Killzone 2

Retrospectively, writing in April of 2010, Killzone 2 is a game which was not help by the hype it received before the game’s release. It was a level of hype that was unavoidable, irregardless of where you want to point to: the famous E3 trailer, the poor showing of the original game, the amount of money and time Sony put behind the project. My concern lies with the fact that none of this could have helped the game’s stature and the way it was perceived by the public. Killzone 2 is a very, very good game. It was amongst the best released for the PlayStation 3 in 2009, and remains one of the best first-person shooters for the platform. What’s important to note is that Killzone 2 makes an amazing first impression. After about one hour of playing the game, it’s easy to feel that little else could top the Killzone 2 experience. But as one progresses through the game’s story, as one peels back each layer of the onion, the game keeps on offering reasons why it should never be considered the perfect package.

Sony’s blockbuster title enters without much of a story behind it. There is a group of space marines, they may or may not be defending their own planet or invading another planet (I still haven’t worked out which, entirely to my fault), and their forces, known as the ISA, are under heavy attack from hostiles known as the Helghast. At the top of the Helghan pyramid stands an emperor named Visari, the root of all evil in the eyes of the ISA. It’s a fairly generic story then, but one that is peppered throughout by colorful if a little stereotypical characters who manage to bolster the plot along. Acceptable voice acting and well produced character models also keep the cutscenes clipping along at a comfortable rate. While at no point did I feel like I cared a whole lot about the characters in the game, I was interested to see what would happen next, and I remain particularly interested by the game’s cliffhanger ending. That says something about Killzone 2’s story. It might not make literary history, but for a game that is essentially about killing people where the story could have easily fallen by the wayside, enough attention is given to it to make it interesting, if one is willing to engage with it in the first place.

Much has been made of the game’s graphical power. It is indisputable that Killzone 2 is a very pretty and very good looking game. The aforementioned character models do the PlayStation 3 a great service. The characters look believable and it’s easy to tell them apart. There are very few textures in the game that go amiss. All of them look very clean. There is no blurring or lossy-ness, there is no pixilation: in short, there is no uncanny moment of realization that one is playing a video game to draw you out of the experience, at least not in the graphical department. Killzone 2 also features very strong particle effects. Dust and garbage fills the screen and blood plays an integral role in the game.

The graphics have the potential to divide players, and that’s something that comes down to Killzone 2’s art style. The world is dark, metallic, dirty, and grim. The sky is always clouded and stormy. I don’t recall seeing any bright greens or blues throughout the game. The game’s color palette is the definition of limited. While I found the aesthetic unsettling, it clearly works in the game’s favor, and it represents the world the ISA are fighting in accurately. Some may not like the art style or the palette. It’s important to differentiate personal taste and graphical power, though. Irregardless of the art style, Killzone 2 is a very good looking game, even one year after the fact.

It’s lucky that Killzone 2’s gameplay rounds out the rest of the package nicely, or perhaps it was simply to be expected from Guerilla Games, who probably knew that they had to call a Hail Mary if they wanted the Killzone franchise to live on past two main series title and a PlayStation Portable spin-off. Just like the art style, Killzone 2’s gameplay will prove to be divisive. In a sense, it really is just a contemporary first-person shooter. There are grenades, there are the standard weapons, the player character can only carry two firearms at a time, and if you don’t get hit for a set period of time your health regenerates. There are also “intel documents” to collect throughout the world. This follows the generic first-person shooter archetype, and there are never any surprises.

What differentiates Killzone 2 is the feel of the game. This is a fairly abstract concept, but it boils down to this: Killzone 2 has momentum. The camera swings almost imperceptibly every time you move. The characters run slowly as if they’re hulking around. The kickback is slow to effect weapons but is heavy. Moving in and out of cover is a pronounced movement. The idea is to make the player feel like the game has weight, and this is the divisive factor: some players will like the fact that they can feel weight and others will not. For me, it was quite effective. What makes it powerful is that it makes Killzone 2 unique. It ensures that Killzone 2 won’t play like Resistance or Halo, and that’s important, since Killzone 2 doesn’t make bold changes to the motifs of the genre.

Another key part of the gameplay is the cover mechanic, which can’t be ignored. Long time players of the genre might feel out of place as they get used to the fact that you will die if you don’t take cover. This is very important to the game: cover is in essence the health pickup of the game. Stay behind cover and think intelligently about when to shoot, and you’ll survive. Run out into the open, and you’ll get mowed down by an impressive mixture of melee attacks and long-range fire. The AI isn’t particularly smart in any way, but they do know how to make the player feel uncomfortable. If they’re close enough they’ll rush you with knives, which is effectively an instant death scenario. Enemies throw grenades accurately too, and they’re no slouches with their own firearms. For the majority of the game the player character will be paired up with an ally to compensate for this. To be fair, the allies aren’t all that smart: they’re there for plot purposes (to open locked doors, to control computers et cetera), and they’re also there to soak up bullets and to take out enemies – both things which, to their credit, they’re good at doing. This is evident because as soon as they die (if they take enough damage) one will often find him or herself in real danger. They don’t really die. They can be revived, but they must be revived by the player, and if there are enough enemies around, it’s a hard task to manage. Allies are integral, then.

So as a whole the story mode is well handled. The game looks good and plays nicely, which makes everything a comfortable experience. There is the requisite online multiplayer available. I don’t play multiplayer, so I’m not in a position to comment, but I did love the offline multiplayer simulation, which puts the player up against a number of bots. You can change the variables – the map, the difficultly level, and the number of bots. Unfortunately you can’t progress in rank as you might in the online world, which means that, for a guy like me, this mode will never change. But it’s a good time killer and it does extend the life of the game from a single player perspective.

Why four stars, then? I’ve given Killzone 2 a very good review and I’m not one who hesitates when faced with awarding a game five stars. It’s just that there are some crucial things which draw Killzone 2 back – those reasons for marking it down that I mentioned at the start of the piece, that onion that you keep on peeling back. The game has the tendency to put you in difficult situations that are made even harder when your ally dies, as aforementioned. I died a lot throughout the game, and a lot of the time I did not feel as if I died fairly. The final boss is a chore, and I can’t clear the level on any difficulty other than easy. It’s worth noting that the trophy for the final boss is awarded to you if you clear the fight in under twenty minutes, which suggests that it might take much longer than that for some. I found myself bogged down in one position for over forty minutes, because I kept on getting killed by the same unfair wave, and because my partner kept on getting killed. I’m well aware that this is my failing; this is my lack of skill. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel that there are some parts of the game that are legitimately unfair, and these parts do keep the game down.

I cannot allow that to keep from the fact that I had a lot of fun playing Killzone 2. It’s an enjoyable, well produced game, and it is certainly an essential title to have for the PlayStation 3 console. It’s a landmark title for the console, and while it may be divisive, its importance cannot be disputed.