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    Killzone

    Game » consists of 4 releases. Released Nov 02, 2004

    Fight back against the Helghast invasion with your four man squad to save the Vektan colony.

    More thoughts on Killzone 1: Halfway there, starting to get it

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    bigsocrates

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    Edited By bigsocrates

    A couple weeks back I posted a blog on Killzone 1 and its antiquated ways. Since then I have been picking away at the game and have some more thoughts. Overall I like it better than I did at first and see both how it influenced modern game design and some things modern games could learn from it.

    • The biggest difference from the opening levels of Killzone 1 and the later game seems to be the ability to play as different characters and be accompanied by your squad. This makes the game a lot less generic than its opening levels, where you play as Templar, suggest. While Templar is a typical FPS guy, Luger plays very differently, more focused on sniping and stealth. Playing as her allows for some different traversal of the levels and also rewards a more methodical approach. Instead of just a bad Modern Warfare Precursor corridor crawler you spend a lot of time sniping and hiding behind cover. It makes for more exciting play. In addition, your squadmates in Killzone are not useless. Given enough time you can rely on them to take out threats and they can also draw fire. Once Killzone has its full squad in place it is a much different, and more interesting game, than it is at the outset. Going off on recon missions to open up areas for your squad to come meet you is exciting and fun.
    • The environments also improve over the first few levels. The first level is a bombed out city that just looks ugly and devoid of detail, followed by a very boring facility you infiltrate. Later levels include a docks area that has some character, and rivers and canyons that, despite all being green and gray, are at least mildly visually interesting.
    • What doesn't improve is the draw distance, and it sucks. It really sucks. Enemies can shoot you from an indecipherable mist and threats often pop in after they've seen you. There is an area where drop ships are adding soldiers to the fray but other soldiers literally pop in behind to flank you (if you're looking you can see them just appear) and overall the game shows its age and hardware limitations in a big way. Killzone is the opposite of a Halo killer. It shows why Halo, and the Xbox, were better than the Ps2, at least from a hardware perspective. Halo does things that Killzone simply can't.
    • Killzone's checkpointing also sucks big time. HUGE time. There is one level in particular where you go down a long river facing a number of questionably fair challenges and difficult areas, with zero checkpoints. I died a few times towards the beginning and then made it through on my fourth or fifth run, but the level took me half an hour, was more stressful and times confusing than fun, and if I had died near the end I may have had to put the game down for several weeks.
    • Enemy AI is dumb as a post.

    Killzone plays very differently from a modern shooter, at least once it opens up. It throws challenges at you with enemy placement and the like and gives you various tools to approach them, then lets you do so. Want to sneak around as a Shadow Marshal and snipe everyone? Go ahead. Want to charge in as Rico and machinegun everything? You can. Want to be bored? Templar is available. It's definitely a linear game, but it opens up battle arena spaces and gives you interesting geometry to explore or use as cover. The squad mechanic is also interesting and fun. Rare is the modern shooter that allows you to pick between characters who have different abilities and focuses, Having a squad that can actually kill enemies is also rare in the genre. Unlike the roller coaster ride of a CoD game, Killzone gives you a set of abilities, a set of challenges, and lets them approach them how you like. Modern games could learn from that design and implement some of those options to make the corridor crawls feel less generic, while not really compromising the spectacle and bombast. As long as they don't learn from Killzone's brutal draw distance and enemies who can shoot from beyond your range of sight. Really, who thought that was a good idea? That dude should not be designing games.

    Overall I'd say Killzone is worth revisiting, if not a great game that deserves to be in the pantheon. Now if you'll excuse me I've got to find a wire to shimmy up so I can snipe at Hellghast with my submachine gun (which does much more damage in single bullet mode because...?) while Hakkar cheers my 'efficiency.' Good stuff.

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