Sony's E3 Press Conference: 10 Key Details And Games That Stood Out

5. Killzone: Shadow Fall

With Insomniac no longer making new games in the Resistance series, Killzone has emerged as the PlayStation's dominant FPS. Killzone 2 and Killzone 3 were graphically astounding, gritty shooters that felt significantly more genuine than an arcade shooter like Call of Duty. The environments had excellent detail, the player models were well done, and all of the weapons were fun to use - and they each took a degree of skill. Where we last left off in Killzone 3, the remnants of the ISA (BTW, I loathe the ISA) had managed to (unrealistically) evade the efforts of an entire Helghast fleet, detonating a hefty payload of nuclear devices in the planet of Helghan's atmosphere. This culminated in a chain reaction which violently irradiated the entire planet. After a cliffhanger ending, we knew that the Helghast, genetically conditioned to the harsh conditions of their planet, weren't killed by this latest development, and indeed, two HAZMAT troopers are seen in the ending welcoming home an unseen official. Fast forward to Killzone: Shadow Fall, and the setting is Vekta, the lush homeworld of the Vektans (humans), 30 years later. Due to their questionable politics (which caused the conflict in the first place), the humans have offered asylum for Helghan refugees, a sizable population of the Helghast setting on Vekta, in a large, metropolitan city dividing the two species with a large wall. As expected, there are righteously vengeful factions of Helghast, and the demos shown at the PlayStation 4 reveal and E3 display a guerrila movement, for the Helghast that "did not accept Vekta's feeble pleas for forgiveness."

Pictured: the Helghast being tired of your crap.

As such, the demo puts you in the hands of a Shadow Marshal (think the Special Forces of the ISA), tasked with keeping the relations in line, and fighting as necessary to keep peace. Although Guerrilla has hinted that you will finally be able to engage the ISA as well as the usual hordes of Helghast soldiers, I hope that they take advantage of an extensive backstory, which details the interactions between, and origins of the Helghast and ISA, to great effect: hitherto in this series, you just fought waves after waves of Helghast, without awareness of the finer points regarding the motivations of the war. In the fourth console installment of the series, I hope that you're able to be more balanced, rather than just depicting the Helghast as mindless sociopaths.

Regardless of my gripes about the story, the game looks graphically stunning, as usual of the Killzone series, and the gameplay seems fluid, weighty, and realistic as usual. Although the weapons in the trailer are clearly more advanced than the guns we're used to, I would bet that Guerrilla has an experience for us that's every bit as enjoyable as previous iterations in the franchise.

You can't call a series a "Halo Killer" and it not be good, after all.