This girl at EB gave me a demo disc for Killzone, so I tried it out this evening, since I had a lot of interest in this game. It has two playable missions, one where you fight the Helghast in trenches and another that takes place in the ruins of a city. You have three characters to choose from:
-The 'all-around balanced' guy. He comes with a machine gun, granades and pistol.
-The 'ninja' chick (who is butt-ulgy without her mask). She comes with a machine pistol, granades and a knife that she can use to do some nice stealth kills (throat slash, erk). She also has optional heat vision and can climb up/down ropes. Can't choose her for the trench mission.
-Some Spanish dude. Gonzalez, Sanchez, something. He's the heavy weapons guy, comes with something similar to the Smartgun in Aliens and a pistol. Can't choose him for the trench mission.
In addition to the default weapons, you can pick up enemy rifles as well, and man a gun turret (old news in FPS games).
Overall, the game is pretty decent. It does a great job of making you feel like you're in the middle of a war- the engine manages to put a lot of enemies on-screen at one time (I think I've seen up to 8-10 Helghast on the battlefield at once, in addition to tanks and several of your allies), along with plenty of explosions and junk flying around. The levels feel like real places, with tons of little details like rebar sticking out of broken concrete walls and such. Framerate's solid, textures are pretty detailed. The character animation is okay, a little on the stiff side though. The Helghast are very fucking cool looking, however (great-sounding voices too).
However, there's also problems. The game has a grainy, low-res look to it- not sure if it's on purpose (for "war atmosphere") or not, but probably not. Whle I said the framerate is solid, it could stand being smoother. The controls get the job done but are sluggish and sometimes it feels like you have to almost force your character to move (they seem to walk slower sometimes than others). You have a stamina meter that allows you to run but it depletes too quickly. You can crouch, but not jump. The AI of your squad members borders on retarded at times...you really can't count on them to cover your ass in a fight, or even keep up with you. Sometimes they hang back waiting for you to activate a scripted event and even then they don't always come. Plus, they just spout out random phrases that sometimes have nothing to do with what's going on (seems like a glitch).
It doesn't compare to Halo at all, despite what all the stupid magazines say. Plays totally different- it reminded me much, much more of a sci-fi-themed Medal of Honor game in that it's slower paced, slightly clunky, and more gritty and 'realistic' in tone. Like I said, it's pretty decent, and the theme/atmosphere is very good, but it's certainly not the "Next Big Thing" of first person shooters. Rent first.
