ISA vs. Helghast
The storyline of Killzone has a lot of potential. In the future, humans manage to colonize other planets throughout the galaxy. However, it is at this stage that humankind is divided into two groups – the ISA, and the Helghast. The Helghast were initially humans, but the harsh and unforgiving atmosphere on their home planet of Helghan actually changed them into an entirely new race. As you would expect, the Helghast are rather bitter towards the ISA. After patiently building up their armed forces, they have decided now is the time to strike and destroy the ISA. This is all set up in a fantastic opening cut scene, giving you incredibly high hopes. Unfortunately, it tends to lose its way a bit during the game, thanks to some average story telling during the cut scenes, but it is still quite reasonable.
Life is a battlefield
Just a few Helghast, then.
Initially you play as Captain Templar, a regular Captain America who can handle pretty much anything. However, as you progress through the game, other playable characters pop up. First is the female Luger, who specializes in stealth. After this Rico joins the party, bringing his incredibly large machine gun with him. Last but certainly not least is Hakka, the Helghast traitor. As you would expect, he can handle the Helghast weaponry far more effectively than the other three troops.
As soon as these other characters become available, you can choose to play as them. You can also change characters at the end of each level. Each character has a slightly different path through each level, adding extra reason to replay the game. This is definitely a great addition, as the characters do genuinely play differently – Rico for example just cannot hit a thing with the standard Helghast assault rifle, whereas Hakka’s aim is dead on. Unfortunately though, squad based combat doesn’t really play a part. The other members of your squad will usually just sit back and give covering fire, occasionally killing someone, but that’s it.
And this can be extremely irritating as the Helghast are not particularly easy to kill. It can sometimes take an entire clip to put down one or two enemies – even headshots do not always work. This becomes a nightmare on the harder settings – you can shoot them for hours, but once you get hit a few times it’s back to the continue screen. Grrr.
Things are evened up slightly by the fact that the Helghast aren’t overly intelligent creatures. Of course, they will hide behind whatever they can to reload, but aside from that they will just charge at your team in single file. It is incredibly disappointing.
Would you like a machine gun with that?
The weapons in the game are all good fun to use. There’s your standard range of automatics, pistols, grenade launchers and so forth, with the ISA and the Helghast each having their own unique weapons. A highlight here is a weapon which will allow you to target an area to be obliterated from above. Handy when you come in contact with those pesky tanks.
Aiming the weapons can be an enormous chore though, thanks to the PS2 analogue sticks not being well suited to precision aiming. It can make long distance shooting much tougher than it ought to be – but this can’t be entirely blamed on the controller, as the rest of the controls just feel clunky at times, especially when compared to something like Halo 2. In fact, it is quite possibly the single biggest downfall of the game.
Time Warp
The levels in Killzone are generally modeled around various wars throughout history and they come off quite brilliantly. You have the first level in World War 1 style trenches, which is followed later on by a World War 2-eqsue beach invasion, further down the track are Vietnam type swamps and so on. The environments are also well detailed for a PS2 game, and the developers should be congratulated for achieving it on weak hardware. However, some of this detail should have been sacrificed to allow for some more action on screen. This war has supposedly just started. People should be fleeing in every direction – but no. There is not a civilian in sight, and the whole game feels very desolate.
Killzone has implemented various small things to help immerse you in the gaming world, such as your character ducking down his head to reload, the screen blurring when sprinting and so on. They are actually quite effective (although it makes throwing a grenade much harder than it should be), and something that other FPS games should look to include from now on. However, the inappropriately placed load times/victory screens tend to undo some of this good work. Each world tends to have three or four sub sections, which take anywhere from five to twenty minutes. At the end of these you are harshly greeted with a Victory scene, telling you your stats for the section, which tends to break up the gameplay – these would have been better implemented at the end of each level. The loading between stages is also incredibly inappropriate. First you get a cut scene, which will often place your character ready to open fire. Instead of going straight to the stage to capitalize on the buildup, the game pauses to load for up to fifteen seconds. The loading and the cut scene process should have been reversed. These don’t sound like major things, but they must be taken into consideration when the game is trying so hard to immerse you in the world.
Purdy
In still shots, it is hard to believe the game is running on a PS2. The game is simply immaculately detailed. The players and enemies themselves are superbly modeled, as well as the weaponry. As mentioned prior, the levels are also thoughtfully designed, successfully capturing the targeted feel.
However, things aren’t all rosy. In order to achieve such detail, the frame rate has been sacrificed. Whilst it is very, very rarely unplayable, it is much slower than the usual 60fps we are treated to on other consoles. Also, some rather ugly fogging crops up much more that we would like. As well has this, the animation throughout is particularly average, with the Helghast looking incredibly choppy at times.
Some fantastic World War 1 trench action
Epic
The whole game sounds quite impressive. The score throughout the game consists of epic orchestral work, and it is quite effective and helps immerse you in the game. The real standout here though is the weapons. They all sound positively meaty, and make the games a joy to use. Even the voice acting is quite good throughout the cut scenes. Out of cut scenes though, they are generally garbage. Your fellow squad members will shout out to keep out of sight. Constantly. Aside from this repetitive problem, the audio is pretty damn good.
No Pushover
Killzone will hold your attention for a long time. The campaign is quite long, and the harder difficulty levels will keep you going even longer. The multiplayer mode is also highly enjoyable, with a variety of levels, bots and game types, including your standard death match, supply drop (pick up packages and rush them back to base), domination (control the various flags in a map), team death match and so on. The online aspect is just as good, so those with a network adapter should get quite a lot out of the game.
Surprisingly Good
Killzone, somewhat surprisingly to us, has actually delivered. The game delivers an enjoyable campaign that any FPS fan will undoubtedly enjoy, with fantastic art direction, intriguing story and some entertaining gameplay. However, one can’t help but feel this game is somewhat of a missed opportunity. With some better controls, more polish and better hardware, Killzone could have been a real contender for best console FPS. Let’s hope Guerilla can improve with Killzone 2 on the PS3.
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