Killzone

[Dolemite]

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.

[MarkRyan]

Killzone is all about atmosphere. The high-motion first person view (almost Breakdown-ish) adds a lot I think, and the design of the environments--both structurally and artistically--is really solid. The game does have a pretty low framerate, though, and I hate that many of the levels are boarded up by invisible walls. Also, the controls could definitely benefit from some Halo-style auto-aiming (and the game has the lame-ass TimeSplitters-style sniper zoom).

Overall, it should be a pretty awesome game to play despite some technical downfalls The atmosphere of it is just bloody awesome.

[Do You Like Erotic?]

Wait the ninja is a chick now? Used to be guy named Luger or something How disappointing.

[Despair]

Thanks for the impressions D

Its definately on our rent list, once its out. From what I seen, I like the style, and Helghast designs are awesome (very Jin-roth ish ).

[Rocca]

Was always going to be a total rent over here, but thanks for the impressions. I found the game very grainy looking in mags but I only blamed the printing for the image quality. Guess it goes further then that.

[Zerodash]

Does Killzone look grainy in a Steel Battalion sense, or in a N-64 "I can barely handle these textures" sense?

[Dolemite]

Wait the ninja is a chick now? Used to be guy named Luger or something How disappointing.

Heh!

Oh, the ninja's still named Luger...and I can easily understand how someone could think she's a man, baby. But that voice is either that of a chick or the gayest male videogame character since Bandiger from Thousand Arms.

Does Killzone look grainy in a Steel Battalion sense, or in a N-64 "I can barely handle these textures" sense?

Eh, hard to say. Kinda looks like the developer might be going for a dramatic effect with the grain, like Spielberg did in the opening battle scene in Saving Private Ryan when the troops stormed the beach in Normandy.

[B-Ri]

I beta tested, and im saying 1 thing, rent before you buy.

The game, on my PS2 with S-Video looked nice, sure. The problem with the game was, although it looked awesome for ps2, they spent more time on the look then the acctual fuctionability of the game. Testing it was a pain because it was just too hard to stand. By that, i mean that i would unload my entire stock of bullets into anothers head, and they would not die. They would turn to me, shoot a handgun round and down i go. Another problem was picking up the weapons, hell what got me killed a lot of times was while i was busy trying to pick up a sniper gun 2 people would sneak behind me and doubleteam me. Even after you finaly pick it up, it would take about a minute for you to be able to acctualy use it, you would cycle through your weapons like crazy and never find it. To me, the game may have looked fantastic, but when you see that they cant get the basic gameplay right in time for beta, thats just....

And no, this problem wasnt discovered right as testing began, it was a stickied post letting everyone know that that didnt work a week before the beta shipped.

[MarkRyan]

I beta tested, and im saying 1 thing, rent before you buy.

Are you talking about the multiplayer? I really don't think the game was originally designed with multiplayer in mind, and I sure as hell wouldn't play it for multiplayer.

[EvilMog]

I beta tested, and im saying 1 thing, rent before you buy.

I had the beta also. I played it for maybe a day before I decided I didnt like it very much. It did look pretty good I think. Halo it is not. I hope they clean up the hit detection in the final game. Because it was REALLY lame in the beta.
Future ratings for the game will be in the 7 and 8s I predict.