Hato-kun's Profile

So, I recently had the opportunity to play through Killzone 2, and I thought I might share my thoughts with you guys. So here goes nothing.

As soon as I got my hands on it, I stick it into my PS3 and booted up the game. The first thing that hit me, was as everyone says, the graphics. Dear lord, they are a sight to behold. Though, in my opinion, I found Gears 2 to be right up there with it, only gears looks a lot brighter. The animations were smooth and lighting worked well with the mood that was being set. As the camera moved away from the light, friendly filled planet it dove out into space showing a fleet of Vectan ships firing upon oncoming Helghast, and blowing them to pieces. The debris from the destroyed Helghast ships passed across the camera to reveal and very dusty, atmospheric planet, which was blowing up Vectan ships left right and center, and as the camera zoomed down to the surface the music changed, giving off a hostile feeling as soldiers were shot and bloodied left right and center. Finally, as the camera slides along the ground and tilted up into the eye of a Helghast soldier, it ends with the line "..And they will know, Helghan, belongs to the Helghast." and with that, the title is shown, a dark red 'Killzone 2' is constructed on screen, then blown away. And I sit there going, "Wow."

So those were my first thoughts. Epic? Yes. Did it make me yell "THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER!"? Not yet. But it did eventually. The campaign flows across ten missions, each leading onto the next and ultimately building up to a good ending. The core gameplay element of Killzone 2 is to shoot your red-eyed friends untill the fall over and die. Which is every amusing sometimes (in a disturbing way). The body reactions in Killzone 2 are wonderful. Shoot a soldier in the chest and he will yell and fall over backwards, clutching his stomach, still screaming. He will then try to get back up and shoot you again, still limping from his injury. You pump a couple more rounds into him and he will fall back again, rolling around on the ground in agony. Then you walk up to him, pull out your pistol, and shoot him in the head (What fun)! These reactions are only made better by the genius cover system developed for the game. Walk up to any barrier or wall, hold down L2 and you will get into cover. From this position you can slide close to the wall, avoiding fire, then peek out from the side and pick off enemies quite well. But remember, your enemies can take cover too.

Which brings me too Killzone 2's AI. It's great, as expected from Killzone. The Helghast will take cover when you open fire at them, they will dive away when grenades are thrown, they will push forward when you don't make a move towards them, they will lob grenades at you when your in cover, just these little things that help the game actually be enjoyable and challenging. Even with your partners, they will help you push forward if there is an open space of cover, they communicate with you and yell at you when you get shoot to much, and all their animations are smooth as they could get.

And the graphics, dear god. They are amazing. You can see each individual speck of dust floating in the wind, all the lose pieces of cloth and wire attached to boxes flap around in the wind with perfect shadows. The blood effects are top notch, with your foot prints showing up around dead Helghast soldiers, and you see the pools of blood begin to stain the ground. Just everything about the game looks nice.

But, there are complaints. My main complaint is the lack of weapons. Some people might argue with me, but I found the weapons too boring. You have two assault rifles, a weird rifle thingy, two pistols, rocket launcher, SMG, some exploding bolt gun (Which you don't get that much.) an electricity gun (Which is AWESOME but have for one level) grenade launcher, shotgun, sniper, flame thrower and that's it. I found it to be a dry selection, and they also took away the secondary fire, which annoyed me a lot.

Another complaint is the voice acting. Overall, it's pretty good, but some characters just get on your nerves. For instance, Rico is more annoying than me. I wanted to keep killing him over and over again because he was that bad. Come to think of it, most of your squad was annoying. The acting wasn't terrible, just the casting and some rather hilarious lines when you shoot your friends. But hopefully, these problems wont be in your final copy :P

With some closing comments I'd just like to say, buy this freaking game. It's amazing, fun, sexy looking and even more amazing. It doesn't really do anything too new, it just improves greatly on everything else. And with the possibility of a Co-op patch, and definite DLC, this game is definitely one to treasure. I give it 9.6, but 10 is the closest :D

[Hato]