Four years in development and worth the wait!!!
After nearly four years in development, the infamous Killzone 2 has been released exclusively on the Playstation 3 platform. It's a First Person Shooter developed by Guerrilla Games that lives up to the initial CGI trailer released at E3 in 2005. Without going into too much detail, plain and simple, this game is a must buy for ALL PS3 owners and warrants at least a rent for owners of multiple platforms.
The single player campaign follows the events of Killzone and Killzone: Liberation, and entirely takes place on the planet Helghan, the home-world of the Helghast, who invaded an Interplanetary Strategic Alliance (ISA) colony. Two years after the Helghast assault on Vekta, the ISA has launched an assault on the enemy's homeworld of Helghan. The ISA goal is to capture the Helghast leader, Scolar Visari, and bring the Helghast war machine to a halt. You play as Sergeant Tomas Sev Sevchenko, a battle-hardened veteran of the special forces unit Alpha Team, that goes on a mission to take out the Helghast threat. Despite what the masses are saying, the single player campaign delivers a very good experience with huge, detailed set pieces and TONS of action!
Like most games for the current-gen systems, it features a multiplayer experience, which in my opinion, is the high point of the game. It features your standard Team Deathmatch (Bodycount), Conquest (Capture and Hold), Capture the Flag (Search and Retrieve) and VIP (Assassination) modes. The biggest part that sets the multiplayer in Killzone 2 apart from other shooters is that it seamlessly fuses all these modes together, which is superb. It also uses a class based system like Teamfortress. Players initially assume the role as a standard soldier, but with time you receive points that eventually unlocks other classes (medic, engineer, tactician, assault, saboteur and scout), items and special attributes.
The sound is fabulous and features great voice acting and sound effects that are hugely immersive with a surround sound system. The graphics are the selling point of the game and are stunning as Guerrilla Games truly came through with delivering visuals that are close to or equivalent to the 2005 E3 CGI trailer. The controls take some time to get used to as Killzone 2 is not your standard Run-N-Gun shooter. The physics deliver a feeling of realism as your characters will feel as if they are actually carrying gear with weight, not like the arcadyness (real word?) found in COD. The physics also are reflective of real world situations as there are a multitude of particle effects found throughout levels and really sells the environments and characters.
I could go on and on about how great this game is, but it would do a disservice to experiencing this adventure first hand. As stated previously, if you own a PS3, this is a must buy and clearly a system seller for Sony.
Time to kill some Higs!!!
Final Score: 9.6
