Killzone 2

Everyone has read about this game and it has had a lot of expectations and hype since the initial E3 trailer which was claimed to be real time gameplay.  I have to say the look and feel of the game very much delivers on what we say in that first trailer, the look of the game and the feel, it is very cinematic.  The gameplay is solid while the campaign does a good job of keeping you entertained while you are offline.  Killzone 2 is not perfect, however, because of some minor flaws here and there, lack of engaging story and some really odd decisions on part of the developers and some points where the effort is shown to be minimal.  These flaws stand out that much more because you have such beauty in grace in the rest of the game.
First off, let me just say I do think that technically, this is the most impressive game I have seen on a console.  The graphics are pretty amazing to behold.  I don't know how they did it, but the developers have managed to create a cinematic view that I have never seen before, the gun you hold seems to have a blur to it, and the fluid movements of it just make it that much more cinematic.  The textures on the guns and the special pixel shading effects they use all look great.  When looking at the initial cut scene, I began thinking they were using CG but no, the cinematics look amazing and the quality is superb.  Some of these things we have seen in games like Gears of War but not of this cinematic nature.  Artistically speaking, this game is not very pretty and well it wouldn't be, the game portrays the planet Helghan as a wasteland but in a way where you can see that this place has been ravaged by war and what is left does show signs that people used to live there.  The cities are shown as dirty run down slums made of concrete. I do have some problems with the graphics where these flaws are kinda glaring in contrast to the rest of the game.  The first ugly thing I noticed came only 30 seconds into playing the game and that is the in game mouth movements of characters talking are so ugly.  In game, the developers didn't even try to mimic speech, they are just moving their mouths until the audio of their voice stops.  I had seen better mouth movement in the first Half-Life.  THere are a few ugly textures here and there too, but on things the developers probably assumed you would not look to close at or notice.  Then there are the special effects.  The water in the game looks great, but man, fire and lightning look like shit.  The fire of something burning or coming from the flamethrower is so crappy that it makes me think they might want to release a patch to fix it.  Then the lightning from your little heal gun to the arc towers is pretty lackluster.  For the heal gun, it looks like they just use a 2d sprite.  Though I have to say the most impresive part of the games graphics is the lighting, from the shadows to quick lightning strikes that shine through, it looks amazing.
On the sound side, this game is not as impressive as the graphics.  The guns sound great and have distictive sounds that make them sound powerful yet realistic.  It is nothing revolutionary but everything is pretty much there.  THe music sets the tone and the explosions and things like reloading all sound good.  There are however points where you want to turn off the game, and that mostly comes from the dialogue.  Oh man, I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to kill Rico myself.  There have been other games with the archetypical black sounding marine, but man, this guy takes the cake.  And the thing is that he is no over the top like other marines like Hoffman from Gears or Johnson from Halo, but this guy sounds so serious that it is like a real person you hate.  There are some great effects that come from him though, like his screams when he gets electrocuted in one part of the game.  Also good are the screams of the helghast when you incinerate them with the flame thrower.
The story of the game is pretty forgettable, you don't get to care about anyone except maybe Garza and thats because seems to back you up through a good portion of the game.  You don't even care about your character, Sev, because he doesn't say much and you don't know anything about his personality.  Pretty weird but I think that at some points, it seems like they were going for the Gordon Freeman route, where you define the character, but by giving Sev a part in the cut scenes, you detach yourself from him and don't care about him.  And again, Rico, I have never hated a game character as much as I do him.
The game is a solid shooter that feels like a mix between Halo and Call of Duty 4.  The helghast can take some damage but wont take a whole clip like some guys in Halo.  There are a lot of questionable decisions gameplay wise that I don't like.  For one, the movement of the gun feels weighty yes, but at the same time unresponsive.  Granted, the PS controller wasn't designed with shooters in mind but the fact is that there is a slight delay between the time you start to turn and when you press the analog stick.  I checked it many times to make sure it wasn't just me.  I feel like Guerilla Games could have added weight by introducing momentum to the movements, not delays in response.  I feel this brings down the playing of the game a whole lot because you feel like your character doesn't do what you want them to do, when you want them to.  Also, the game just lets you use one gun and for some situations, this can be frustrating because you don't want to be carrying a rocket launcher and only have your pistol as backup.  Though I do like something here that I had never heard before.  When your gun has 5 bullets or so left, the firing of each bullet sounds different, letting you know you are low.  It seems to not be realistic, but in terms of games, I really like it.
In multiplayer is where the game shines though.  Even though I have problems with the controls, it was ok enough to have fun with the multiplayer portion of the game.  Sometimes I think the game would be better off if it were just multiplayer only so you don't have to endure the story and characters of the campaign.  I would say it is a cross of COD4 and Team Fortress 2.  It takes what made those games great and brings them together, the leveling up of COD4 and the classes of TF2.  It is sure to keep people entertained for a long time.  And finding people to play is not hard and the lag is quite minimal when you think of how bad some games on the PSN can get.
Killzone 2 is a great game but there are so many flaws that stand out because of how good the rest of the game is.  There seems to be no in between, either something in the game is amazing, or just really really bad.  It does give you what you were promised in the original E3 2005 trailer, the game does look that good but we didn't get to play anything or hear Rico talk.  So it does deliver on that promise, just that promise was not to deliver a perfect game, just a good one.