If you wanted a reason to wipe off the dust on your copy of Killzone Shadow Fall, then Sony Entertainment of America has given you one. This week Guerrilla Games released what seemed like a simple DLC that would extend the life of a launch game, but has turned out to be just a bit more than expected.
Killzone Shadow Fall’s Intercept DLC puts you (and your friends) in the middle of medium sized, multi-level environments and asks you (and them) to maintain your ground, capture checkpoints and survive. It can be compared to Call of Duty: Black Ops II – Zombies, but with a tighter space to move around in and scary, bullet accurate Helghast to go toe-to-toe with. On top of this, it’s all fast and furious, so once you sit back and relax after dispatching a group of charging Helghast, the next group readies itself to throw everything and the kitchen sink at you. It’s a non-stop war affair that doesn’t let you catch your breath for very long.
Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? It’s a first-person shooter, so you would expect a literal ‘point and shoot’ fest to erupt during all of the four maps (get to those in a bit) and you would be done with it, right? Negative. GG has given you a few more elements to think about during the matches, a reason to work as a team, and challenges to fulfill along the way.
The first thing you will notice in during the game is that it’s divided up into four classes. They are as follows:
Medic – As a medic, your job is to kill Helghast and keep your teammates alive. It’s a sticky business when you’re a medic, as you have to pretty much determine whether to save someone without getting yourself killed. Our poor senior editor, Eric Layman, used this class and I think I got the poor guy killed more times than should be allowed in a match. He did well and kept everyone going, which is what you would figure a medic would do.
Marksman – This was my favorite class. You’re given sniper weaponry that keeps you far away from battle and while forcing you to do the scouting for the rest of the team. It’s difficult to keep out of the CQC scrum when you’re a marksman, but you won’t do a damn bit of good in CQC with the weapons offered.
Assault – Run and gun, baby. This is the grunt of the group. Everyone who ever played KZ, Call of Duty or Battlefield firmly understands what an assault class does. It’s definitely the most hands-on class of the group that carries the kick-ass weaponry, but is sadly likely to die the most during gameplay. You’re required to give mid-game speeches to rally the troops, though.
Tactician – Supplies, turrets and shields – oh, my! Didn’t really get a chance to play the tactician, but this class seems like a blast. People who did play this class kept most of the areas secure in the game.
Once you choose your class, you get ready to go into the game and do your job. Your job consists of multiple items. First, you have to group together with your teammates to kill the Helghast as they move forward from point to point. So, protecting the points (there are three) isn’t too difficult during gameplay — when you have your teammates. It’s when you either die or don’t have enough men to protect the points when the game gets difficult. This is the most basic part of the game, as you’ve played it before in other FPS titles.
On a quick side note, there are times where you will only get two men playing out of four. The Helghast still come in full force, as if you have four teammates ready to go on the battlefield. Our other senior editor, Steven McGehee, and I found ourselves in this situation in a couple of games. The horde of Helghast were nearly impossible to fight off until we got that third and fourth person. In other words, the game isn’t forgiving when you lack the men and fire power to hold the enemies back. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or bad, but it certainly caused a lot of stress along the way.
Anyway, back to the next item of business.
The second job you have in the game is to collect as many points as possible from each kill. The points system in Intercept is more complicated than any DLC deserves to be — and that’s not a knock on the game, as I’m genuinely impressed with the amount of work and thought that went into the point system. For every enemy you take down, you get at least five points. The points vary depending on if you took the enemy out with a head shot or body shot, how you killed the enemy and how many enemies you killed at once. For example, during my most recent match with Eric, I set a laser guided grenade in the middle of capture point B on one of the maps we were playing on. I must have had a huge group of Helghast walk over to the grenade because in one explosion I gained about 115 points. That was the most amount of points I gained in Intercept at once.
Once I acquired the 115 points, I had a decision to make. I can keep gathering points and kill more Helghast, or I can ‘bank’ the points in a certain location on the map, which throws it into a team pool. If I continued to gather points it would lead me to a possible multiplier, which upped the value of each kill I made. I made it to multiplier three in one game (it takes around 200+ seconds to gain a new multiplier level), which made my five point kills into ten point kills. It was a jump up, but at a great risk. If I had died during that duration, I would have lost all the points and had my multiplier reset back to level one. That would have sucked and hurt the team.
Why would it have hurt the team? Glad you asked.
To win the match, you’re given a certain point goal to achieve. That point goal varies depending on the type of game you want to play. The game types are Quick (1500 points), Regular (3,000 points) and Long (10,000 points). You can take more chances with the quick gameplay type, as the points come fast and furious, and the game ends before it even begins — thus, the name ‘quick’. The regular type is a bit more grueling. It will last anywhere from 40 minutes to nearly an hour and half, depending on your teammates. Two days ago, I would have said the regular gameplay type was closer to quick. Today, that is not the case. Again, it depends on your team.
The beast of the bunch is the Long gameplay type. Sony and Guerrilla Games should send you an empty bottle of Gatorade to pee in because this gameplay type lasts so damn long. As I was informed by our FPS expert and senior editor (we have so many), Will Johnson, people love long horde games that last 2-3 (or more) hours. I’m sadly not that type of online player when it comes to hordes and FPS games. I know that there are some gamers out there that love doing this type of gaming, but for me it felt like I was walking a mile while scooting three-inches a minute. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but I understand why someone would really like this.
These three game types show you the main purpose for the points in Intercept. The secondary purposes vary in the game. You can pick up items in an item box with a certain tier of points and another element (not giving that away). You also have to use points to respawn (50pts), so that’s not free anymore. The more you respawn, the more you’re hurting your team. So, get to know your medic and make sure you have their ass covered, so they have your ass covered.
Outside of points, you also have challenges to complete with each class of character. This keeps the characters more interesting. For example, I played the Marksman class more than any other class during my Intercept stint. My initial goals for that class included banking the most points during a match, recapturing uplinks (capture points) and achieving a certain amount of brutal melee attacks. When you meet challenges, you get unlockables.
What about the maps? Well, you get four initial maps. Here’s what you’re looking at:
The DMZ – This is an area that is surrounded by that giant wall you’ve come to know and love within the single player mode of Killzone. It’s probably one of the most open areas, and horrifyingly beautiful, which can be great and terrible at the same time. Your middle point is a building that has multiple levels that are ideal for sniping. Not a lot of coverage in this one, but enough to get the job done. Not an easy map to play on, but a beauty to see in motion.
The Outpost – This is the wooded area from the SP side of KZ. You get metal platforms to climb up on to make treetop sniping opportunities happen, a nice building in the middle that will keep you covered and a hilly ground filled with rocks/boulders that can be a quick advantage and disadvantage, depending on which side you’re on. I actually disliked this map the most, as it felt way too open. The enemies really didn’t flow out as well and gaining ground in this map meant that you would more than likely die quickly. Not my favorite by any stretch of the imagination, as it created too much chaos to get any good ground.
The Market – By far my favorite of the bunch. You’re in a multi-tier marketplace that has plenty of coverage and plenty of places to take out the enemies. There are a lot of mini-walls in this area, which keeps the combat thriving and flowing constantly. This was one of the more balanced maps in the bunch, and one I like to revisit, when my teammates cooperate during map voting sessions.
The Highway — I’m going to let you discover this one on your own.
Each map is very different than the other in visual style. In hindsight, though, the way they’re laid out is a bit repetitive. Buildings in the middle, capture points all around. It does bring a certain comfort zone to the action when you’re jumping from map to map, knowing what you’re going to get in the design category, but the variety has to be a little bit better if Guerrilla Games is going to do this sort of co-op DLC in the future.
Before we move on, let me touch upon the enemies. The enemies are just as bastardy in co-op, as they are in single player. The A.I. seems to keep the enemies out of your sights and taking advantage of opportunities when they crop up. They tend to bunch together initially, but spread apart when the gunfire erupts in the game. It’s also neat to see them actively move independent when they’re out in the open, which means they won’t blindly run at you in a blaze of glory.
The Helghast also take a lot of advantages when they can, which again is impressive to watch. You will also be graced with a variety of enemies in the game. You get grunts, snipers and enemies that can cloak themselves — those are a bitch. You also get air drones to make your life hell, as well as small drones to bring enemies back to life (those cloak too, so enjoy them). In addition to those enemies, you will find bosses cropping up 2-3 times during a match. This includes the lovely Echo making a grand appearance. The bosses are far tougher to bring down, though they aren’t as violent as the grunts.
All in all, you get good A.I. and a good variety of enemies in Intercept.
Now, let’s discuss the capture points in the map. The capture points play a pivotal, secondary role to the point system. You have to keep those uplinks captured during battle. If you should let those uplinks go completely to the Helghast, then the match is over. The game keeps players on their toes with this secondary worry during a co-op session. You could be at 1450 points out of 1500 in quick, if those capture points go to the Helghast then all that effort was for nothing. It’s another complicated element in Intercept to worry about during gameplay, and it makes logical sense why this would be a bad thing in battle. I like the fragility of the uplink situation in Intercept. Anything to add a bit more stress and give you reason to gripe at your team is a good thing. No, seriously.
As you can tell, there is a lot here to be impressed by from this DLC. This is a $9.99 purchase folks, but it doesn’t feel like a $9.99 purchase. It feels more like a $14.99 – $19.99 add-on, as it’s well thought out and incredibly deep in gameplay design. It is true that the lack of variety in the maps and the amount of constraint you might feel on those maps might make you second guess purchasing it, but the gameplay elements will impress you enough to move that purchase forward. If GG had included this in the original release of Killzone Shadow Fall, I’m almost positive the game would have been received better amongst the reviewing and gaming community. Again, it’s a lot of well thought out, complicated gameplay design wrapped up in a $9.99 package. It’s certainly not perfect, but Intercept offers enough to warrant your time and money.
