if you remember you could carry a primary weapon and then a heavy weapon like an lmg or a sniper rifle plus then have that third secondary one to fall back on so i mean if anything that means that shadowfall has actually regressed from killzone 3 and that's just silly i get too that this thing is set 30 years in the future but i also kind of dislike how none of the weapons feel like they have any personality anymore i mean in the other games when you picked up a helgen rifle it looked like a helgen rifle those weapons were designed and built for functionality they didn't have all the bells and whistles or the aesthetics of vectored weaponry and you could tell they were supposed to look like something being mass-produced by the thousands to arm these fanatical soldiers it played into the whole futuristic world war two vibe they were going for and it also tapped into the idea of the helghast being this industrialist working class civilization i mean these guys have had to fight for everything even down to just having breathable air everything now though just looks so shiny and pristine and there's so little difference artistically between each of these factions weaponry regards to the weapon though you know the drill arseholes and elbows you aim down the sights you shoot people and then you hide behind something when that blatantly obvious q tells you that you're gonna die because of that dog [ __ ] hdr effect that so many playstation 4 games often seem to have enemies can be near impossible to distinguish from the background sometimes too and yeah that's fun and how's about the shotgun in this thing which has this really weird effect of making people jump backwards when they're hit by it often when the physics don't really make sense for it to happen that way [Music] reminds me that one scene from django unchained badminton i will say one thing and that is i like the minigun you get your hands on here and if there's one thing i have to praise these guys for it's the way they always seem to know the way that these heavier weapons feel there's a petrocyte cannon you get later on in the game too which just outright vaporizes enemies and sends them to the goddamn shadow realm or the shadow 4 realm i guess and this thing is also really fun to use much more fun than whatever boring generic hit scanning weapon you're going to be using for that other 90 of the game so for the few short times i got to lug these things around it made me not want to kill myself the sad part is that i often can't even kill myself if i want to because you've got this little flying drone thing called an hour that revives you half the time i guess one way in which shadowfall does try to differentiate itself and do something new is with this dinner plate size drone that can fly out and perform a few basic tasks firstly it can simply be sent out in an offensive capacity hovering around and shooting at enemies something it's so effective at that it's almost kind of boring in a way because it often kills enemies more quickly than you do plus it also carries the player even further with the ability to revive you if you're carrying spirit adrenaline packs in fact it kind of makes you wonder why they don't just mass produce these things and send them into battle with express orders to kill every helgen outside it's kind of like those little century robots from doom 3 and again you have to wonder how the good guys are losing the fight here when these little dynamos exist later in the game you'll see guys with energy shields and the owl can also zap them shorting those shields out and making them vulnerable but that's more of a necessity than it is a tactical decision the second one is a grappling line which might have been cool only this thing can only go on a downward trajectory not up would have really given you some fun options with mobility during combat you know i've been able to get high above enemies and use that verticality to your advantage instead yeah it only goes down and the only times i ever really used it was when i had to the third mode is the ability to hack into terminals again something which you only ever need to do at mostly fixed points enemies will set off alarms and call in reinforcements so you're gonna need to hack the panels to stop more guys from pouring in but yeah that's about it it's never used in like a clever tactical sense or anything creative like that like imagine being able to hack into someone's helmet and jam their vision or send them false orders to make them leave the area i don't know just something creative anything then finally it's got a shield mode where it hovers in the air and puts out a protective barrier in front of the player preventing you from taking damage kind of and out of all the modes i found this one to be the most fun because at least i can actually use it in any scenario this is all of course controlled by using the touchpad on the playstation 4 controller because you know the six axis controls weren't bad enough to begin with on the playstation 3 so this time they had to find another awful gimmick to implement i think it might have actually been done out of necessity because every single other button on that controller already has a function to it to the point that it's almost confusing but there's a reason why barely no other games aside from this and i think infamous second sun used this feature you know what's basically just a giant ugly pause button because it's a gimmick and it sucks they really break the mold about halfway through the game when you team up with echo and for this entire level you can tag enemies and then she'll take them out from a distance with their sniper rifle somehow always managing to get a shot off and have a perfect vantage point target killed and it's the most unexciting impactless effect to when someone gets hit by her they just kind of slump to the ground like a sack of potatoes neutralized later on they break even more ground as you've then got to return the favor and cover her with her own rifle yeah the irony good shooting at some points about this level you need to hack these spider bots to destroy cameras or terminals and they're so lazy with this that most of the time these things are just laying dormant right next to the spot you need to use them it's like they couldn't even be bothered going off and putting them somewhere hard for the player to find you know heaven forbid the level design encourages some actual exploration you'll also have to deal with these things on the flip side hacking their containers to stop them from endlessly spawning in and they're further proof that small exploding enemies are the absolute bane of fps level design you know along with turrets and mines oh [ __ ] one of the last levels has you planting petricide containers into these machines to destroy these giant century towers and i just want to say that fighting giant robots is never fun in any game ever made and that's a hill i'll die on and it's just the same tedious procedure repeated those three or four times until the whole level comes to an end it doesn't get challenging or exciting it just kind of feels like a chore repeating the same task like you're washing dishes or hanging clothes out on the line those free falling sections of the one where you're moving about in low gravity might be some of the worst things ever created the free falling sequence is just needlessly difficult because that console fov makes it impossible to see your surroundings and you get no real tutorial or introduction to the low gravity levels and then you just kind of expect it to come to grips with the controls as you're under attack with these constant incoming threats i don't even know what's going on half the time here so i just keep shooting it stuff until the whole thing ends i mean that seemed to work there are a couple of good ideas in there though i think one of the best sequences in the game is the one on a space station when you're trying to escape and while you're being shot at you can shoot away these protective blinds from the windows that lets in the harsh helgen sun this of course fries anything that happens to be caught in it which is just a cool effect one section later in the game has you controlling drones and you can send these things off the foot soldiers or make them focus far on the tougher units and again it's pretty damn fun just because it breaks up the tedium of pressing a combination of l2 and r2 until everything's dead plus i like this bit here too when you've got to run across no man's land if only because it kind of felt challenging and took my weapons away from me causing my [ __ ] to pucker up so tight that i could probably use it to crush rocks and turn them into gravel there's another cool level early on in the game where the helghast attacked the vsa disguised as soldiers and this might have been a really clever mission making it hard to tell who was an enemy and who was an ally it's just they don't even bother exploring that concept because despite the helghast having these very effective disguises for some reason they all turned them off you know making it easier to spot them okay it all just kind of makes me miss some of those vehicle sequences from killzone 3 which is something i never thought i'd say i mean at least then they tried to mix things up a bit here it's like they didn't even bother getting past the basic concepts and it's things like this where you start to understand just how rushed and unfinished the whole thing feels almost like they've just kind of given up where i really knew they'd given up was during the final room which much like kill zone 2 is just rooms and rooms full of constantly spawning enemies who come out of these doors which only seem to exist to spawn them in and in fact the only way i managed to beat this area was by exploiting that and rushing through one of those doorways when it opened because it was the only spot in the room where i had cover and wouldn't get constantly ambushed from behind and comparing this to killzone 2 i think is a perfect example because despite how good the whole thing looks and all the upgrades they made to the presentation it still feels like you're playing something from an older console you know new gen graphics old gameplay again it's like poetry so if they rhyme for some reason you stuck around for the entire campaign and managed to make it to the end well then you'll be witness to the ultimate dumb video game logic [ __ ] as our hero kellen who up until this point has survived about a bazillion bullet wounds is suddenly killed in a cinematic by a single bullet come again and that marks the end of the game you finished killzone shadowfall thanks for watching [Music] now i'm kidding son this is actually a fake ending cut into credits for a bit before then revealing it's a psych out as you instead then get to play through an entire epilogue sequence as echo but the thing that actually surprised me is that this whole section is actually pretty damn good you've got a cloak which makes you invisible and lets you avoid getting seen not to mention a silenced pistol finally and it's actually really fun sneaking around and taking enemies out you've got to watch their patrol routes you've got to time your takedowns right and actually use skill to make it through unseen and all i can think this entire time was why didn't they use this for the rest of the game yeah let's keep all the solid stealth mechanics for a 10 minute epilogue at the end of the whole game yeah good one gorilla this all ends when ekko manages to get a good shot on sinclair assassinating him for killing kellen and preventing him from using the aftermath of the previous events to incite a war against the helghast and in a final display of summoner gorilla clearly not giving a [ __ ] you get this awful side of this spinning bullet heading for sinclair's head before the game finally ends i kind of look at this last sequence as a bit of a metaphor for gorilla killing off the killzone brand because after this game they focused entirely on the horizon series in fact i think they're now even working on a third game for that franchise as we speak which if the second game is any indicator is gonna have alloy given an almost constant commentary on the entire campaign from start to finish like she's a sports commentator never personally i hope gorilla just leave killzone alone and i don't see any reason for them to go back and make another one especially now considering that two out of these four main games are mid as [ __ ] to begin with i mean it's not like they're going to be reviving this masterpiece of a franchise the playstation 4 would eventually end up having some pretty dope exclusives you know you had things like god of war ghost of shashima spiderman and bloodborne and look maybe if shadowfall had a bit more time in the oven it could have joined those ranks but it ended up being a sad swan song on a console that should have done it better for a series that deserved more no but at least now this video is done people can stop asking me about it and i'll never have to play it again [Music] you

Channel: GmanLives

Views: 421,792

Keywords: killzone shadow fall ps4, lets play, video game, guerrilla games, playstation 4, killzone: shadow fall, killzone review, killzone shadow fall, killzone shadow fall review, killzone ps4, video review, ps4 launch, ps4 review, video games, killzone shadow fall ps4 review, playstation 4 vr, killzone shadow fall review 2021, killzone 3 review, killzone 2 review, killzone review ps2, horizon, gmanlives, gggmanlives, next gen, killzone 2, killzone 3, playstation network

Id: WhaolyTRttQ

Length: 30min 51sec (1851 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 28 2022