Halo started it all for console first person shooters as we know them, and until Call of Duty 4 came along, it was pretty much unopposed. One failed attempt to take the crown was the original Killzone, which received a poor response from gamers everywhere. Now Killzone 2 has arrived to compete with the juggernauts of the FPS genre, does it reign victorious?

First impressions are always important, and in gaming, the first impression when you first play the game comes from the visuals. Killzone 2 easily blows you away with its incredible attention to detail and graphics that could easily be mistaken for CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery). What is most impressive is the lighting, as everything that is supposed to create light will create it realistically, creating some of the most stunning looking game play moments ever seen. The first time you find yourself in a cramped, dark room with a Helghast in your face, you pull the trigger and watch him react to every one of your bullets, the muzzle flash lighting up his flailing body and giving a disgusting red glow to the blood, you really can’t help but be impressed by how truly beautiful death can be in Killzone 2. Despite the obvious criticism that it lacks 99% of the color spectrum, this game is one to be played in High Definition. Every time a color other than grey does find its way into your field of vision, it will be there for dramatic effect. The beautiful muddy orange explosions, the red glow of the Helghan eyes, the yellow muzzle flash of a far off sniper. They all add vastly to the atmosphere, and in this game, atmosphere is by the bucket-load.

Killzone 2 follows the story of Sev, your character. Though if it wasn’t for the first scene in the game where he looks at himself in the mirror after waking up to the sound of an alarm, it would be hard to distinguish him from the other cookie-cutter bone headed military characters. Sev and his friends are aboard the New Sun, one of many ships tasked with being part of a huge counter attack on the planet of Helghan, after the victory you saw after the attack on your home colony of Vekta in the first Killzone, and Killzone Liberations on PSP. The campaign will take you through many similar looking set-piece battles on the quest to find and capture Emperor Visari, the Helghan leader voiced by Brian Cox. Aside from this, the voice acting is awful and the dialogue sounds like it was written by a 13 year old with a copy of Aliens and a book of “yo momma” jokes. Though the story serves its purpose, giving you a reason to move on to the next fight, it just isn’t up to standard of most AAA titles, packed with misused curse words and an endless array of clichés that it simply loses the immersion of the player during the cut scenes. Luckily the gameplay provided is more than up to scratch with competitors. The cover system takes some getting used to but adds to the immersion and gives the game its own unique identity among a flood of similar sci-fi FPS games. Movement is well animated and weighty, though the controls may need to be changed to suit your needs, and the sensitivity will need to be increased vastly if you wish to even stand a chance of hitting a moving target. Control delay is an issue at first, but with the increased sensitivity, it does not take long to get used to after the first few levels. Although many of the locations you face are not all that distinguishable from one another, the level design will make up for this. You will also never feel like you are visiting the same locations all the way through, as you will also find yourself in a dusty desert shanty town, a moving train, and you will often find yourself manning a tank or mech, which breaks the mould nicely and reduces repetitiveness. Unfortunately, like most games of this generation, the game is of unsatisfactory length, only racking up eight hours. Despite this, there is much reason to come back, whether it is just for kicks or to find some of the collectables. Trophy support, like many games, increases the reason to return to the single player.

Multiplayer functionality a very important part of FPS games, and Killzone 2 is clearly no exception. Though many games have failed to pick up a crowd, trying to put their own twist on existing game types, Killzone 2 basically just takes existing game types and turns them into a single game mode, alternating each separate game type as objectives throughout the match. This is called Warzone. Though an extremely simple way of differentiating itself from other popular online games, it is a genius way of keeping the flow of the game moving, reducing repetitiveness, and keeping all the game types we have come to know and love entirely intact. This of course means you will be spending a long time on just one map before moving to another without manually quitting out and selecting a different game. Despite this, the maps are impressively big, and sometimes can even feel too big for the full 32 players to fully accommodate. The dynamic shifting of game types will often put previously unused areas on the map into full focus, keeping matches from getting too tedious too fast. The class system has also unique. Taking the same rank system that has been around for years and allowing players to customize and blend together classes to suit them as they rise up the ranks. The class system is very well balanced out, and constantly rewards you for your achievements, adding new layers of customization to the fun. Still, not many users use headsets, and this keeps things from ever feeling like you are facing real opponents, especially with impressive AI bots on offer. Though packing only half the number of players that fill a match on Resistance 2, the experience on offer is certainly more enjoyable, yet less hectic. Although this has become standard in many multiplayer games, this game is missing a party mode. It allows you to join friends directly in a game, but no way to move from game to game with friends in a user-friendly manner. Despite this, the squad function encourages you to make new friends, letting you invite people into your squad and join other players in their squad, which is a nice feature. It is also nice to see a developer making use of the in-game music feature, which allows you to play music from the PS3 hard drive while playing the game. This is unfortunately only for the online mode, but it is easy to understand why Guerrilla made it this way. The overall multiplayer experience is a keeper, and will easily be able to hang with the best in the genre for a long time.

Overall, the experience is incredible. It truly raises the bar for the genre, though not enough to definitively take the crown, as that is still open to debate. However, it is not open to debate that this game is undoubtedly the most impressive looking game out for consoles. While the tale it tells and dialogue it tells it with is far from top notch, all the positive aspects of the game outweigh any problems the game faces, though this is not to say the negative aspects of the game do not exist.

FINAL SCORE: A