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Rating : 8.2 / 10 Developer : Guerilla Games Availability : PlayStation 3 |
Killzone 2 has been long awaited and it is worth the wait.
The Helghast invaded your planet Vekta and after fending them off your planet, it’s your turn to take it to them.
Playing as Sev as part of Alpha Squad, you embark through various objectives to aid your allies in infiltrating the Helghan base and capturing their leader Vasari. You are constantly on your feet and never is there time to rest.
While in battle, you will constantly move from cover to cover. You can latch onto cover and peek either over or to the side to shoot down the Helghast. However, not everything provides complete cover as the tip of your head is nevertheless too high, and when you are in complete cover, not always can you peek over while in the latched position, which is a crouch sitting position. This requires you to manually stand and crouch to fight off the enemy troops. The hard part is that you may be trying to pick off one unit who is doing exactly the same thing as you are, but they will either pop over, out, or lie down to shoot you. They will blind fire also in hope to hit you or pin you down.
Now, imagine 5 or more other soldiers doing the same, taking turns at reloading and pinning you down; you really don’t have a lot of chances to pop your head up, and when you do, you have to be quick and accurate to pick off whoever you can.
In the struggle for survival, you need to fight smart and flank the enemies while your team is pinning them down, or while they are trying to look for you. Constantly moving is key as it will provide you with the opportunity to make hell, but also because the Helghast are thinking the same. If you are pinned down for too long and the Helghast have enough men, they will start sending out soldiers to flank your sides or use grenades to drive you out into the open.
The Helghast will always seek cover to protect themselves and run from grenades; they are tricky and smart.
Without the help of your squad mates, you’d have almost no chance.
Though there are large battles, there will be times when you will be alone or with a squad mate and they definitely come in handy.
The great thing is that your team mates know how to shoot and can take a beating, enabling you to make shots more safely and comfortably.
There is however one issue and it’s that sometimes they will be out in the open longer than they should, only to be hailed with bullets and falling dead. Though you can’t revive squad units during large battles, you can always revive a character comrade who’s part of the story, luckily.
There is one glitch however where sometimes the squad member you're paired with doesn't go to the next objective like they should and you need to come back and slowly rally them on. Other times, just go ahead and they will spawn next to you to continue the game.
But other than that, they do come in handy at times. At other times, they are useless and do almost nothing, leaving you to do all the work.
Speaking of large battles, there are a few sections of the game where this happens. The other half is the scattering and scouring of Alpha Squad as they try to complete key objectives to enable the ISA to move forward.
But during these battles, they require you to constantly move forward. If you don’t, it is endless. You need to push forward to push back the enemies to the point of victory. This provides huge intensity as waiting around too long will only prolong your doom, where as pushing forward to hastily will prove deadly. You need to work with your allies and constantly be on your feet moving to and fro to prevent being flanked or out gunned.
These battles are nothing though without the beautiful colour of red. The environment you fight in is old, gritty, and wasted. Waste and rubble flying everywhere with the winds blowing heavily against you, and explosions and bullets hailing over your head while you’re ducked for cover.
However, all this is affects. Wind doesn’t play any role in the game and doesn’t affect a lot of ground objects properly, such as bushes. The only time you’ll feel any sort of resistance is during a train ride with the force against you, but even then only grenades are affected vastly.
Nevertheless, you are fighting a hellish war and that’s exactly the environment you’re thrown into; hell.
Though all looks great, there will be times where some objects don’t have the same amount of love the mass majority does and at times, there will be small drops in frames when the smoke and debris gets heavy. What you may notice is that during these times, rather than having the game skipping around, you have a slight slow motion feel. But nevertheless, expect smooth gameplay, other than the regular quick loading to load up each section during the mission.
The only real downside is during cut scenes, details are there, but character polygons are a little lacking.
Gore doesn’t just look good, but sounds good. Music is dramatic, and carries out the atmosphere. However, even without it, battles are filled with constant screaming of pain, bursts of blood, and bullets hailing across your head. You will hardly notice the music during battle.
Voicing is well down and shows a lot of emotions, a lot of anger, and a lot of frustration.
Reading around, a lot of people are saying they are unable to hear enemy footsteps when online. The issue is that some footsteps aren't as loud as they should be so the sound is drowned out. But nevertheless, footsteps isn't a huge factor in the online play here.
There isn’t much of a story and if any, very standard good vs evil. KZ2 doesn’t employ any sort of twists but straight forward action. The thrill comes from the battles alone.
Having said that, the sequence of events that do happen do good justice for what Killzone does have to offer and what story it is trying to tell.
Other than intense battles during the campaign, you can take these online in the Warzone. Killzone plays up to 32 players and across large environments of various locations.
All is fair with the large maps and various locations, but what sets Killzone apart is the dynamic warzone.
You go in fighting for team morale, and next thing you know, your life is on the line as the other team hunts you down. As battle progresses, you need to fight for more territory and capture or destroy various components from your enemies to progress in further into the war. What hounds you on is a commander commentating through the battle declaring war, revenge, or victory, and motivating you to do things.
It forces players to work together, play in different ways, and complete various objectives to obtain overall victory.
Classes also play a key role in enabling strategic defenses or offenses.
Tacticians deploy spawn areas, giving squad members quick access back into hot spots, and can call air support to help push the fight forward.
Engineers is the opposite where they repair mounted guns or deploy a turrets to work on building up the defenses for when the time comes.
Saboteurs can disguise themselves as the enemy, enabling you to infiltrate bases with more ease and planting the explosives to give your enemies nightmares.
Assault and Medics are standard issue on reviving team mates, leaving health packs on ground, and Assaults having more armour and speed.
However, players can’t jump on and play as what they want as they need to earn that badge and ranking by doing various actions before they can take up the class.
Overall, Killzone 2 delivers an intense experience; true intense and rampage, not with a lot of shooting and killing, but a lot of flanking and cover and strategy.
Though Killzone is relatively short in game, it makes up for its beautiful, though gritty, environments and atmosphere and you will find yourself constantly on your feet and on edge.
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