Killzone 2 (single player)
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By Randy Yasenchak
Before playing Killzone 2, I did my best to avoid all reviews, previews and screenshots in hopes of not ruining the experience when I came around to play and review it. With all the hype surrounding the game, it was no easy task. I can happily say K2 deserves the attention it gets. K2 is a fantastic first person shooter that exceeded my expectations on a number of levels. It has its flaws like any video game but the overall positive gaming experience far outweighs its foibles.
Killzone 2 is beautiful. Actually, K2 is beyond beautiful. It’s a game that I thought I’d be seeing out on the Xbox 720 or Playstation 4. If another game comes out on either the 360 or the PS3 with better visuals, I will be beyond impressed. Currently, there are few games on the market that can compete with its visuals, even on the PC. Crysis and Crysis: Warhead are the only two titles that come to mind that look as sweet. The game has a few semi-obvious low-resolution textures, but you’ll only see them if you’re looking for them, like I do. The game is very dark, so if you have an older television set with a dieing color tube, you might have to jack up your brightness and contrast up manually to compensate. The game offers an in-game gamma correction, but even on my 6-month old Samsung flats screen television, it wasn’t bright enough until I manually increased the contrast and brightness by about 15%.
K2's story is a little lacking, but it serves its purpose. Basically, you’re the good guys. The weirdos with the red eyeball helmets are the bad guys. Here’s a gun. Go get ‘em soldier. There are hints of a back story, but back story isn’t necessary because you play the role of an enlisted Marine. Your role is to do what you’re told and not get caught up in the details of politics and war-making decisions anyway. Toward the end of the game, your character does go rogue and makes a few decisions for himself, but otherwise, you do what Colonel Templar, your commanding officer, tells you to do.
Story aside, the gameplay experience that K2 presents is astounding. You’ll feel like you’re part of a war. The last time I felt this engrossed in combat in a video game, I was playing Call of Duty 2. If there is one major complaint I have about the game it is that the controls are horrendous for the most part. Reloading, firing, jumping etc, all seemed to be mapped to reasonable buttons, but the response time set by the game isn’t fast enough to respond properly to the ever-expanding threat that grows around you. Even with the controls on maximum sensitivity, you’ll die a thousand cheap deaths simply because you couldn’t turn your head fast enough to see who was shooting at you. Even on the normal difficulty setting, your firearm isn’t very effective against your enemies giving you an even bigger handicap. Pistols, SMGs, LMGs, and assault rifles all feel roughly the same. They all delivery poor damage to your enemy and they’re all highly inaccurate, even when crouching and looking down your sights. Some enemies will require almost a complete clip of ammunition dumped into them before they fall. In the future, apparently our weapon technology took a few steps back. At first this can be annoying, but you learn to compensate and ignore it by about half way through the game.
The sound design is another strong point in K2, so I recommend playing the game through a surround sound system. There are several points in the game where sound is imperative too, because some of your enemies will move so fast, the only way to know their exact position will be by sound alone. The voice acting is believable for Marines, but even for military personnel in wartime, they seemed to swear more than a natural amount and I’m certain there is a LOT of swearing in wartime. The game drop the F bomb more than real bombs and it can jar you from the believability of the situation very quickly.
For brand new game, K2 is on the short side. It took me only 7 hours to complete. The game does have much more to offer with its multiplayer options, but I generally don’t buy single-player-centric first person shooters for their multiplayer capabilities. There are 4 levels of difficulty, so depending on how much you love first person shooters you will probably find a good amount of replay value here.
Killzone 2 is a great entry game to the Playstation 3’s already fantastic library. If you aren’t a hardcore gamer, the autosave points are frequent enough so you can pick up the game and put it back down in a matter of moments and still feel like you’ve accomplished something. Certainly, it’s not something you want your kids to play. Nor is it a game that you’d want to share with your spouse, but it is a fantastic “Saturday Matinee” kind of game. If you are a first person shooter junkie, don’t delay on purchasing K2. If you’re more of a casual shooter fan, K2 is a great rental game. When you’re done, you’ll want more.