Killzone: Shadow Fall

Like its predecessors, Shadow Fall is a first-person shooter in a science fiction setting. Staple weapons such as the M82 Assault Rifle, stA-52 Assault Rifle, and stA-18 pistol return from the earlier Killzone games, albeit in new forms and variations. New weapons include the LSR44, a recoil-free, hybrid assault/charge sniper rifle that functions much like a miniaturized rail-gun, and the OWL, an advanced hovering attack drone (used by the Shadow Marshals) that can attack/stun when it is adjacent to an adversary, as well as deploy an instant zip line, protect the player from enemy fire with an energy shield, and hack/scan terminals and enemy alarms to prevent reinforcements from arriving.

While the previous games in the Killzone series portrayed a large war-zone with numerous allies by the players side at any given time and an overall linear design, Shadow Fall opts for a more open-ended level design and allows players to utilize stealth to approach their missions in addition to engaging in direct confrontations with enemies. Levels are much more open than in previous games, allowing for multiple ways/routes to complete objectives. Also in Shadow Fall, for the first half of the campaign, the player is alone in firefights, with the OWL as the player's only "companion", which is able to lay down cover fire, among other abilities. During the second half onward, the player is occasionally joined by Echo as an ally, where she is able to snipe enemies marked by the player.

Following the Petrusite detonation that rendered the planet Helghan uninhabitable in Killzone 3 (an event now referred to as "The Terracide"), the ISA grants refuge to the Helghast survivors on the planet Vekta, allowing them to colonize half the planet, with that half of the planet dubbed New Helghan. A massive security fortification called The Wall is constructed to separate the two civilizations from each other, due to the resentment they bear over the previous war. Both the Vektans and Helghast routinely perform covert operations against each other in the hope of finishing the war each claims the other started. The majority of the game takes place in Vekta City, home to the Vektan Security Agency (VSA) headquarters, as well as a prison in New Helghan, and Helghan, the original homeworld of the Helghast, now dead and shattered due to the Petrusite detonation.

The game begins in the year 2370, several years after the construction of "The Wall", during the forced relocation of Vektans out of New Helghan. Michael Kellan and his 5-year-old son, Lucas, attempt to sneak through New Helghan to The Wall. Along the way, they meet Sinclair, a Shadow Marshal, who aids them in making it through to safety. Just as the group makes it to The Wall, Helghast forces spot them and kill Michael.

Killzone Shadow Fall was seen by Guerrilla Games as an opportunity to revitalize the franchise, since it was established early in development that they would be working on a new platform. The main point during development was to give players more options on how to proceed, particularly during the single-player mode. According to Guerrilla Games, the original size of Killzone Shadow Fall was 290 GB because the game has no assets designed for lower spec systems.

The demo shown during the PlayStation 4's announcement only used 4 GB of memory – not the full 8 GB GDDR5 RAM available to developers in the final hardware, Guerrilla has revealed. According to the studio, 3072 MB (3 GB) of the PS4's 8 GB were dedicated to video resources powering the demo, with 1,536 MB used for system resources. A further 128 MB were shared between the two. Of the 3 GB reserved for video memory, 1,321 MB were used by non-streaming textures.

Killzone Shadow Fall received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. It was mostly praised for its visuals and multiplayer mode, but criticism was directed at the game's story and AI problems.

Destructoid's Dale North was very positive of the game; he scored it a 9/10 and said: "I like Killzone: Shadow Fall for its change of direction from previous series games, as well as its change of pace over other first-person shooters. Guerrilla has tried a few new things this time around, and should be commended as such. I welcome the almost sandbox-ish level approach, and the stealth segments did a nice job of breaking up the standard shooting action. It's really nice when gameplay concepts win out over big set pieces and cinematic events.