Negaview

Killzone 2 has been out for over a month now, so you might ask yourself, “why review this now?”  The simple answer is that this site didn’t exist back then.  While that’s true, I also wanted to really give the game a lot of time and a thorough play through.  Well, after finishing the game on veteran and achieving max rank in multiplayer i feel confident enough in my assessment of the game.

As we all know a prodigious amount of hype has surrounded this game since the unveiling of the original pre-rendered cinematic that sony was masquerading as gameplay.  Gamers initially reacted with shock, could that possibly be what the game would look like?  Then slowly screen shots and videos trickled out over the next 3 years and disbelief turned to amazement.  Guerilla Games actually managed to make true on the promise of their initial cinematic.  Yes, Killzone 2 is hands down the most impressive showcase of graphics i’ve ever seen.  Could it sell Playstation 3’s for Sony?  More importantly did Guerilla actually have the ability to craft a solid triple A title?  That means gameplay and story as well as graphics.

No.  Killzone 2 is like dating a really hot girl that won’t give you a blow job.  Satisfying, but only to a point.  Is that a deal breaker?  Obviously not, if blow jobs were that important there wouldn’t be so many married couples…. spreading their mongrel seed and spawning their annoying kids… but i digress.  The control was laggy, the story and characters were generic, everything about the game besides the graphics screams mediocre.  Now, if you believe the fanboys you might think that killzone 2 has ‘realistic’ controls rather than laggy.  Well if that’s the case then why does a pistol have the same amount of lag as a shotgun or assault rifle?

The story… well it’s just generic, as is the gameplay.  Kill x number of troops, move to point b, kill x number of troops, rinse repeat.  Throw in a demolition mission or a vehicle mission every now and then and that’s the entire game.  There are a few stand out set piece moments near the end of the game, but it really felt like work to finish the single player campaign.  Great graphics can only carry you so far.

Now on to multiplayer.  As we all know mutli is what generally makes a good FPS great, Call of Duty 4 being the perfect example of this.  The multi in killzone 2 started out fine, until i tried to play with friends.  Up to this point i would have still called it a decent game.  Our trials and tribulations attempting to play together has officially knocked killzone 2 to the average range.  Perhaps i’ve been spoiled by call of duty 4 and halo 3, but I expect a party system in games.  Even if there’s no party system, at least let us know if a game we join has faction balancing turned on or not.  Then let us switch sides if it’s off.

This seems to be the problem with the game in general.  They just didn’t think things through.  For example they created a spectator system instead of a party system (guerilla games has already admitted that the spectator system makes it nearly impossible to create a party system).  Or they allow you to pick from a list of games but don’t let you see the rules in the games.  Several times i’ve joined games to find that they’re pistol only.  On top of this games are currently nothing but rocket launcher spam.

Bottom line, the game is worth a rent at the very least, just to soak in the graphics.  However, the greatness ends with the graphics.  The gameplay and story are mediocre, and the multiplayer is just fundamentally flawed.