Killzone 2 game review for the PS3

Posted by Al Warmington on Mon 2 Mar 2009

Visually arresting, overpoweringly cinematic and utterly tedious

It is impossible to talk about Killzone 2 without mentioning the H word. Yes, hype. Killzone 2 has, rather unfortunately, been subjected to oodles of it. The original struggled under the weight of it, anf failed to deliver, while Killzone 2 almost managed to completely undermine itself way back in 2005 with one fateful pre-rendered video that caused a mighty kafuffle in the gaming community.

Fortunately, the controversy surrounding it now seems somewhat futile. Although one Sony rep may have naively tried to pass it off gameplay footage when it was in fact nothing more than a speculative impression of what a game like that might look like much further down the line, it is a huge tribute to developer Guerrilla Games that Killzone 2 really has lived up to that original graphical spectacle.

Shame it didn’t go the extra mile, though.

Graphically, Killzone 2 is at the very pinnacle of first person shooter design. An average encounter – and there are a great number of very average encounters throughout the 10 mission campaign – is an orgy of exploding, dizzying, spell-binding chaos. Glowing red visors swim in a haze of clogging smoke and blood, dancing between the flaking concrete of an industrialised nightmare. Helghan is a planet so pestilent that it’s as though someone took the seventh circle of hell and built a motorway service station in it, and Guerrilla has realised it perfectly.

Enemy and friendly AI models are drawn to an incredible degree of detail. The lighting effects too are spectacular; and the anti-aircraft barrages, lighting strikes and the frequent staccato of gunfire illuminates in so many eye-catching ways that you’d want to stop and stare if you weren’t constantly running for the nearest obstacle to hide behind.

Killzone 2 also features a few familiar faces from the original Killzone on PS2. Jan Templar and Rico Velasquez return to starring roles, although it’s the foul-mouthed, perpetually obnoxious Rico who’ll be doing your head in throughout several hours of main campaign while the relatively bearable Templar takes a back seat on the command ship. Brian Cox reprises his role as Scolar Visari in excellent form, and according to IMDB, the superb Sean Pertwee does the voice of Colonel Radec – a slight oddity seeing as he was also the voice of the shady half-Helghan spy in the original, and about the closest thing to an interesting character that the series has ever had.

Also unlike the original, where you could at least pretend to get some gameplay variety by controlling the various different characters, you are stuck in the role of Sergeant ‘Sev’ Sevchenko; an army man about as stereotypical as you could ever hope to meet this side of Haze. If this change was intended to perhaps draw the rest of the narrative into a more coherent, engaging whole, it failed. Miserably.

Each mission flows gracefully into the next accompanied by instantly forgettable wittering about escorting convoys full of god knows what to god knows where for no discernable purpose, securing bases and checkpoints and LZs and oh dear, did we drop off for a minute there? Nevermind, hit up on the D-Pad to get an arrow pointing to wherever you need to be for Rico’s next instalment of petulant twattery and kill everything else you see en route.

The killing, or at least the tactical encounters between your varying force and the constantly spawning enemies, can be prove to be a superb display of artificial intelligence. Helghast troopers will take refuge behind any available bit of scenery and aren’t so daft as to stick their heads up when there a bullets flying over them, instead choosing to crawl to safer spots to pop out and take pot shots at you. Stick around in a single place for too long and you’ll find grenades raining in to flush you out and bolder enemies will attempt to rush in and take you out while you reload.

Alas, the same level of AI doesn’t quite cover the friendly troops quite as effectively and you’ll frequently find them charging out directly in your line of fire practically at the very moment you thought you’d lined up a perfect headshot.

And after a few missions, you’ll be getting a very strong sense of déjà vu. The bog-standard Helghast troopers soon give way to slightly tougher, more heavily armed varieties that look pretty similar, as well as a couple of special units like the larger heavy troopers who have something of a dubious role in the game seeing as you have to shoot them in the head so that they turn round and bend over for you to unload a *ahem* clip into their backside. The locations and the scale of encounters seldom change either – it’s all one big war-torn oil refinery, with the occasional smattering of elevated positions and desert wasteland.

Making this worse, and proving to be the gaping flaw in the whole game, are the controls. They’re twitchy and yet at the same time manage to make it slow to turn and cover all the necessary angles. Furthermore, the most essential of actions demand a lot of fiddly button presses.

To stick to cover you hold L2. To fire a shot you then press R1. If you want to lean out from cover first to get the aim in properly, you need to hold a L2, the direction you want to lean and hit R1. Or if, heaven forbid, you want to aim down the sights from cover, you need to hold L2, the direction you want to lean, L1 and fire with R1. The result is something like trying to strangle a particularly vicious lobster.

If that wasn’t quite annoying enough, not all the cover mechanics work as promised. Aiming out in just the wrong way – a relatively frequent occurrence seeing as the available cover doesn’t always lie at just the direction (a la Gears of War) and enemies are eager to push for their own dominance of the battlefield – can result in you twitching in and out of cover as if you’re having an ill-timed seizure.

It’s a real relief then that the tedious single-player campaign is only half of the real Killzone 2 experience. The extra months of development that were pushed into the multiplayer side (although sadly not into creating a co-op mode which could have been a hell of a lot more fun) have been well spent. The maps are wide and sprawling, packed with nooks and angles, raised platforms and hidden trenches for you to spring attacks on unsuspecting players and for them to replay the same favour.

As you get kills and achieve objectives (the best innovation on this front is not a new game mode, but the ability to play multiple modes in random orders throughout the same map) you’ll receive experience points which will in turn unlock new equipment and abilities. There’s a good chance that this could be seen as rewarding better players with better kit, a scenario which doesn’t make for particularly fair balancing, but it gives the game real longevity and at least means that it will change for you over time as you develop your character.

Killzone 2 has borrowed a lot from Call of Duty 4 in this regard, and even if it has delivered in a less balanced manner, it should result in a similar kind of longevity.

Killzone 2 is by no means a perfect game, but it’s done its job of proving the PS3’s graphical superiority. The controls might be akin to threading a needle with a pneumatic drill but there’s no arguing that there’s a certain triple A quality that somehow managed to slip past all the ghastly storylines and repetitive single-player encounters. There should even be a decent amount of replay value in there too.

Link: Killzone 2

20 Games that changed it all

Without them that you thing called a console would be wasting away in the garage

- Click now to see the true gaming stalwarts

User Comments

By freegadgets4u

1|09|2009 18:44

Get yourself an Ipod, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360 etc for just FIVE POUNDS or even FREE! Simply get signed up at

http://tiny.cc/freegadgets4u (copy and paste into browser)

Complete ONE of the offers on the 'offers' tab to qualify. Lovefilm is a free trial offer, Coral costs a one off £5, which you must place a bet with but may win some cash back! Lots of other offers to choose from if none of these appeal. bbc approved system, I have received countless free items from here, even my hdtv!

http://tiny.cc/freegadgets4u (copy and paste into browser)

Report this

By freeiphones4u

26|08|2009 14:13

The Free iPhone Guide

To get yourself a free iPhone, iPod Touch, or the latest Macbook Air all you have to do is follow the 3 easy steps:

Step 1 : Sign up for a free Gift
Sign up at the link below to get your free gift. We recommend this free gift site because it's been TRIED and TESTED to work.

http://gifts.kudosnetwork.co.uk/172 (copy and paste into address bar)

You can choose other prizes like free iMacs from this site too! Make sure you use a real email address. Use your real details when you sign up so that the company knows where to send your gift! Remember that they have been proven legitimate, so will send you your free gift if you do everything legitimately!

Step 2 : Try an advertiser's offer
Basically all you need to do in this step is complete one of the offers, this is where the freebie site make their money, if you complete an offer then the freebie site will recieve commission for it. So if you complete Coral which will only cost you £5 to complete, the freebie site gets £25 from Coral. The two best offers are Lovefilm Free DVD rental trial (where you rent any two DVD's for free!) and Coral (bet £5 on a sport). I would reccommend you do Coral as it credits in an hour and is really simple to do, Lovefilm however can become complicated and takes up to 4 weeks to credit! You can also try one of the other offers, most are gambling offers. Don't skip this step! You must complete this step to get your free gift!

Step 3 : Refer some friends

This part is a lot easier than it seems, especially now with free gift sites getting so popular. There's lots of people online who want a free iPhone, Touch or macbook too, so start referring them! You only need to get a few signups before you'll be finished. You can ask your friends or your online buddies. I already got a free iPhone without even having to ask my friends for help - there's lots of people online who want a free iPhone like you! One of the easiest ways to get a referral is to do a favour for a friend and ask them to sign up in return. That way, you both can get a free gift!

Basic rules
Don't break these rules! This is the only reason that you won't get your free gift, so make sure you follow these rules!

- One account per household - don't use a public computer to sign up!
- Use real information - this is a proven legitimate site and they will not give out your information.
- Only complete each offer once! You cannot complete the same offer again, even for different freebies.
- Don't try to cheat the system. This site has been proven legitimate, and they will catch you if you try to cheat. If you do everything legitimately, by following this guide, you will get a free gift!

Thats all, just follow my guide and you will have your free gift in no time.

Report this

By FreeItems4You

21|08|2009 13:57

www.gifts.freebiejeebies.co.uk/86180

To get yourself a free Xbox 360, Playstation 3, or the latest PS3 Slim all you have to do is follow the 3 easy steps:

Step 1 : Sign up for a free Gift
Sign up at the link below to get your free gift. We recommend this free gift site because it's been TRIED and TESTED to work.

www.gifts.freebiejeebies.co.uk/86180

You can choose other prizes like free iMacs from this site too! Make sure you use a real email address. Use your real details when you sign up so that the company knows where to send your gift! Remember that they have been proven legitimate, so will send you your free gift if you do everything legitimately!

Step 2 : Try an advertiser's offer
Basically all you need to do in this step is complete one of the offers, this is where the freebie site make their money, if you complete an offer then the freebie site will recieve commission for it. So if you complete Coral which will only cost you £5 to complete, the freebie site gets £25 from Coral. The two best offers are Lovefilm Free DVD rental trial (where you rent any two DVD's for free!) and Coral (bet £5 on a sport). I would reccommend you do Coral as it credits in an hour and is really simple to do, Lovefilm however can become complicated and takes up to 4 weeks to credit! You can also try one of the other offers, most are gambling offers. Don't skip this step! You must complete this step to get your free gift!

Step 3 : Refer some friends

This part is a lot easier than it seems, especially now with free gift sites getting so popular. There's lots of people online who want a free iPhone, Touch or macbook too, so start referring them! You only need to get a few signups before you'll be finished. You can ask your friends or your online buddies. I already got a free iPhone without even having to ask my friends for help - there's lots of people online who want a free iPhone like you! One of the easiest ways to get a referral is to do a favour for a friend and ask them to sign up in return. That way, you both can get a free gift!

Basic rules
Don't break these rules! This is the only reason that you won't get your free gift, so make sure you follow these rules!

- One account per household - don't use a public computer to sign up!
- Use real information - this is a proven legitimate site and they will not give out your information.
- Only complete each offer once! You cannot complete the same offer again, even for different freebies.
- Don't try to cheat the system. This site has been proven legitimate, and they will catch you if you try to cheat. If you do everything legitimately, by following this guide, you will get a free gift!

Thats all, just follow my guide and you will have your free gift in no time.

www.gifts.freebiejeebies.co.uk/86180