Killzone

[TotalBiscuit]

Firecracker winning at the let's spoil the game for those that haven't played it yet contest.

TB.

[Kikinchikin]

Rented it. The first 45 or so minutes I thought the game was absolute crap. The bulky and troublesome controls made it very difficult to do anything. However, once i got into it, I found that it was kinda fun. The graphics are pretty good, showing some good detail on the characters, but mainly the environments. Although they aren't very open to explore, the environments look pretty consistent with what one might think a broken post-apocalyptic world would look like. The AI is decently smart, although they run in pretty predictable patterns, but they make up for it with their excellent marksmanship (tried playing multiplayer with friends against AI bots, and they smoked us on normal setting).Anyway to break it down the pros and cons look like this so far:

Pros
Good graphics on characters, weapons and environments
Smart shooting AI
Good defensive AI- enemies take cover pretty frequently and are hard to kill(provides a challenge since it takes 2 headshots to down a soldier and up to 8 shots to kill them when the bullets hit elsewhere)
Health regeneration- adds a little bit of tactics to the game (IE running and taking cover when you are low to replenish health)
Feeling of being in the war- although it is nowhere near the feeling you get when you play CoD, it is still better than average FPS's which are based on get to point B from point A missions.

Cons
Limited, closed environment- although the environments are detailed nicely, there is a relatively small space in which you can maneuver, unlike games such as CoD. Also makes it somewhat difficult to find cover, since it is hard to maneuver around wreckage and debris.
No mobility/no JUMP KEY- It makes it very hard to do anything without a jump key. For example in one level you must run through a trench and retrieve a rocket launcher to kill a tank. While it is hard enough to get thething, it is made worse by the fact that when you try to take cover to kill it, you are hampered by a very narrow , linear path that yo must take to get back to basically the only spot where you can have sufficient cover. Also decreases from the scope of the levels and makes it so there is not much to explore.
Repetitive enemies- Yeah the Helghast are pretty cool enemies to fight, being tough to bring down and fun to shoot, but they get old pretty quick. It'd be nice to see some boss fights as well and maybe some different kinds of soldiers thrown in (IE spec ops, snipers, artillery men)
Modest repetoire of weapons- there's a decent amount of weapons, basically enough to cover each major area (IE rocket launcher, machine gun, shotgun)
Boring objectives- there really aren't any objectives. It's basically kill every enemy that gets in your way so you can get to the next battle. There are some minor moments diverse gameply (such as covering your comrade with a sniper rifle while he runs to plant a charge), but for the most part it's pretty stagnatn gameplay.

Overall, Killzone certainly doesn't live up to the hype. It's worth a rental probably, especially if you're really into FPS's. I'll give it a 6.5 out of 10.