Tried out Killzone: Shadow Fall’s multiplayer yet? Pretty mean isn’t it? Don’t go running back to the warm embrace of Call of Duty just yet soldier. Man up, and check out our Sunday Seven Survival Tips to leave behind your days as a snivelling recruit and be reborn as a feared harbinger of doom. Failing that, maybe we can make that kill/death ratio a little less pitiful.

1: Equip some spawn beacons

I don’t know why, but the vast majority of players seem content to respawn from the default base over and over, with a tiresome slog back to the action. Who the hell has the time for that crap? For Vekta’s sake, equip some spawn beacons to your support classes. With this ability, you can deploy a spawn point anywhere in the map for your team. It can be destroyed by enemy fire, but it doesn’t expire if you die and you’ll get loads of points when your teammates spawn on it. Be careful not to drop it in front of enemy turrets or in wide-open spaces though.

There’s too much of a mentality of ‘someone else will do it’, just change class for one spawn and do yourself -and your team- a huge favour and drop a beacon. Or carry on going for a long jog that ends in being shot in the back time and again.

Life is so much easier if you drop them close to a map’s hot zones for team deathmatches and if you’re playing objective matches, they really help keep the pressure on the enemy as you try to breach their defences.

2: Sprint and Slide

I can’t help it. I have to sprint almost everywhere in FPS games, call it impatience, call it my team’s inability to drop a goddamn spawn beacon every now and then, or maybe I’m just too eager to get shot in the face.

Killzone at least gives me a chance to redeem myself with the slide move. Just press the crouch button when sprinting and you’ll perform a quick slide. If you suddenly come under fire when rounding a corner, going into a slide can throw your opponent’s aim off and if you can turn enough, you may be able to return fire mid-slide, which is obviously all sorts of badass if you can get the kill first. It’ll shit up the confidence of anyone on the receiving end of it too.

It’s also worth sliding when you come around corners just in case campers have a headshot lined up for anyone that appears on foot. Or you can slide into cover if you know you’re not going to have the range to turn and return fire. Just be sure not to Paul Blart Mall Cop it by sliding too soon.

3: Adapt or die

You may well be a long range-sniping expert, but some Killzone maps just aren’t for you. Close quarters combat is kind of a big deal in many maps, so it pays to be handy with an assault rifle or even the oddly weak shotguns.

Think about what the current objective is and be sure to switch loadouts. Tempting as it is to stick to one class when you’re trying to grind through to unlock a new scope or ability upgrade, you’re just wasting your own time with some loadouts in some maps. Become a more rounded player and you’ll find those duller maps start to open up a bit more for you if you’re confident with various loadouts.

4: Try all the abilities

From the start most of the ability logos are horribly similar to the untrained eye, the only way you’re going to be able to see what most of them are is by diving into the menus and looking through them one by one.

Better yet, make sure your initial loadouts include all of them so you can test the full range. You’ll get a feel early on what abilities you’re never going to have time to activate. If you’re running around corners a lot you won’t have time to activate a stun blast, but having an auto-stun drone would be handy to watch your back if you set up camp as a sniper. The personal assault drone won’t net you many kills but it will often spot targets long before you do, which can be very useful if you’re struggling to get on the scoreboard. It’ll take a while, but mastering your abilities is essential to not being perforated on the battlefield.

5: Rename your loadouts

You really need to put some time aside to tailor your loadouts. You almost have enough loadouts to equip every primary weapon in the game, so I’d advise trying them all out to see which you want to dump –a puny sub machine gun and a painfully slow shotgun were left at home for me. Check out the stats for each one to judge distance, rate of fire, damage and so on to see what’s going to work best for you.

The images on your loadout selection screen mid-match aren’t particularly clear, so you may want to rename the loadout to give you as much info as possible. If you have two assault rifle classes, maybe indicate which of them has the longer range in the title or mention which sight you have equipped too. The more you play the game, the more you’ll know which guns are suiting your style.

6: Use your teammates as bait

While working in a team goes without saying for objective mission types, they can also be used to survive in general with a bit of common sense. If you see two teammates enter a room just ahead of you and witness an unholy storm of bullets rip them to shreds, don’t follow them in!

You now know where an enemy is and can make your way into the area from another side to outflank them. You’d be surprised at the amount of players content to set up camp and only watch a couple of entrances, unaware that you can still approach on their blindside. As tempting as it is though, don’t always opt for a knife kill, some of these maps are so small you may end up getting shot by someone else as you approach your target. Just shoot and take the points.

7: Warm up the minigun

The minigun is probably the most fun gun in the game. A huge ammo clip means you’ll never have to reload in the middle of a firefight and its raw power will make mincemeat of any opponent in a head-on encounter.

It has some drawbacks though, it loses accuracy at greater distances, it’s slow to aim once you’ve opened fire and it doesn’t fire immediately when you pull the trigger, as it has to get rolling first.

Used in the right conditions though, the minigun is arguably the deadliest weapon. The closer the combat the better, so even in wider environments like the forest, you can stay close to the rocky walls so enemies can’t see you coming from a distance.

But what about the slow start up speed? Well, you can prime the gun by briefly squeezing the trigger to initiate a roll, with practice you can keep it rolling without firing, and then when you need to fire, it will do so as soon as you hold the trigger, enabling you to tear through an entire charging party before they’ve even seen you.

As per usual readers, we’d love to hear your thoughts about Killzone’s multiplayer so far. Enjoying the user-generated Warzones? Have any tips to share? We want to hear about them.