Killzone 2

4/5

As I said the other day, I’ve been making quite a bit of progress through my stack of games, most recent of which was Killzone 2. It takes a little getting used to, but it’s quite fun when you persevere.

The story was complete shit the whole way through, maybe it was too reliant on Killzone and Liberation, but the majority of the time it consisted of going to fuck up the enemy for some reason, fucking up the enemy, and repeating. There was a little depth given to it in the second half, something about some electrical energy or something, I wasn’t really paying attention. It seemed to portray the Helghast as super evil enemies, killing with impunity and such, despite the fact that the “good” guys were invading the Helghast planet. It didn’t do the evilness with any subtlety either, just big obvious BAD GUYS and GOOD GUYS floating over people’s heads.
On a micro level, and while I’m a great fan of profanity when it suits, the dialogue was a bit over the top – “What the fuck is this shit?”; “Man this is so fucked up, we’re so fucked” – delivered by everyone’s favourite character, the gruzzled space marine with a massive chip on his shoulder.

Killzone’s concept is quite nice – instead of a normal run-and-gun shooter, there’s a (fairly strong) cover mechanic. Holding L2 crouches normally, but if you’re close to cover, you’ll stick to it, and can then fire over it, or pop your head up. This changes the pace of the gameplay somewhat, as you’re required to sprint between cover, and stick to it when you can. Unfortunately, it’s let down by two problems:
The first (and admittedly, it’s not so bad once you get used to it) is the control scheme. L2 (hold) sticks to cover, R1 shoots primary weapon, R3 (click) zooms the weapon, R2 grenades. It’s quite counter intuitive when coming from Modern Warfare 2 (LT zoom, RT shoot, RB grenades), but it’s the best layout for the fairly complex scheme. The PS3’s analog sticks are still a bit too loose for FPSs, don’t have the feel of the 360’s.
The second problem, and more of a major one, is to do with the level layout and colour palette. Often, and I mean often, you’ll stick behind cover that protects you from your nearest visible enemy, only to have one fire on (and often kill) you from a side position. The Helghast’s uncanny long-range accuracy, combined with the grey palette (everything looks the same), not-too-helpful damage indicators, and slow turning speed means avoidable death was many times unavoidable.

But that’s not to say the game wasn’t fun. Once you start to learn how to deal with it (several combat-intensive sections can be bypassed by legging it to the next section), and don’t rely on the cover so much (running up close to enemies, meleeing them, then running to cover, was my most effective tactic), it becomes pretty enjoyable. There are some niggles in parts – not being able to carry two primary weapons means you’re often unwilling to part with the weapon (ISA rifle) you’re given at the start of the mission, fearing you won’t find one again; fairly useless AI companions; the irritatingly good long-range accuracy of enemies – but like I say, once you learn to accept them as quirks, it’s easier to enjoy.

The graphics were pretty lovely throughout, nice effect that looked like lens flare, but wasn’t quite, but was really nice. Character models were all grand. Guns didn’t really have that much weight to them – while the environment felt very used and gritty, the standard (both assault rifles) didn’t really pack that much punch (requiring two headshots to down every enemy – one for helmet, one for head – didn’t help) – though shotguns were fine, and the lightning gun was some laugh. One massive problem (which was really a design issue rather than a tech one) was the environments – the one piece of variation from a generic post-apocolyptic/war-torn/industrial template was a level set in a desert. The pervading colour, gan dabt, was grey. Grey walls, grey rivers, grey enemies, grey weapons. I’d love to see a fucking tree or something somewhere.

Having said all that, the network code was TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME AND THE BEST NETWORK CODE EVER MADE (I haven’t played the multiplayer, but man that code was unreeeeal).

I still had more fun playing Halo 3 (four player co-op) and Modern Warfare (scripting), but Killzone’s worth a look if it can be found cheap. It’s nothing new, and annoying before you get used to it, but it’s fun in the end.