The Epitome of Mediocrity

We all remember the Killzone 2 hype train that lasted far longer than any train should. You know the kind, where you have to sit there in that sort of shady part of town for ten minutes as the damn thing passes. To recap, it started with a video whose graphics looked too good to be true during E3 2005, a full year before the PS3’s release. Well it turned out it was too good to be true because that video was pre-rendered. The train ended this February when the game was finally released to critical acclaim. MetaCritic right now lists the game at a 91 and I want to know why? I finally played it this week and while I can say it’s not bad, it sure as hell isn’t good. The game is incredibly average in all aspects aside from graphics. Average isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when you make a game in as saturated a genre as shooters are than you had better have something more than graphics to set it apart.

I will say that Guerrilla outdid themselves on the graphics. The Killzone 2 that finally did make it out four years after that infamous pre-rendered video looks damn near as good. Everything is incredibly detailed and the character models really pop when you see them up close. The only problem is everything is brown and gunmetal gray. Like every other war shooter out there this gen, Killzone has you fighting your way through boring dirty colored cities. There’s no luscious green foliage or vast deep blue bodies of water to look at, just dirt and metal.

Other than that faint praise, everything about Killzone 2 just screams mediocrity. Every gun I found throughout the campaign was simply uninspired. There was the assault rifle with the green dot scope, the enemy assault rifle with an iron sight, the enemy SMG with the same iron sight. Oh and I can't forget the heavy machine gun that resembled an M60 and the utterly useless grenade launcher that launched the slowest detonating and tiniest exploding grenades ever. The only gun I encountered that was remotely unique was the lightning gun and I can’t even say that it was well designed. To use it you simply had to aim in the general direction of your target, lightning would then proceed to shock the shit out of him and arc towards anything else nearby. Within about three seconds everyone in front of you would be dead and twitching. This thing had infinite ammo too, so I think I can safely say it was the most overpowered gun in any shooter ever. I think Guerrilla knew that though because it is only available for the last half of one mission. Also, wouldn't a lightning gun not arc towards people when being used in an almost entirely metal factory?

The actual gameplay pretty much played out like every other run of the mill shooter I’ve played. It had a cover mechanic, but it wasn’t nearly as good as Gears or Rainbow Six’s. There was a knife, but there was never a reason to use it or a fast way to get it out. There were a few vehicle sections, but they controlled clumsily and didn’t really add anything special to the experience. I guess I can’t really fault them for that though; I haven’t played a shooter in ages that had a fun vehicle sequence. Actually I can fault them for that, them and everyone else. Anyway, point is there was nothing really original or refreshing about the campaign and that is kind of a problem when games like Bioshock, Call of Duty 4 and Far Cry 2 have been proving over and over again just how powerful this genre can be. The only vaguely interesting part about the game was how enemies kept respawning, you pretty much had to force your way forward. It was more like advancing the frontline rather than killing everyone and moving on. Still this proved frustrating because the game never really made that concept clear and it only applied to certain parts of the campaign. The only way to be sure this is what you were supposed to do was to kill people for a long enough time that you were satisfied they weren’t going to stop coming.

Lastly, and this is kind of a personal complaint but I might as well mention it while I’m completely hating on this game, is the PS3 controller. Something about the way it feels just doesn’t work well for FPS’s. The analog sticks don’t resist enough so aiming always feels kind of floaty and loose. There aren’t triggers, which doesn’t seem like it should matter, but pressing R1 to fire just feels wrong. R2 is even worse because firing in bursts usually results in my finger just slipping right off the button. Every time I play a shooter on the PS3 I just find myself wishing I could use my 360 controller. I know if I had readers I’d get a lot of flak for that, but luckily I don’t and if I did I’d tell them to shut up!

I didn’t intend for this “review” to be so harsh (though the sarcasm was pretty intentional), but I was fairly appalled by how much hype and high scores this game received. Like I said above, it wasn’t bad, but it didn’t do anything even remotely new or unique. In all fairness I never tried the multiplayer, but from what I heard during release it took it’s RPG elements a little too far. Besides, I gleaned enough of the games controls and gameplay from the single player to know I didn’t want to play the multi. I think the reason this game resonated so negatively with me is because it is a perfect example of hype affecting review scores. I can’t think of any other explanation for why it reviewed so well. Based on the current state of grade inflation, I would have expected 8’s all around. If we were using all the numbers in the 1 to 10 scale then 5's would be pretty accurate. Instead we are left with an average of 9.1, which comparatively speaking should result in a fantastic game. Yet we didn’t get a fantastic game, we got a shooter that everyone forgot about a month later because everyone was getting hyped for the next big thing.