Killzone 2 is the PS3’s latest behemoth, one of the ones that everybody is talking about. Of course, this means that it had a lot of hype leading up to the release and, as we all know, games almost never live up to that kind of hype. Oddly, this massive amount of hype can result in reviews that would have had a higher score if there had been no hype at all (I call this ‘bad reviewing’, a game is as good as it is, it should not be scored in relation to it’s hype).

Fortunately, though, Killzone 2 does live up to it’s hype. It had a considerable amount of it, but, whilst it didn’t bring anything new to the already crowded FPS table, it lived up to all of the hype it got.

I’m going to start off with graphics for two reasons; one, it’s arguably the least important part; and two, they are fantastic. Everything, from the guns to the character models, the explosions to the smoke effects, are pixel perfect. Everything is so very good looking you’ll probably start to search for glitches just to break the perfection. At this point you can, if you really try, find a few small things – like, sometimes, though very rarely, you can see a Helghast’s gun stick through the cover he’s hiding behind. Obviously, this isn’t supposed to happen, but it’s such a small thing and so very rare that it doesn’t matter. Not at all.

Not only does the game look great, but it runs great, too. Despite the massive amount of polish the graphics have, even with the sand blowing horizontally across the entire levell (the blood splashes and smoke go with it, too – a very nice touch), even with explosions, blood splattering, smoke that you would swear was real if you didn’t know otherwise, the game doesn’t stutter. Not even once. Everything moves smoothly throughout the entire game.

I have to specifically highlight the hit responses of the Helghast; they’re very realistic. If you’ve played the demo you’ve both shot loads of them and seen it for yourself and seen the oddly-soundtracked hit response trailer that plays after you finish it. You may have noticed, in the demo, the Helghast’s odd tendency to throw themselves off of whatever they’re standing on if they’re up high, which looked unrealistic but, rest assured, whilst they still fall, it looks much more like they just fall than ‘I’m dying, let’s see if I can crush them with my corpse as a final revenge!’.

I also want to highlight the character models, this is about as close to being out of uncanny valley I’ve seen, even if most of the characters have facial hair, it’s like Guerrilla really like beards. The mModels are highly detailed and move smoothly and realistically.

It is truly a sight to behold and it really does raise the bar for visuals on a console.

Next; sound. The sound is great. The guns sound meaty, the explosions may make you jump and everything is generally good-sounding. The screams of the Helghast as you kill them is particularly disturbing, and a great touch. Voice acting is, for the most part, solid. There’s a lot of swearing but it conveys realism more than tourettes. There is a particular part that stuck out blatantly – it involves a cutscene that was clearly intended to be emotional  and some punching. The sound really let it down, as well as the voice-acting getting a bit sketchy, too, making the whole cutscene come off as more awkward than anything else. Other than that, though, everything is good.

The story is much less interesting. Don’t get me wrong, it does it’s job, but it’s not like Call of Duty IV here, the story does not focus on specific people, it focuses on two armies fighting each other, rather than specific soldiers in those armies. People mistake this for there being no story, which is simply untrue, it’s just a different kind of story. The war is the story and, whilst this is adequate, it won’t give you the same story-based thrills as the CoDIV/WaW games probably did. Obviously, I can’t go into more detail, but there are a few twists that you might not expect. Just come to terms with the fact that you’re not going to feel as engaged with the storyline as in the CoD games.

Alright, gameplay, the important part. You’ll be pleased to know that the gameplay is also very solid. It is slower than Call of Duty IV, but then, Call of Duty IV is slower than Unreal Tournament, but you don’t hold it against it, because they’re different games. The first obstacle you’ll meet is the usual – the controls. Personally, I turned the sensitivity settings way up and switched to alternative 4 immediately, as I am used to CoDIV’s controls and the control scheme matches it almost completely. On the other hand, I also know people who got used to the normal controls in 15 minutes, despite playing CoDIV a lot, so it’s not a problem (and if you think it is you need to play games more). Getting used to controls is part of playing new games.

As I’ve said, the gameplay is slower than CoDIV, in the same way that CoDIV is slower than Unreal Tournament. It’s just a difference in style of gameplay, not a problem with the gameplay itself. This is not to say that the game is slow, though. The cover system may invite some caution from people, being a first in a completely first person FPS (as opposed to a third person/first person hybrid, like Quantum of Solace), but rest assured that it works well and adds to the realism of the game and just how immersed you’ll feel. Something about just crouching behind something whilst the rest of the friendly AI actually took cover properly never felt quite right in previous FPS games, and Killzone 2 rectifies that problem.

The system works well; hold L2 (in my chosen control scheme) and you’ll lean against cover (crouching if the cover is low). You can then move along whatever you’re taking cover against by moving the analogue left or right, if you’re at the end of the cover, pushing outwards will move you out and let you aim, just holding R1 will look out and shoot automatically (akin to blind firing), holding L1 whilst out will go into iron sights, for more accurate aiming. If you’re taking cover against something low (fence, sandbags, boxes), pushing up will let you peer over the top and shoot. If there’s nothing to take cover against, holding L2 will cause you to just crouch.

The AI in Killzone 2 will blow you away. Most likely, it will blow you away with a shotgun to the face as it has flanked and snook up on you without you noticing. That is to say that the AI has surpassed any AI I’ve seen (yes, that includes FEAR). They run from grenades, blindfire if you’ve pinned them down and use grenades to flush you out. All of those are expected, but the AI in Killzone 2 will use tactics too. Some will distract you whilst others will go around and flank you. At one point, I was having an intense firefight (firefights in this game are all intense) with 4 or so Helghast who were shooting at me from cover. Suddenly, I was killed from behind by a fifth – he’d gone around me via a corridor that was to my left that I didn’t even notice. I’d had no idea he was there and he killed me. Clever bugger. It was awesome.

Not only will they use these tactics well, but they rarely use the same ones twice. When I restarted after that death, the guy didn’t flank me, instead he threw a grenade in, forcing me to move or risk death by explosion. I ran down the corridor to escape (just barely), and ran into two of the Helghasts whilst two others came up and moved in from behind. It was both surprising and exhilarating to have enemies that didn’t just sit somewhere shooting at you until you put them out of their tedious repetitious misery.

On top of this, infinitely respawning enemies are never, if ever, used. If they are you don’t notice at all. You see all of the enemies that you’re going to have to fight and, once you’ve killed them, they’re not infinitely replaced until you pass a certain point. It adds a little more realism to the game, endless swarms of dumb enemies are not good.

On the other hand, neither are useless friendlies, which Killzone 2 almost has. I say almost, because they’re not quite useless, they do, in fact, help quite often, but when you’re with one friendly and said friendly runs towards a group of enemies with guns, without a thought for his personal safety or, presumably, any thought other than ‘I want to run to the funny men with the glowing eyes!’. After this, he then lies there asking for you help, as if you don’t want to punish him for being such an idiot. Of course, you can’t help but do it because you have to. Though if you leave them long enough they will eventually get up themselves, as I discovered after fighting my way through 10 or so Helghast just for him to stand up when I’m running up to him, but his punishment isn’t worth standing around waiting and listening to ‘argh, help’ over and over until he just stands up like nothing happened. I also wonder why, when you die, you have to restart at the last checkpoint – why can’t your own allies revive you if you can revive them?

Regardless, it’s not too noticeable until the odd occasions in which they do run towards them like banzai soldiers without the actual killing of enemies part.

All of the battles are intense, with explosions, blood, smoke, bloody sneaky enemies (that I’m not at all bitter-in-a-good-way about) and what-not all over the screen, the screams of your enemies as you mow them down. Weapons are ‘beefy’, and there’s a decent selection of mostly realistic guns for you to shoot away. A couple of assault rifles, some machine guns, RPG, sniper rifle. There are some more ’scifi’ weapons, like a lightning gun, and the bolt gun that can nail enemies to walls, the round blows up. These aren’t available online, though, as that would be unfair. The screams of Helghast when you electrocute them is just as effectively chilling as when shooting them, if not more so.

I quite liked the six axis implementation into the game, from placing remote charges, to having to hold the controller still whilst you’re scoped with the sniper or, if you’re clever, using the six axis to fine tune the aim. It works quite well and, whilst not technically necessary for remote charges, the sniper rifle idea is actually very clever.

Peppered through the game there are a couple of boss fights. You will die. It doesn’t matter how good you are, you will die. Strangely, one of the bosses uses some great AI itself, avoiding the typically repetitive systems that most bosses use in aid of something that responds to where you are and compensates for it. On the other hand, the final boss is one of the most frustrating bosses I’ve ever beaten. I must’ve died 30 times there and, eventually, it did get frustrating and seemed a little unfair and, instead of the accomplishment you should feel after a boss, I just felt relief that it was over.

Now we move on to multiplayer. I noticed two things when I first went online; first was the graphics looking exactly as they did in multiplayer, which is great; second was the fact that there was no cover system online. This really disappointed me, I was very interested in using the cover system in an online match and, with this option barred to me, I was a little annoyed. On the other hand, the multiplayer excels almost everywhere else.

Matches are made up of different game types, from Bodycount (team deathmatch) to assassination (kill a specific enemy player or protect a specific ally from the enemy) and, when one match begins, there is absolutely no break in the flow as nothing resets, you just continue playing as you go into the next game mode. A very nice touch. Playing online consists of fast and furious matches that, at first, can seem quite daunting.

I will predict your first death; you spawn, run towards the action (you have a radar to follow), then you’ll die. This will happen, and it will continue to happen whilst you adjust to the online because, you see, you can not play this like CoDIV. It handles differently, it controls different and it should be played differently. You need to be a little more tactical because, if you run towards a couple of enemies online in Killzone 2, you’ll get shot and you’ll die. It’s a painful realisation that will probably push some people away from multiplayer.

This isn’t helped by the rather harsh levels system – you start with a single class and two weapons and, to unlock more, you have to kill enemies and complete objectives. You don’t unlock another class for 4 levels, you get a shotgun and an SMG at the level before that. This lack of selection from the beginning is just going to push people away a little quicker and, I thought it was a little unfair.

This is unfortunate, because the online is tremendously fun. After an hour or so of online play I was suddenly kicking arse and chewing bubble gum (though, regrettably, I was all out of gum). I actually came out top in the server a couple of times. I felt like I was on top of the world until I came against better opponents. I suddenly found myself thinking tactically; ‘no, don’t run through that door unless you want your head to go back through it alone’, or ‘instead of running through this door, why not go around and flank them?’.

It was a strange experience, as, in the later levels when you’re playing with more experienced players, they are very clever people. They don’t run into firefights like the friendly AI, they hang back, or they flank, they converge on the objectives in a fashion that makes them very hard to kill. These are actual players playing a game tactically without an ounce of communication. It’s an unspoken agreement on tactics that inexplicably works rather well. You will be surprised at how well organised you will be online because the game beats it into you mercilessly.

But yes, without an ounce of communication. There are few mics in use online and the ones that are in use are rarely being used for tactics. Instead, they’re usually used to give us a peek into the player’s arguments with their mother, or their children wailing like banshees. Of course, you can mute them, but you’d think that these people would do it themselves and be a little considerate. You’ll have to arrange to play with friends if you want real mic usage. Luckily, this is easy to sort out, with clan systems and other such innovations that are expected in online FPS games of late. They work rather well, too.

There’s a squad system in-game, too. You can either join (bye requesting or by invitation) a squad or you can start another. As squad leader you can have your squad mates respawn on your position at any given moment and, as a squad member, you can spawn on your leader. It’s a mutually beneficial thing, either having help appear from nowhere or spawning straight into the action. It’s all good.

Classes online range from the soldier, who is just a standard soldier, to the scout, who is a sniper and can turn invisible, the medic, who revives allies with their strange magic-ray-gun-thingy, to the tactician and the saboteur, who can create spawn points and disguise themselves as the enemy, respectively. They have various skills and pros/cons, and usually another that can be unlocked (for example, you can, as a medic, unlock the ability to drop medipacks, too). The class systems works quite well, with each class having special skills that give tactical advantages without making it too unfair, regardless of whichever you’re playing as.

Overall, Killzone 2 is an extremely solid FPS. It doesn’t bring anything new, other than a cover system that works extremely well, but it does bring everything that had already been brought before, then polishes it until it shines in next-gen glory. It does this whilst being the best looking console game to date and holding the most entertaining multiplayer since CoDIV first released.

9/10

Filed under: Killzone 2, Review