Killzone Shadowfall is so forgettable. I just remember thinking it lost the focus on busted, grimy, visceral future firefights. Killzone 2 was incredible. It had infamously heavy controls to make the camera a soldier of its own you were pulling with you, incredible hit reactions and blood from the enemies, and stellar motion blur and post processing for a signature CGI pre-rendered emulation style (pay no mind to that oopsie when the Sony team commented to the press that the target render done in CGI was actually what the game looks like for real). It had flashes of hot colors in the fire or ship lighting, with swathes of grey lost city territory. It felt like a war happened and you were wrestling to see it through.
Killzone 3 was ok but made less splash. It lost some of the pre-rendered look with its toned down effects and worse aliasing. It went to some more fantastical looking scenes with weird plants and icy locales. It tried very hard to call upon Nazi iconography.
Then we got Shadowfall. Largely set in a sparkling generic city of the future, it didn't really look like the war focused predecessors on PS3. It was pretty and it's darker atmosphere often just came from some more industrial stuff rather than any battlegrounds . It had a weird concept where we were to believe the enemy civilizations were just on opposite sides of a big wall if I recall? It was meh. We moved on.
We oddly got another spinoff from a PS3 giant in Infamous Second Son, technically coming a few months after PS4 itself. I remember the game had good global illumination, but a dreadful cast of edgy street hipsters in a cheesy comic book plot with some very bad writing. But worst of all it has the very worst AAA main character design I've ever seen after 6 years. Why did they take Troy Baker and give him a different complexion and darker hair and eyes and say he's Native American??? I have to scream.
This is so horrible
And there was Knack! I didn't play that after it bombed in reviews
To be fair, the Xbox One launch titles are largely forgotten too. A tragically low res Dead Rising sequel, a Forza entry, and Crytek's dying showcase breath Ryse were the big three there. Ryse is quite pretty still.
Here's to a better PS5 lineup.
