Killzone
is a decent first-person shooter. It's not bad but
it's far from great. I had high expectations for this
game as I'm sure many of you have. My disappointment
is a result of a combination of factors. The FPS gameplay
is a little on the mediocre side and the game is rife
with flaws including a really bad slowdown glitch
that permeates both the single-player and online modes.
Killzone,
even if all of the technical bugs were fixed, would
still not be able to burst Halo's bubble. The gameplay
becomes "repetitive" which may be confused
with "consistent." The battles are scripted
and the AI is really weak. Some will rush at you on
an obvious suicide mission while others are unaware
that they're in a war, some seem unaware that they're
even in a game. They stand around doing nothing and
aren't even alerted when a nearby mate gets gunned
down.
Despite
offering you different characters to play as, only
the gunner is consistently the most fun. The others
have limitations that you have to work around but
it's not much fun being handicapped when the AI doesn't
care one way or another.
Mankind
has colonized yet another area of the galaxy. They
have subsequently split into two groups, the ISA and
the Helghast. You can tell by the name that the Helghast
must be the evil ones. They inhabited a desolate region
and have been mutated through environmental conditions.
Now they have assembled into fighting units and have
declared war on the ISA and all that it owns and represents.
Templar
is the principal character in the game. He's an ISA
soldier. He is flanked by three other warriors: Luger;
Rico, and Hakha. Rico is the heavy gunner and he's
the most fun to play as. There are no futuristic weapons
to use, instead you will use ballistics and explosives.
It's got a more realistic feel to it this way. Using
stealth is slow and cumbersome. The game doesn't call
for you to use any specific characters' trait so you
might as well just mow the bastards down.
In
the cutscenes you will see what looks like thousands
of enemy troops on the march complete with vehicles
of mass destruction. In reality you only find pockets
of enemies to fight. There are some rather lengthy
and lonely treks in between making the war seem more
like a non-event than an epic battle.
Things
heat up a little more online where you have a good
selection of modes including Deathmath, Team Deathmatch,
Assault, Attack and Defend, Dominator and Supply Drop.
In Supply Drop several packages will be dropped in
the center of the map. Both teams will have to scramble
to pick up as many as they can while defending themselves
from attack.
In
these modes you don't have to worry about scripted
events and badly programmed AI, but you still have
to contend with the damned slowdown. It can cost you
a life and that's a pretty steep price to pay for
a glitch. I just pretend it's an earthquake or some
random space-related anomaly. I shouldn't have to
make excuses for games but sometimes, as in the case
of a review, you have to play the hand you're dealt.
For
the most part the graphics are great. They are realistic
in their portrayal of a slightly futuristic apocalyptic
society. When I say "slightly futuristic"
I mean there are no Jetson-ringed buildings. Everything
looks realistically functional, or previously functional.
However the seams do show, literally. You will see
really bad animation - sometimes no animation at all
as some faces don't even move when the characters
speak. Some of the low-res distant backgrounds don't
get replaced when you get close resulting in some
very bad looking sections which are inconsistent with
the majority of the top-shelf graphics. The music
and sound effects are also great but the voiceacting
can't overcome the poorly written dialog.
Killzone
is a game marked, and ultimately marred, by contrasts.
Fortunately the good outweighs the bad - but like
a wart on a hot babe's nose, it's not that easy to
overlook.
|