Killzone 2
Review
Are you prepared to enter the Killzone?
by Joseph Barron
reviewed on PS3
Great gameplay (cntd)
The pacing of the campaign's action is punctuated by occasional turret sections and a brief section in a tank early on in the game. Neither of these is especially fresh or exciting, but there is one other vehicle section which is truly spectacular: the mech section. You see the mech from the inside and view your character's hands on the controls in first person. The look of this section from inside the huge machine reminded me greatly of the mechs in The Matrix Revolutions. It's extraordinarily immersive as you tower over soldiers and muzzle flashes reflect off your windscreen which becomes scratched and cracked as you take damage. It's the best vehicle section in an FPS for a very long time.
Back on foot, the best parts of the campaign are undoubtedly the large scale battle sequences, where you and a huge squad of soldiers (sometimes upwards of 10) take on waves of increasingly tough Helghast opposition. It captures the chaos of war like no other game, while still providing some tactical depth thanks to some intelligent AI which always seems to find a way to get up close and personal. Killzone 2 is probably the best single player FPS on the current generation of consoles, but co-op would have been a nice extra.
Not everything is perfect
Despite all of the great gameplay and design in the single-player campaign, Killzone 2 definitely has its share of issues. After all the great missions throughout the game, the final level is a huge disappointment. It's horribly designed and feels very archaic. Some other weird problems include weapons not carrying over between missions and the fact that the initial primary weapons on each level are very random. One wide-open outdoor level actually starts you off with a shotgun, which is just plain stupid.
Multiplayer fun
Once you're done with the campaign, which will take somewhere around 8 hours on your first playthrough, there's the online multiplayer to jump into. The core experience of Killzone 2's online matches feels very similar to most other FPS titles released in the last 2 years. Thankfully, the progression of each match is a cut above any other console FPS.
When you go online you'll find all the usual deathmatch, capture the flag, zones, and assault gameplay types, but you don't play them as separate matches. Instead, they are presented to your team as objectives and the team that completes the most objectives wins the match. For example, your objective might be to capture the other team's propaganda speaker (Killzone 2's version of a flag) and the next objective might be to capture and maintain control of certain control points.
The way the different gameplay modes contribute to one overall score on the map helps to create a sensation of the ebb and flow of a battle. You might not be great at a particular game type but there's always a different one right around the corner, so you never feel like you're not contributing to your team's success. Also of note is the fantastic map design which really helps the dynamic of the online game. There are a variety of open and closed spaces, with a huge assortment of high vantage points to get the drop on enemies and the map layouts often funnel players in just the right directions to create intense battle sequences.
The multiplayer is certainly innovative and it's an awful lot of fun to play. However, it isn't as complete an online package as Halo 3 and coordination can be difficult because so few PS3 owners are using headsets. Still, with all of that said, Killzone 2 is the best online FPS since Call of Duty 4.
Outstanding!
Killzone 2 is an outstanding game and a prime of example of just how powerful the PlayStation 3 really is. Is it the definitive killer game for Sony's machine? In my opinion Metal Gear Solid 4 still has the edge in that area, but if you own a PS3 this should be a must-have game for you. If you don't own a PS3 then this is yet another reason that you should consider buying one.
9.0
fun score
No Pros and Cons at this time
