For some reason I found myself playing Killzone 1 today (I have many, many, better games to play but I felt an urge to play through the Killzone franchise and I picked up the HD trilogy cheap a few months back so...)

Here are my thoughts on the first five or so levels:

-The presentation stinks. I thought this was supposed to be an AAA PS2 game, but when I think PS2 AAA I think God of War or MGS 2 or 3, or whatever. I've recently played through GoW 1, Jak and Daxter 1 and 2, and Prince of Persia Sands of Time on HD collections so I think I have a decent idea of what HDified Ps2 games are like, and well, this is by far the ugliest and seems the most dated, even though Jak and Daxter was 3 years older. The voice acting in Killzone is frequently really bad, the environments feel like they're out of a PC game circa the first Half-Life and the cutscenes are stitled and lame.

-The gameplay is about as bad as expected. It's pre-CoD4 console first person shooting.

-The enemies have no AI to speak of and come off as super generic. Maybe this will change.

-Oh those checkpoints...I have not died far from a checkpoint yet but if I do I feel like it might be the end of the road for my run with this game. Brutal.

Despite all those flaws there are some interesting aspects that make me want to continue playing, at least for now.

+The Hellghast squad chatter is somehow engaging even though it seems like it shouldn't be. Basically the Hellghast speak the same way that your squadmates do. They come off not as videogame enemies placed there to be killed but rather soldiers on a mission who happen to be on the other side. It's pretty cool.

+The game is a corridor shooter but seems not to know it. Lots of open rooms and side areas. Plus the level geometry sometimes allows for multiple approach. In level 2 there is a room of Hellghast above the street who are meant to shoot at you as you pass by, but there are stairs leading up to the room from below and you can go up and machine gun them from behind. This feels like the game trying to break out of corridor land but being forced back in because of the PS2's limited RAM.

The game really shows how game design was different back in the Ps2 era, especially first person shooters. It makes no effort to be a CoD style rollercoaster or tell a great story like Bioshock, or to present interesting environments and mechanics like Metro Last Light or Bulletstorm. It just plops some brain dead hellghast down in some generic settings and says go shoot them. And it was well-received at the time.

All in all the game feels incredibly dated but in an interesting way. I think I'll explore a little further.

I played it for the first time last year and really liked it. Besides the bad check points, I found it really really fun. I played the PSP game after that and it was also great. Then I played Killzone 2 and that was poop. I was not able to finish it, it was too generic and lacked the personality of the PS2 and PSP games.

I can't speak for the PSP game but I am very interested in what the personality of the PS2 game was in your opinion, because I have found literally no personality whatsoever other than the Hellghast, who I do like. I don't hate Killzone 1 so far, though IMO it definitely does not stand up over time like something like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, but personality is not be where I would think its strength would be.

I don't know, I grew attached to the characters of Templar and Luger. I hate how the game just completely throws all that out in 2 and instead follows Rico and dude with a mohawk.

NOOO! NAWT JAWNSUN! HE WUZ ONLEEABOY!

It has been a very long time since I played that game, but I remember it being pretty cool and having great reload animations. (Which carried over to the other games.)

My memory is probably pretty inaccurate after all this time. It was probably the first FPS I enjoyed on a console. I do remember the bit at the end on a spaceship with the bad guy from Robocop being hugely frustrating though.