The Helghast invaded Vekta, one of ISA’s colonial planets. Now in Killzone 2, the ISA gets some payback and invades the Helghast’s home world of Helghan. Their goal: to capture the radical ruler of the Helghast, Scholar Visari (greatly voiced but underused by Brian Cox), and to stop the Helghast once and for all.
You play as Sev, a veteran soldier tasked with stopping the Helghan army. Your squad consists of Garza, Natko, and Rico. You’re helped along the way by scientists and other soldiers. The storyline is a little bit lacking, considering that once you’ve finished the game, nothing you did really made an actual dent to the Helghan army. You only helped to make the Helghast more pissed off. Good going soldier!
This game was one of the highlights to showcase the power of the PS3 when it first came out. It was later revealed that the graphics used in the teaser trailer was pre-rendered. But make no mistake; even though it’s not in the same league as the pre-rendered graphics, the graphics are still one of the best for the PS3, or any consoles, to date. The game starts you off as Sev and the gang invading Helghan (reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan’s Normandy invasion). You can see ships flying around, soldiers everywhere shooting one another. Smokes and flames can be seen in the distance showing the devastation of the ISA invading. It’s very chaotic, yet beautiful. There are areas in the game where the graphics are pretty bland, like plain-looking corridors and the inside building structure that houses Visari, but it’s a minor thing that won’t ruin the experience. This game also makes use of heavy saturation, making the Helghan world very sad and uniformed.
The gameplay is your standard FPS affair, so picking up and play won’t be a burden on you if you’re familiar with FPS games. The only drawback for the controls is the motion delay when aiming your weapon. You can change the setting to faster aiming, but it still feels as if the gun is tracking the crosshairs instead of being precise and on target every time.
The coolest addition is the ability to cover and fire. It’s different from games like Gears of War in that you have to hold the cover button to continually go behind cover. As you’re holding the cover button, you can aim to pop yourself up and get a better view. Once you have a clear target, you can fire upon them. It can get tricky since the AI will try to flush you out by rushing and shooting from the side.
The game mixes things up a bit by letting you drive a tank and control a bipedal-armored mech. Both tank and mech missions are very short and feels tacked on, especially the tank mission. But it’s a good thing that these missions were short because they weren’t that great to begin with, since it felt repetitive. The mech mission can be a pain if you die, since the checkpoints are more spread out than usual, and your armor can’t heal itself.
Although Killzone 2 adds nothing new to the genre, it makes up for it in artistic beautiful visuals. The controls are good but it could be better. The story is lacking and feels like one big tease, but it’s a game that’s definitely worth checking out.
Campaign Mode: B-
Now here’s Cricket with his take on Online Mode:
Killzone 2’s Multiplayer is a disappointment. When I first played online, I can only choose two primary weapons. Both were machine guns and I couldn’t choose a shotgun or a trusty sniper rifle. Nope, I have to earn the other weapons. This would have been a good idea but when you have maps setup for sniping, it’s no fun being sniped over and over again. You have no choice but to practically run and hope the snipers won’t get you. Of course they’re really far so it’ll probably take a good 6 seconds of you’re dodging their bullets and running towards them before you have a chance of killing them. Sounds fun right?
Then you have the controls. It’s not as responsive as it should be. For this reason, it’s really hard to aim. I tried adjusting the sensitivity of the controller and it was a little bit better but still a chore trying to mow down your enemies. The control just feels sluggish, even when I changed the zoom to L1 and L2 to crouch, it still didn’t feel natural. It was just too much work trying to get a kill.
As for the map, most looked the same with the dull saturated colors. Each level should have a unique design that makes you want to play it. In Killzone 2, they might have as well built just one level. Nothing stands out from the rest.
Multiplayer for Killzone 2 is just too much work and not worth the payoff.
Multiplayer Mode: C
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