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First Killzone: Shadow Fall review

Hanmik

Member
BTW.. there is a second opinion--.-

En andra åsikt
Jonas Mäki
Att slippa promenera längs en utstakad stig som i merparten av de senare årens actionspel lät på förhand bra. Men Guerrilla går aldrig hela vägen utan försöker hitta något slags gyllene medelväg mellan Call of Duty-linjäriteten och de labyrintliknande miljöerna i den gamla skolans actiontitlar. Jag tappar bort mig, saker som ska triggas igång för att man ska komma vidare är för långsökta och tempot är ibland irriterande lågt. Visst finns det en hel del riktigt maffiga banor här som verkligen imponerar, men överlag hade jag hoppats på mer tyngd och fläskiga effekter. Guerrilla måste dessutom - som så många andra - sluta jaga Infinity Ward när det gäller spelets multiplayerdel och försöka gå sin egen väg istället. 7/10

7/10
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
So a fluctuating framerate between 30 and 50 is now "phenomenal"? Sorry, I don't want to come across pc-dickish...but what's a stable 6ß then?
You're wasting your time with these comments. You know damn well that most journalists don't understand this stuff.
 
So the natural reaction the reviewer comes to is to blame the game for breaking away from the traditional FPS mold. I see.

"I can't just run in a straight line? AHHH WHAT DO I DO?"

That's not what he's saying at all. At least not what I'm taking away from it.

The slower pace is a welcome change, and with many ventilation shafts to crawl through there's a sense of actually being able to lose track of where you're going, which is also appreciated. At the same time the ill-thought-out level design drives us crazy at times, and the sometimes careless structure of the missions and the exaggerated variation of mechanics also frustrates.

It just sounds like they may have some issues with certain points of the levels that don't make sense, but overall welcome the variety and possibly the designers aren't very familiar with that type of level design, such as this:

We played through Shadow Fall on "hard" and died more times during our 8 hours with the game than we've done in the four numbered Halo games put together. But while it's easy to appreciate the more open game world, it's also easy to spot signs of stress and the fact that the team hasn't constructed these kind of labyrinthine levels before.

Guerrilla has been trying a little too hard, and it's noticeable that they have been pushed to make a deadline. Combat is sometimes poorly choreographed.

It sounds like they really enjoyed it (other 'top' games are receiving an 8 on their site) and that at times the level design seems to be haphazard compared to other parts.

... or, you know ... they just hate tuff gamez.

EDIT: I skimmed some paragraphs that went into mission detail when they'd say things like "It showed it's best form ... " or "the worst level was ... " mainly because I want to enjoy the game myself. But I don't get the vibe you're getting at all, not even sure how you could pull that from that review unless you're just selective quoting.
 

Steroyd

Member
Well judging from this line from your quote "At times it gets really weird when you have to go back, perform some seemingly menial task, return to the previous position and push a button that wasn't there at first. It breaks the illusion." that seems to be like poor level design. I hate games that force you to backtrack through a level for objective that wasn't there before normally to lengthen the level.

Those screenshots look gorgeous though, guerrilla games never fails to deliver on the visual front thankfully.

Read the sentences before it.

All too often, especially in the forest level, enemies and their well aimed attacks draw me in the wrong direction. We follow the sound of gunfire, take out the enemy and progress. As conditioned by 20 years of action games. But several times it turns out that we should have moved in the opposite direction to set off bombs in a downed freight ship (or similar tasks), before moving on towards the spot the enemy were guiding us to

He sees enemies and it's like bees to honey to him because of his 20 years of conditioning lol.
 

maverick40

Junior Member
It is shit that geis is actually helping with the killzone review but at least he wasn't the main reviewer. 6/10 it is so.
 

dmr87

Member
Uneven difficulty, or is the reviwer bad at vidja games?

I'm not gonna read any reviews, game is pre-ordered.
 
So some bad level/mission designs deserve 2 marks off? Those type of things are subjective, maybe lots of people will like those levels and dislike the levels the reviewer liked.
That's typically how reviews work, yes. They're not an attempt to anticipate mass reception or pre-empt criticism from rabid fanboys. Reviews are supposed to convey the reviewer's honest (and subjective) thoughts on the game.
 

Sotha_Sil

Member
Not too concerned about the score, I like some of the things the reviewer cited as negatives. The eight-hour game length is the main worry I have about the game now.
 

nib95

Banned
Looks like they should have played on Normal. Guys, there is no 4th difficulty in this game, only Easy, Normal and Hard. No additional 4th difficulty unlock from what I can remember reading.

So do NOT play on hard unless you're very skilled. It's never fun constantly dying.

GameReactor said:
We played through Shadow Fall on "hard" and died more times during our 8 hours with the game than we've done in the four numbered Halo games put together. But while it's easy to appreciate the more open game world, it's also easy to spot signs of stress and the fact that the team hasn't constructed these kind of labyrinthine levels before.
 

Ricky_R

Member
Looks like they should have played on Normal. Guys, there is no 4th difficulty in this game, only Easy, Normal and Hard. No additional 4th difficulty unlock from what I can remember reading.

So do NOT play on hard unless you're very skilled.

Sounds good. I'm a normal kind of guy. The only game I've started on hard in the past couple of years was TLOU.
 

Sojgat

Member
Well judging from this line from your quote "At times it gets really weird when you have to go back, perform some seemingly menial task, return to the previous position and push a button that wasn't there at first. It breaks the illusion." that seems to be like poor level design. I hate games that force you to backtrack through a level for objective that wasn't there before normally to lengthen the level.

It's something many modern shooters have abandoned, and I think it's actually a bad thing. Exploration and backtracking can actually make a level feel like more of real environment, rather than a virtual guided tour or theme park ride.
 

Hawk269

Member
So, graphics > gameplay..?

Edit: whoops forgot the question mark.

Was just going to say that. I mean they complain about level design as an issue and other gameplay issues, but visuals is good enough to rank up the score. If this is something that is going to become the norm, get ready for games with pure eye candy and no depth!

If I apply the graphics over gameplay/game design, Ryse on Xbox One should be a 10!
 

leadbelly

Banned
Fuck, spoiled in the first paragraph.

Not really sure what "stupid" levels means.

Well, I've never really found the Killzone series to be exceptional in any way, but sounds to me like a game that had to meet a specific deadline, i.e. launch.
 
Read the sentences before it.



He sees enemies and it's like bees to honey to him because of his 20 years of conditioning lol.

Not to break up the "dis reviewer is stoopid" parade. But isn't this pretty much an MO for ALL games in general? Especially in FPS games? I mean, there's exploration and such, but even in Uncharted, Bioshock: Infinite, and almost any game I've played in the past 30 years, there is usually a sequence of enemies that leads me to the next objective.
 

Heshinsi

"playing" dumb? unpossible
So the game looks great, runs great, controls great, but let's give it a lower score because of the story...when did story matter in an FPS? CoD looked like shit, ran like shit, had a stupidly crappy story in most of them on PS3, and yet would still get 9/10's.
 

Kade

Member
It is shit that geis is actually helping with the killzone review but at least he wasn't the main reviewer. 6/10 it is so.

He's a review editor, he helps with every review and the extent of his help is probably limited to proofreading and touch ups among other things. It's not like he's adding a paragraph of what he thought to it.
 

PirateKing

Junior Member
Not to break up the "dis reviewer is stoopid" parade. But isn't this pretty much an MO for ALL games in general? Especially in FPS games? I mean, there's exploration and such, but even in Uncharted, Bioshock: Infinite, and almost any game I've played in the past 30 years, there is usually a sequence of enemies that leads me to the next objective.

Have you played Metroid Prime?
 

erawsd

Member
8/10... did anyone expect anything more? I doubt we'll see any launch games on either platform showered in 9s. 8s are as good as it gets.
 
Looks like they should have played on Normal. Guys, there is no 4th difficulty in this game, only Easy, Normal and Hard. No additional 4th difficulty unlock from what I can remember reading.

So do NOT play on hard unless you're very skilled. It's never fun constantly dying.
Who plays normal these days. If I see hard unlocked I'm picking lol
 

JawzPause

Member
They were written by different people. Gamereactor has several branches with different staff but on the occasion some reviews will be translated to other languages.

This is one of those times, the reviewer is the Editor In Chief for the Swedish branch and his review of Shadow Fall got translated for all separate language sites. For the previous games which he only reviewed in Swedish he gave KZ2 a 10/10 and KZ3 a 7/10.
Ah, thanks for the clarification
 

Thrakier

Member
You're wasting your time with these comments. You know damn well that most journalists don't understand this stuff.

So we should stop complaining and stuck with low standards and shit? Because, things never change? I do feel like more people are more sensitive to how important a solid technical execution is for a great gameplay experience, native res and 60FPS being a part of it. PC gaming in a sense is the best teacher here. It's hard to go back to consoles, I was consoles only and while I feel like Sony did a great job all things considered, PS4 as no appeal to me so far, just because of framerate issues...

That said, the direct feed screenshots also have plenty of aliasing.

No it's phenomal

Learn pls

Well, that explains everything. So phenomenal > phenomal I guess. I can live with that.
 

nib95

Banned
Who plays normal these days. If I see hard unlocked I'm picking lol

If there's only 3 difficulties I wouldn't recommend it. Might be a bit frustrating first time, especially given there is so much more variety to combat tactics options now with the OWL and it's features.
 

UberTag

Member
8/10... did anyone expect anything more? I doubt we'll see any launch games on either platform showered in 9s. 8s are as good as it gets.
Forza will get 9s.
Resogun will get some 9.
NBA 2K14 will get 9s.
ACIV and Battlefield 4 have already gotten some 9s.

People were warned not to get their hopes up unrealistically for Killzone: Shadow Fall's Metacritic score.
This game was set up to fail with the Western media. Overexposed, paraded around as the "eye candy" title and lacking other launch gems to hide behind.
 

NotLiquid

Member
BTW.. there is a second opinion--.-



7/10

Quick translation from my end.

"Not having to traverse along a mapped path like in a majority of action games of recent years sounded good at first. But Guerilla never go the entire way and instead opt to find some type of golden middle ground between the Call of Duty linearity and the labyrinth-like environments of old-school action titles. I lose myself, things that have to be triggered in order to proceed are too farfetched and the tempo is sometimes irritably slow. There's certainly a lot of real massive stages here that really impress, but overall I was hoping for some more weight and meaty effects. Guerilla also need to - like many others - stop chasing Infinity Ward when it comes to the game's multiplayer component and try to forge their own path instead."

He previously gave KZ2 a 9/10 and KZ3 an 8/10 in secondary opinions.
 
Have you played Metroid Prime?

Yes, I've played it. Was a great game, you unlocked certain weapons and abilities to move back and through previous sections before. That's good level design with intentional backtracking done right.

According to this review, a few parts of KZ:SF are not done well like that. That's his complaint. Not "It's not COD, this sucks".

All and all, a pretty solid review. It states what I want to know, as a person who has seen Halo become a linear romp in the last outing but loved the open-ness of the first installments, this makes me very happy. I think it's a pretty good review outside of the spoilers. But having not enjoyed KZ2 or 3 all that much, I'm glad they opened it up.

See, open level design can be done well (like Metroid Prime) and it can be done bad, think Cortana level in Halo 3. This isn't an 'adventure' game so his surprise at being led astray is a valid one. I like that they added variety to an otherwise stale (IMO) franchise, and hopefully the graphics bump, the new controller, and new take on the series will win me over. I'm usually always willing to give something another chance.
 
So we should stop complaining and stuck with low standards and shit? Because, things never change? I do feel like more people are more sensitive to how important a solid technical execution is for a great gameplay experience, native res and 60FPS being a part of it. PC gaming in a sense is the best teacher here. It's hard to go back to consoles, I was consoles only and while I feel like Sony did a great job all things considered, PS4 as no appeal to me so far, just because of framerate issues...

That said, the direct feed screenshots also have plenty of aliasing.



Well, that explains everything. So phenomenal > phenomal I guess. I can live with that.
I am tired of ur posts. Buy a pc and stay in the steam thread. You keep repeating the same argument every singlw thread.
 

NBtoaster

Member
I get the feeling the game may have some 'stupid' stuff purely for spectacle. Like jumping onto that ship and riding around the city in the reveal level didn't seem to make sense.
 
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