After many years in development, Guerilla and Sony's long-awaited Killzone
2 has finally arrived on Playstation 3. With so much at stake, the
question is whether the game delivers on its promise or if it falls short
of the high benchmarks it set for itself. The game takes place on a
desolate planet called Helghast, where your invading forces are trying to
wipe out the evil Helghans who invaded your planet several years earlier.
You don't really need to have played the first game to understand the
story and plot line, which are fairly simple. The action begins with an
impressive set-piece where your team's convoy falls through the atmosphere
and barely lands on a forbidding alien planet that's engulfed in the full
fury of war. Narrowly avoiding the Helghan defenses, your team finds what
were supposedly defeated forces fighting viciously to defend their home
planet. Killzone 2's action is quite intense with the Helghans battling
you from all directions, making this quite an impressive and intense FPS
experience. The massive levels showcase a great level of detail with the
maps themselves unfolding over huge areas. Its war torn environments are
quite impressive and Killzone 2 immerses you in the action as the war
surrounds you, with Helghan attacks coming at all directions
simultaneously. The game's pacing is relentless and brutal, giving you
little breathing room. The Helghans attack without warning and are brutal
in the way they can target your location. This makes it important to keep
moving throughout the mission.
In
addition to firing your weapons and killing them, your other objective is
survival. You need to find cover in order to survive these assaults and
this can be done by finding objects to hide behind, where you can then
peak out and exchange fire with your enemy. It's a fairly obvious
strategy, but it won't offer complete protection, so you'll need to stay
constantly aware of your surroundings. Initially at least, the game flows
in a fairly predictable way and should pose little problem for FPS
players. It's enemies and layouts are easy to navigate and the frequent
save points allow for good progression. However, once you get through the
first few levels, Killzone 2 gets much more intense and challenging. One
of the more interesting aspects of the game involves friendly fire, where
you can accidentally take out one of your soldiers. However, you can
revive them by zapping them with a med charger, where they'll stand back
on their feet and continue assisting you. As in many more recent FPS
titles, damage isn't fatal at first. When you're hit, your view explodes
with blood splatters, and the screen loses its color. In order to revive,
you need to find a secure place and avoid taking additional fire. All you
need to do is stand there for a few moments. Once safely out of fire, you
can regenerate your health automatically. Its fairly simple and helps to
keep the action flowing, without interrupting the gameplay with endless
reloading screens. This makes for a much more seamless experience and
helps keep you immersed in the action throughout.
Most of the Helghan soldiers you face
off against are fairly predictable in their attacks, but since they attack
in waves, you have to hold back a little in some areas and allow them to
come out in the open. Otherwise, your mission will come to an early end.
As you begin the game, you have a fairly straightforward selection of
weapons to choose from including standard assault rifles, machine guns,
and grenades. These can be quite effective in taking out enemies of the
standard variety, but there are tougher ones to take out including several
boss type Helghast who shoot flamethrowers at your force. In addition,
you'll have to avoid fire from opponents who are stationed in assault
bunkers, which can produce a serious amount of damage. An effective
strategy in these sections of Killzone 2 is to find cover, and gradually
wear out their defenses. Most of the action takes place on the ground and
unfolds in typical FPS fashion, but there are some cool sequences where
you can take over a fixed position gun turret, take command of tanks and
even one that puts you in the cockpit of a fighter jet. These definitely
help to break up the action and help to give Killzone 2's gameplay more
variety. The game's sense of scale and drama makes for an immersive
experience as you follow the invasion during each level.
While
the game offers an intense and engrossing single-player experience, the
developers at Guerilla spent almost as much effort in crafting an
impressive collection of multiplayer modes. Accessing these is fairly
simple and can be done from the main menus. There are several modes
available, which include fairly standard missions and innovative gameplay
modes that set Killzone 2 apart from the FPS pack. Before each game
begins, you can contact the members of you clan to set up games, or go
right into the action. There are Search and Retrieve, Capture and Hold
Search and Destroy, Assassination and Body Count missions. These are
fairly simple and straightforward objectives, with the Search and Capture
missions offering variations on Capture the flag, while Assassination mode
has the members of your team target a specific member of the other team
while your opponents have to keep them alive for the duration. Signing in
on the PS Network is fairly seamless, thanks to the excellent integration
with the main menu, and the game's extensive leaderboards and ranking
system keeps you motivated. The selection of online maps is impressive and
the game plays smoothly with little in the way of lag or hiccups. These
online modes are well designed which makes them an excellent addition to
this intense shooter.
With expectations for Killzone 2 so
high, there are bound to be a few areas where the game falls short of the
mark. While the vaunted visuals look impressive, and the character design
of the robotic Helghans are very cool, the overall aesthetic of the game
is a bit numbing. It's a relentless journey through a burned out husk of a
world. From a technical standpoint, Killzone 2's use of lighting, shadows
and realistic environments is impressive, and does a good job of showing
off the Playstation 3 hardware. Though, it's been so long in development,
that some of the shock value seen in that old E3 trailer seems to have
worn off. Other impressive titles have already come out for the console
and at this point, the biggest problem with Killzone 2 is that it feels
derivative in many ways, where it was promoted as offering something
revolutionary. It's graphics engine provides for smooth animation and
frame rate, but many of its levels feel claustrophobic and tedious. It
delivers from a technical standpoint, but its unimaginative level design
and waves of identical enemies make it feel repetitive quickly. The
soundtrack is decent, with decent voice-acting conveying the urgency of
each mission effectively. Killzone 2's gameplay is solidly produced, but
again doesn't really offer much in the way of innovation. Take a little
bit of Gears of War, Call of Duty, Halo, and even Sony's own Resistance
and you pretty much have all the elements present in Killzone 2. This
doesn't mean that this is a bad game, just that it doesn't deliver the
kind of innovative experience once promised. If you lower your
expectations and merely want a solidly produced, highly playable and
somewhat impressive FPS then Killzone 2 delivers the goods. However, if
you were expecting something truly revolutionary to happen after nearly a
half-decade in development, then you're likely to be disappointed with the
end result.
- Michael Palisano
