Killzone 2: Predictably Good
Netherlands located Guerilla Games once made a game in contradiction of itself called Killzone. It had AI that was alternately brilliant and on-existent, graphics that looked great in still, and chugged along in motion, sounded great for all of its very few sound samples. If it was untrue when people said that Peter Molyneux delivered on the promises of Fable 1 with its sequel, then this is where it does hold true. This review will have no score at the end or at the top, so if you are among the masses who only want summary: Go buy Killzone 2.
Killzone 2 proves the genre. It is a perfectly built model house, standing aplomb in front of its FPS brethren, filled with comfortable Americana, refreshing
beverages, and made to convince you that yes, this type of thing is exactly what you want.
KZ2 is set on Helghan, home world to the villainous (?) Helghast, which seem to have been named to give Victorian children nightmares. You play Thomas "Sev" Sevchenko, a soldier (sometimes they call themselves marines?) of the Interplanetary Strategic Alliance. You are there to... well, bring the fight back to the Helghast? Or something. I'm not sure. It's never completely clear because GG seems to have spent more time on the gameplay, level design, and graphics than they did on the narrative and I'm so happy they did that.
The easiest of these to appreciate is the graphical design of the game. It is artful. The color palette is broad, with dingy grays and loud oranges, sandy beige in between. The textures are detailed. With the exception of mid-level loading screens (really, why wasn't there an option to load this game to my hard drive), KZ2 never hiccups. There is an occasional issue with character models clipping into each other, never the environment, and it never substantially harms the experience. Mostly, it's brilliant. It is easy to fall into the line of people that say "This is the best looking game I've ever seen." If spoken, that last sentence would normally come with cadence that suggested that it ends with "But, blah blah blah, it isn't." I am not writing that. This is the best looking game I've ever seen.
Even with the story being inconsequential, GG does manage to make you feel an emotional desire to storm through Helghan's gorgeous environments taking out the opposition. I said elsewhere that the Helghast were some sort of "space nazi," a "cross between steam-punk National Socialists and the voice and vigor of Red Skull." I liked those analogies enough to reuse them because I love the Helghast enough to hate them.
Aesthetically they are menacing with just a touch of tempting. In play they are fierce adversaries driven by villainous AI. Like the baddies in often praised F.E.A.R., they understand battle tactics. They'll use grenades to control your movement (and not just blow you up), they growl orders to each other along with insults at you, and they'll flank your position, not just from different sides but from different heights.
KZ2 makes that possible through its impeccable level design. Stages are broad, long, and tall, and your movement through them is natural, comfortable, feeling the way walking through a childhood home does. The levels vary in locale from cities and deserts to palaces and universities, though the first four of the game's levels do feel repetitive. Oddly, each level seems pre-built for Co-Op play, with the main character paired up with a partner (except for when they take a different path through a section, a co-op standard.) Cover is spread throughout the levels, and sticking to it feels safe the way it should. Popping out to take a few quick shots is more reminiscent of Time Crisis than Gears of War, maybe for the better.
The weapons are fun, but often interchangeable. In places you might find you need a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher to get through a fight specifically designed for those tools, but in most cases a shotgun-is-an-smg-is-an-assault-rifle. The exception here is with the handful of unique sci-fi weapons, one with spikes con explosives for ammo, and another that lets you deal out lightning with the ferocity of Emperor Palpatine at the end of Return of the Jedi. The problem with these weapons is that they are level specific, and you'll be left with an itch the second you move on. The other problem is that you don't get to carry weapons over from one level to another; in one case you inexplicably start a level with only your service revolver, having lost your primary weapon in the loading screen.
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