Or die quickly
More than six months after release, Guerrilla Games’ Killzone: Shadow Fall is getting an expansion that reinvents the title’s multiplayer aspect. In Intercept, rather than shooting at one another, players are tasked with teaming up to take aim at the Helghast. After a short hands-on time at Sony’s recent Pre-E3 event, it’s painfully obvious that the “teaming up” bit needs to be priority number one.
The Intercept DLC serves as a cooperative defense mode of sorts, where the mission at-hand is to intercept (go figure) Helghast military transmissions at enemy bases. Each map seems as if it’ll be made up of three capture points that the enemy can attack at any time. Four unique classes are employed: Assault, Marksman, Medic, and Tactician — each extremely varied and important — and the game only allows one of each type to be used.
If the average player’s experience is anything like what we saw, the Medic will be far and away the most useful member of the team. It didn’t take much for the pesky Helghast to swarm on a location and make quick work of any given person. It was a common sight for someone to yell “Medic! Medic!” down the row of four people, vainly hoping that they’d be able to get there in time before a (usually) inevitable death.
In the event of dying, it’s not game over for that player. The team banks points for kills, captures, and implementation of abilities, and these can be to revive fallen comrades. Supposedly, team score can also be used for more interesting and effective perks such as calling in air raids and equipping jetpacks. We didn’t get anywhere close to that, as we were taunting each other over who could drain the points and respawn the quickest.
That particular brand of inefficiency is probably a side-effect of seeing something like Intercept at a preview event. Unfamiliarity with maps, classes, and the people you’re playing alongside almost ensures a feeble attempt at victory, or maybe more accurately just staving off inevitable defeat for as long as possible. Still, it wasn’t difficult to realize that this DLC has all the pieces in place to allow talented teams to really shine.
But, one thing will define “talented” teams, and that’s their ability to stick to their individual roles and act as a cohesive unit. Marksmen can’t wander into the thick of the fray for too long. Tacticians need to focus on turret placement rather than gunplay. Medics, well, they need to be ready to revive anyone at any given time. Any group that can handle that will probably get a lot of enjoyment out of Intercept; a group that can’t will probably only find frustration.
