KillZone Review - PS2

Since the first handful of screenshots was leaked to the press over a year ago, Killzone has been anointed with the decidedly prickly designation of being the PlayStation2’s “Halo Killer.” Prickly not only because Halo is widely considered to be one of the finest games in the forty year history of the medium, but because Killzone’s developer, Guerrilla Games, had precisely zero completed videogames on its resume at the time. (In September, it released its first title: the painfully second-rate ShellShock: Nam ’67).

Killarmy

Any attempts (including this one, clearly) to get through a Killzone review without mentioning the words “Halo” or “Killer” will fail miserably; as one of the PS2’s final first-person hopes and with a release date slated for the same week as Bungie’s forthcoming mega-sequel, the comparisons are inevitable. And, as is often the case with uninformed oversimplifications, these comparisons are also quite irrelevant—Killzone is a solid game, but it doesn’t even approach the first-person shooting bliss-a-thon that is the original Halo.

The game’s fictional near-future conflict has two sides pitted against one another in a violent struggle for the remaining fragments of civilization. Narrative elements are extremely light, however; a scattering of cut-scenes tell the story along the way, providing brief beaks between extended action sequences. The enemy is an adequately evil Helghast army, whose soldiers wear menacing gas masks with red-goggles (also conveniently eliminating any confusion as far as who you’re supposed to shoot). The weapons are high-tech, but rather realistic—guns fire lead bullets, not red lasers, and a great deal of effort has obviously been put into making them feel authentic. Players are accompanied by a team of soldiers throughout much of the game, but don’t expect to have any say in their actions—these squad mates are entirely AI-driven.

Best Fascist Forward

Indeed, more than anything, Killzone succeeds in creating superb atmosphere. With an aesthetic that liberally borrows from such bastions of military sci-fi style as Mamoru Oshii’s Jin-roh and Hitler’s Nazi Germany, it’s arguably one of the best-looking games in recent memory—on any console. War-torn battlefields are swamped in layers of murky gray fog; weapons are lovingly crafted pieces of retro-futuristic machinery; and dense foliage provides a living counterpart to the endless procession of death and destruction around it. Where the story falters (read: paper-thin plot, ham-fisted writing, ham-faced voice-acting), the blueprint and implementation of the world somehow makes up for it.

Level design is also solid, providing effective pacing and enough variety to keep things interesting. The game’s visually striking architecture and landscaping also provides excellent gameplay opportunities—essentially, a great playground for combat. Much like Halo, many levels begin with a series of scripted events—enemy aircraft swarming overhead, huge enemy onslaughts, dangerous trench runs—and then manage to remain gripping through a series of intense firefights with solid AI soldiers. While the interactions are limited to shooting bad guys and finding the occasional key, the world and weaponry is compelling enough that these simple dealings remain fun. Squad mates are intelligent enough so as to make their presence valuable, and compliment the action quite well.

Technocratic failure

Where the game stutters, quite literally, is in its technology. The first-person shooter genre is one that has always been largely dependent upon cutting-edge graphics engines, and Killzone’s simply isn’t up to snuff in 2004. The game is often painfully choppy—breathlessly chugging to keep up with the on-screen action—and then there’s a laundry-list of rough edges: Enemies die in what appears to be a total of five frames of animation. Rather than dynamic, realistic eye candy, explosions are more reminiscent of Clifford the Big Red Dog’s toilet after too many big red refried beans. And most importantly, physics are inconsistent; it’s quite common to see enemy bodies bend in impossible ways, clipping through walls and environmental objects on their five-frame journey from standing to prone.

Hillzone

Of course, these technical complaints are not simply superficial criticisms; the stilted animation and inconsistent framerates directly affect gameplay, making it somewhat more difficult to aim and less satisfying to shoot (particularly because this is a game entirely concerned with aiming and shooting…in that order). Equally problematic is the game’s inability to properly deal with its lack of a jump button. While certain objects can be manually hurdled with a press of the X button, others—like, say, foot-high sidewalks or six inch grassy knolls—are somehow impassable, leaving one with the distinct feeling that the game designers simply didn’t want the player to access particular areas. These might seem like a series of relatively minor technical gaffes, but taken together, they severely detract from the player’s immersion in an otherwise compelling game world.

Epic

And yet, in spite of its sorted technical problems and humdrum story, Killzone provides a great ride; perhaps it’s a testament to the game’s surplus of style and ambiance that it remains enjoyable throughout. Those looking for multiplayer action should look elsewhere, as the somewhat inconsistent action and limited modes, combined with a twist of good old PS2 Online lag, does not a good online experience make. Players looking for a highly entertaining (if linear) run-and-gun romp through what the future would look like if it were actually set in the past, however, should absolutely step into the Killzone.