Killzone (PS2)

(Sony Entertainment)

Pegged by many to be the Playstations answer to Halo on the Xbox I was keen to get my hands on Killzone to see if it could live up to its reputation. Set some point in the future a militant splinter group leaves Earth to establish a new colony on the Planet Helgast.  This planet changes the rogue group bodies over the years until they become their own race, the Helgans.  The Helgans are led by a particularly evil general sets its self up to lay siege to humanity and begins this attack by assaulting the nearby planet of Vekta. All of this is explained in a very schmick looking intro and gives you a sneak peak at the overall graphical quality of the game.

In the single player game you get to play one of 4 characters, Captain Templar, all-round good guy and leader of the team, Rico (No similarity to anyone from Starship troopers) your heavy weapons specialist, Luger the sniper and Hakna a Helgast double agent.  Each one of these players has unique abilities, such as Rico’s combo rocket launcher/auto cannon and this ads some varity to the game and extends the replay value quite a lot.  You get to guide this motley crew threw 11 missions with three or 4 levels in each.  The missions are set across varied terrain from destroyed cities to dock areas with howling wind and rain, so there are a great variety of environments to fight in.  Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the enemies that you encounter.  You seem to fight swarms and swarms of exactly the same Helgast soldiers over and over again.  You get the basic run of the mill grunt and a heavy weapon variant and that it!  Whilst you do occasionally get to tackle a tank or two (which you cannot ride in, just blow up), the lack of variety can be quite boring.  The computer AI however is top notch.  The computer characters will communicate with each other to out flank you, hide when you are shooting at them, lob a grenade if you are behind cover and generally be quite a bother.

The weapons are the standard shooter fare, with the usual assault rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers etc.  Guerrilla (the games developers) have attempted to make the combat ultra realistic, so you will find your 20 mile sniper head shots that is common in most games of this type almost impossible to pull off due to the wobbly aim on the sniper rifle. Graphically this game is probably one of the better lookers on the PS2, especially the environments.  Wind and rain blow across the screen in a storm, great rolling plains appear to go on for ever, overall it’s quite well executed. The sound is also top notch especially when cranked through a 5.1 system.  Bullets fly across you head and seem to embed themselves in the back of the sofa, explosions seem to go of on the balcony, and im sure someone is being murdered in the bedroom.  The sound is that realistic and really adds to the whole experience. Multiplayer is fairly standard on games of this type nowadays and this is no exception, all of the usual suspects are hear with capture the flag, death match and defend the base type maps, you can also play split screen multiplayer without the need to go online, but this is limited to only bot generated multiplayer maps, it would have been excellent to have a split screen mode set in the one player campaign.

Overall Killzone is an enjoyable game marred by some poor execution, it’s certainly no Halo beater, but worth getting if you have already got Medal of Honour Front Line.

Graphics 4/5
Sound 4/5
Playability 3/5
Longevity 3/5
Overall 3/5

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