Killzone 2 is being hyped, and even if Sony is not quite at the forefront of Guerilla Games‘ epic shooter, hands-on impressions tell us the game is going to be worth our while. I recently had a chance to sit down and play the full preview build. Despite being the same game we played at the Playstation Experience, it was still a good opportunity to take a crack at the six-mission package.
The first person shooter continues the events of Killzone and Killzone: Liberation (for the PSP). You play as Sev, member of the Interplanetary Strategic Alliance (ISA) special unit, Legion. You’re taking the fight to the Helghast home world; the desolate environments and hostile chaos that hit you from numerous turns is accurately modeled. The six missions range from the first touchdown (or crash, to be more precise), to the subsequent fire-fights greeting you at each turn. The range of missions is varied. You’ll be separated from your squad and have to rejoin them in one mission. In another, you have to storm a bridge fiercely guarded by the enemy (and his plentiful, magically generated friends), which allows for control of a killer anti-air gun. You’ll defend a city square against the normal foot soldiers, heavy armoured gunners and more, as the scales tilt back and forth.
It’s apt to mention at this point that Killzone 2 is still a very straight-forward shooter game. There are the enemies, there’s the gun; push the right analog stick in to aim, and the reticule grows bigger, depending on how fast you’re running, which weapon you’re holding and if you’re crouching (translation: accuracy decreases the more you run). Movement speed is much improved over the snail’s pace of Resistance 2. The SixAxis was a bad idea, forced onto the decent controller that was the Dual Shock; as such, no good game properly makes dominant use of the SixAxis. Killzone 2 has segments that involve you twisting the controller clockwise and counter-clockwise, which is kinda cool and all, but what the hell? Why have the same feature for the sniper rifle, where the steadiness of the controller determines the steadiness of your shooting hands? What could have been a promising touch of realism became a Duck Hunt-like nuisance when my aim would suddenly jerk one way or the other, simply because I moved down one step.
The various rifles, semi-automatic guns, the default magnum (which you can never exchange for anything else but it has unlimited ammo), a nail-gun which shoots exploding nails, a pistol, an RPG launcher and an M-60 are all realistically modeled. Like the WWII Call of Duty games, you’ll alternate between long-distance firing and close-combat. An interesting take on available weaponry involves placing racks of varying guns everywhere, which is all well and good, but makes little sense when exploring sealed caverns, apparently inaccessible till you and your squad came along. There were no vehicle segments, which wasn’t all that bad given the sheer number of attacking enemies. That said, the A.I. was nothing to brag about, but after flip-flopping something insane in the first mission, they quickly got their act together, utilizing superior numbers to flank and grenade you. Some segments felt cheap: The boss fight against the flying robot was an exercise in sadistic destruction of your self-esteem, and a sniper ambush, compounded by the wonky sniper controls, took more retries then needed.
The graphics were, simply put, not so much, but nonetheless a mixed bag. I realized that Killzone 2 doesn’t use the full power of the PS3. I also realized the game is still a few months from release. Its visual quality was on a level comparable to Dead Space on the 360. That enough time is still left to further improve the quality is a vast understatement. This could help with contorting corpses and clipping issues the character models displayed, but the texture quality is amazing and the frame-rate is solid given the activity on-screen (full-scale war people!). The voice-acting, music and sound effects are surreal; you get the impression of a long standing destruction, surpassing a single battle taking place. A note on the destructibility: It leaves a lot to be desired. Some places are destroyable, some go black, and some tell you not to bother and just continue shooting the bad guys.
All-in-all, Killzone 2 is a good experience. Not great - this would imply that Sony had another Metal Gear Solid 4 on its hands. It is most definitely not as high-profile, despite the hype, but when it comes out, I can confidently say, Killzone 2 will stand with the big dogs of the genre. It won’t redefine the shooter experience or give grizzled vets something to swoon over, but for casual shooter fans, it’s a good sci-fi run of apocalyptic proportions.
wieso sollen dann die soldaten in KZ2 wie götter durch die gegend flizen und keinerlei anzeichen des gewichtes ihrer ausrüstung zeigen?
Die wollen doch tatsächlich das der Protagonist so rumhüpft wie der Master Chief es in HALO tut? Haben die nen Knall? K2 geht doch in eine ganz andere Richtung, das ist kein schneller Shooter ohne Gewicht, das ist ein schwerfälliger fast schon realistischer Shooter, IMO. So kommt ja erst das Mittendrin-Gefühl zu stande. Und warum muss sich das Game überhaupt so spielen lassen, wie es in anderen Shootern der Fall ist? Es ist doch immerhin ein eigenständiges Spiel, dann darf es doch ein paar Sachen anders machen, wo wären wir wenn sich alle Spiele gleich spielen ließen?
