Killzone 2

Review from Matt - Wednesday, 25 February 2009 @ 8:47am

I think everyone remembers the first Killzone. It was a masterpiece of gaming that reminded everyone that just because a title was "science fiction" doesn't mean it couldn't have depth and scope, with complex characters and... forget it. You don't know and I don't know. Did anyone even play Killzone? I know I didn't and I suspect a lot didn't. It was a very odd choice for such a high profile exclusive sequel. Is Sony that hard up for exclusives that they had to dig up the corpse of Killzone, a title known for nothing if not mediocrity? E3 in 2005 was the first we saw of KZ2, and the PS3 realtime videos made everyone sit up and say "WoW!". Unfortunately they weren't saying "WOW! That's impressive!" They were saying "Wow, they actually think we believe that?!" and Sony somewhat sheepishly admitted it was NOT realtime, but was a render based on realtime specs. So far from the same thing....

Killzone 2 reminds me of "space marine" style action movies. One that jumps to mind is Starship Troopers. But somehow the KZ2 team didn't realize Starship Troopers is a parody, and it's the social satire and cleverness that make that movie great, not the marine bullshit. Similarly there are influences from titles like Aliens, an awesome movie. But the marines in Aliens were full of bravado right up until the time when they started to get slaughtered and were saved by a female noncombatant and a 9 year old girl.

Killzone 2's machismo is so in-your-face that you could lick it without moving, and there's no tongue in its cheek. It's straight faced and irony free. The men (and yes, they're all men) are all stereotypes of the broadest kind. There's so much beefcake that it should come with a warning sticker for Hindus.

Another thing that makes Starship Troopers and Aliens stand out is the diverse and interesting characters that were developed, including different genders and personalities. Killzone 2 is devoid of these. Every character is a bland cardboard cut-out of a gung ho marine. Except "the chick". Who's a scientist. She has no actual personality either, but she's marginally different for the 8 seconds she's around getting babysat.

Glowing red eyes are useful in combat

There is one exception to the personality deficiency going on: your partner, Rico. (See how much they watched Starship Troopers?) Rico is your partner through much of the game, and as such you hear and see him far more than anyone else (including yourself). He's the only one who really gets a chance to have a personality.

Rico is a cockhead.

There's no real development than that, unfortunately. Right from the beginning you think "Is this guy a complete cockhead?". Then key story moments punctuate the degree of his cockheadedness. By the end you're thinking "Jesus, what a cockhead." The guy couldn't be more of a douche without squirting water from a spout in his head, and he's responsible for a significant number of good guy deaths within what I'm going to call, under protest, "the story". In fact, large sections of the story are pushed forward by nothing more than Rico helping himself to a tasty slice of stupid pie.

The story itself centres around the Helgast, who invaded a colony of your people, and now you're taking the battle to them, invading them on their inhospitable home planet. Seriously, did they just copy Starship Troopers word for word? Lots of things are not explained. Like why the Helghast, who are so mutated and adapted to their own poisonous planet's air they previously needed gas masks to breathe in the air of your homeworld now need gasmasks to breathe in their own. And you don't.

The characters in question are all soldiers for the ISA. The ISA are the Interplanetary Strategic Alliance. This is the generic "Federation" concept found as a staple of Sci-Fi, and more or less equates to "the good guys". Good science fiction subverts this standard (Firefly making the Federation kind of bad) or uses it as a satire on current society (Starship Troopers). But Killzone 2 plays it straight, and creates an Alliance of good guys with no question or thought.

All of which are Americans.

Every single person in this Interplanetary Alliance is from the US. Granted they're probably from different states... you know... for diversity. Why are they all American? Are there no other places colonised by... say... the Chinese? Indian? French? There are other countries, and surely those countries would have colonies two, and those colonies would be in that alliance. No? Ok. Moving on.

The Helghast themselves are a stereotype. The iconography and visual style of them would have Hitler reaching for Trademark Law For Dummies. We love the Nazis because they provide an unambiguous baddie, and a clear moral need for the war. But it also lets designers just get lazy and appropriate styles and looks as a cheap shorthand for "bad". They must be bad. They look like Nazis!

Hi, we're Nazis! How are you? DIE!

And they're British. WHY THE FUCK ARE THEY BRITISH?! Every one of them, from Scolar Visari, the Hitleresque dictator of Helgast, to the lowly grunts on fire in a turret, speak with a range of accents from the motherland.

American depictions of WWII are ghastly. They suggest that America was fighting World War II on its own. Like the British spent the entire of WWII having scones and tea and saying "Goodness gracious, Mildred, have you heard about this ruckus over in France, what what?!" These facts are brought to us thanks to historical documents such as Saving Private Ryan, which managed to fill 3 hours without needing to show a single non-American Allied trooper. Yet it seems to me that depicting the British as the Nazis for the Americans to fight is tacky to a degree not normally seen, and kind of shows the lack of thought and understanding evidenced in every aspect of Killzone 2.

Those who forget history are doomed to... um... Can't remember. But hey, who cares about history right? It's not historically accurate, it's just a shooter! First Person Shooters come down to shooting, and that involves guns, so it's this one key area that a Sci-Fi futuristic shooter can really excel. With advances in our technology you can play with traditional weaponry, and the "advanced alien weapons" allow for awesome and crazy effects, letting you innovate and offer something new.

Given that opportunity, Killzone 2 opted to ignore it. You have a series of assault rifles and submachine guns. The assault rifles are more or less on par, with the submachine guns having high rates of fire but lower damage and accuracy. The only difference between half the guns appears to be the simple fact that you can't use the bullets for them in the gun you LIKE. And all of this seems nice and accurate, etc, but the year is 2450 or something, and the best mankind can do is bullets? There's not even a freaking railgun. Enemy troops use the same guns as you do (bullet incompatible versions of, anyway) and with one exception they offer no new technology.

Little girl young man old man...

There are shotguns, sniper rifles, heavy machine guns, rocket propelled grenades and a grenade launcher, all of which we've seen in 472 games so far. There's also a flamethrower. I have to admit the flamethrower is good. It fires what is clearly a burning liquid, rather than the usual "jet of flame" and I approve of that. It follows a trajectory, falling quickly, making it useful for filling a region with liquid death. The fire looks awesome, and doused enemy run around screaming in a satisfactory manner. But it's just a flame thrower.

I started to get hope half way through the game when I stumbled on a Bolt Gun. The bolt gun shoots a spike, and much like in Painkiller will ragdoll their asses, faces, or whatever you hit into the wall. It's not new (Painkiller, as mentioned above) but it's well implemented, and frankly awesome anyway. What IS new is that it also is an explosive, though not an especially powerful one. This makes significantly more useful and fun than most of the weapons in the game.

So they only put two of them in there. One at about half way and one where you've got the best gun in the game already. And there are no bullets. (Please don't send me a list of where you can find them. I probably just missed some, but my point stands.)

Apart from the bolt gun there's only one gun better. Stripped from the corpse of a fallen foe is the Electricity Gun (it may have a real name, I don't care). The E-gun shoots bolts of what's essentially lightning. It requires no bullets, and little or no aiming, wiping out enemies with a brief hold of the trigger. Electrical enemies abound when you first pick it up, and they fall before it like harvested wheat. Infantry fares little better.

The gun is so powerful that it essentially breaks the game, and naturally it's stripped off you by the end of that mission, and you return to the standard issue assault rifle. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

There is a disappointing lack of variety to enemy as well, with what amounts to a few different soldiers, one flying unit, maybe some tanks. You can tell when there are tanks because Rico yells out "Tank incoming! Get on that fucking RPG!". And there happens to be one lying on the ground beside you.

There are some driving sections, where you get to pilot a tank or a big walker thing. The walker was a lot of fun, but the tank confused the crap out of me. Its controls seemed to randomly invert, and it could only be used inside this tiny space. In either case, both of those elements were only used once, and seemed like artificial attempts to add variety by completing some sort of arbitrary checklist.

Note how all these screenshots kinda look the same? Yeah... now you're getting it.

And seriously, what's the deal with all the swearing? We get that you're a mature game. From about half way the men begin swearing like they're paid by the "fuck" and it becomes incredibly trite. I happened to be playing it with Gordon Ramsey next to me, and he was getting uncomfortable. Yes, ok, they're all mother fuckers, and yes, fuck this shit. I get it. Swearing of that magnitude doesn't seem gritty to me... just like unimaginative writing. Speaking of which, no one really says "Come get some".

Every character yells stuff like what Hudson started doing midway through Aliens, but he was snapping from combat fatigue and fear... note: character motivation. Your guys are just idiots.

One thing I can't comment on is multiplayer. The review titles we got didn't include multiplayer support, and the network is not up yet. I'm not really a big fan of multiplayer. Not sure why, it's just not my thing. I'll say a few words on it, though.

Killzone 2 will probably go off in multiplayer. Without story or characters to let it down all you have is the shooty guns it's so competent at, and though some of the issues stand (lack of interesting guns, especially) many will be non-issues. One criticism I will make is that apparently there is NO co-op multiplayer. I think that's a real shame, as it's something that I might have actually gone for.

Killzone 2 will get compared to two games mostly.

Gears of War 2 because it's an Xbox 360 exclusive and a direct competitor. And Resistance 2 because it's the other PS3 exclusive shooter series.

Against Gears of War 2 I don't think KZ2 fares especially well. Gears is just as gung ho and cliched, but at least it seems aware of it. The cheesy silliness of it is part of the fun and there's nothing wrong with a cheesy crust. Killzone 2 doesn't realise it's stupid, and that's just kind of sad. Additionally, Gears offers variety that Killzone doesn't, with varied architecture, native creatures (conspicuously absent from Helghast) and even a mission set INSIDE a giant worm, whose internal structures have to be chainsawed to get to his main arteries and sever them, risking drowning in blood. That is so awesome! Not to mention melee combat - Gears 2's chainsaw is a much more visceral and exciting melee than Killzone 2's Haloesque weapon thud.

Resistance 2, similarly, offered a sense of variety and imagination, colourful enemies and interesting weapons, which Killzone simply doesn't match. I guess you could put that down to taste and say Killzone is more "gritty", but Resistance 2 also offers much better co-op multiplayer, by virtue of it actually existing. R2's co-op was for me a highlight of the game, as were its interesting and varied weapons and classes.

I bet he sprains his ankle. Why does that not happen in games?

It just seems like 10 years after Deus Ex and System Shock 2 and a few years after Bioshock, games would be trying to offer something new, different. Considering the success of Half Life 1 and 2 surely there's a place in games to do new things. Building on a platform of originality, interest, diversity and story, instead of just trying to have the most finely polished turd. Killzone 2 is the lowest common denominator in action. But hey, I guess it's common for a reason, right?

So here's a weird thing to say. Buy it. You'll probably like it. Just because I didn't doesn't mean you won't. Maybe you have a higher tolerance (or even love) of cliched dialogue and characters whose only characteristic is terminal genericism.

I've no doubt I'll get criticised for this review. People will say "OMG BUT ITS AWESOME!" and imply that I somehow didn't "get it". This review has so far been relentlessly negative, in stark contrast to its 92/100 on metacritic, but let me qualify something.

Killzone 2 is incredible. Combat is well handled, though familiar to almost any game anyone has played in the genre. It's polished to a shine I've never personally seen on the PS3, and I'd put it (graphically) marginally above even Little Big Planet. It's an exceptional example of what the PS3 is technically capable of. The above referenced controversy about the pre-rendered trailer was not well founded - Killzone 2 really does look THAT good.

Is this all we want from games now? Don't challenge us. Don't innovate. Just recycle the same basic concepts over and over with no intelligence or thought, and give it more more detailed explosions.

Pros

Exceptional graphics. Gritty combat. Probably has good Multiplayer but I can't be sure. Um... that's about it.

Cons

Offers nothing new to the genre. Story is sub-par. Incredibly cliched dialogue between uninteresting and undeveloped characters. Rico. What a douche.