Some would have you believe that Killzone has no fans, just fanboys, mobilised by Sony's promise of a technological blitzkrieg. That's not entirely fair. The first game, released in 2004, created a cult of sorts that a smart PSP spin-off, Killzone Liberation, galvanised in lieu of a proper sequel. The most physical game of its kind, it was a shooter made of metal while others dealt in plastic. Now the sequel's here, though, it's those genuine fans who will suffer it the most. Because if Dead Space shows just what can be gained when you approach the familiar with a mind to making changes, Killzone 2 shows just what can happen when you don't.
It opens as four years of marketing have led us to suspect - with thunder and lightning. From ISA carriers that point like daggers towards Helghan, home of man's forsaken children the Helghast, leather-faced marines cling to fragile dropships as they swoop through the clouds. Orders are yelled and banter exchanged, until seconds later a stupendous blast rips up from the clouds below, filling the sky with wreckage. Those that survive, among them Sgt Tomas 'Sev' Sevchenko (you) and his loyal squad, are greeted by further blasts of technical wizardry on the beach below. Then some more, and then some more.
Helghan is quite the cesspit, so awash with toxic particles you'd think someone made a snowdome from an ashtray. The Helghast, invisible behind their anime-Nazi armour, are products of the most advanced performance capture and procedural technology in gaming - and it shows. With each wave they give a masterc!ass in squad-based tactical warfare, suppressing, flanking, f-ing and blinding with nary a breath in between. Your only choice is to hug the nearest surface (with L2), lean out (with the right stick) and snipe (R2) until your cover's blown, be it by a new line of sight, a mischievous grenade or the ballsy athlete who spikes you with his blade. Smart and nimble, the Helghast like nothing more than someone foolish enough to hide. This intimate, sizzling combat feels a lot like that of FEAR, but is actually more like another game of the time: Criterion's Black. It shares that laudable desire to see you through a level without fuss, hindered only by the constant fear of a fatal mistake. A gun game in the truest sense, its bullets and ragdolls offer a literal take on the 'theatre' of war, a rare pleasure since GoldenEye. And it gets extraordinary mileage from piling lots of bodies into simple spaces, letting cutting-edge AI do the rest. A quasi-tactical shooter, its action rivals any in Stalker or COD4.
But without the first game's ambiguities, a sense of humour or even an ounce of intrigue, its story stinks. It's so slight you could play the levels in random order to little ill-effect, and it assumes knowledge of everything and everyone, not once recognising the real-world echoes of its premise: an allied invasion of an enemy the allies themselves created. Instead, it settles for the opening act of Starship Troopers via Aliens and Saving Private Ryan, as if they were somehow fresher than Long John Silver's toenails.
The fraught team dynamic is gone, as is Killzone's neat trick of having a Helghast operative fighting by your side. The dialogue is functional, the motives obvious. And too much time is given to Rico Velasquez, the ISA's version of the Cole Train. He's rotten company, so foul-mouthed that you'll wonder when gaming will overcome its latest obsession. His squadmates, to their credit, hold him in equally low regard, his courage vastly outweighing his commonsense. But still, he's infinitely harder on the ears than the Helghast, who aren't exactly choirboys themselves. One day, technology like this will produce a performance worthy of an Oscar, maybe even Jean-Claude Van Damme. But not today.
Worst of all, Killzone 2 doesn't just default to the genre's worst impulses some of the time; it does so whenever the fateful question's asked: "What now, Sarge?" Answers include: get on that turret, marine; grab that bazooka and take out that tank; man that mech; watch out for those sentry bots; and rendezvous with Alpha Team and secure that LZ. Sentry bots? You must be joking. If you can't think for yourself after so many millions of dollars have been spent, surely it's common courtesy to make your clichés interesting. Not here, it seems, where half the chapters feel like multiplayer maps full of bots and random waypoints.
In fact, few story-driven games have been so much more dramatic in multiplayer. Freed of its narrative shackles, Killzone 2's deathmatches openly celebrate the tight controls (jumping now included), hand-made environments and technical beauty of a game that is, almost exclusively, about popping someone in the face or blowing them to kingdom come. Separate development of the multiplayer modes has paid dividends, the badge and perks systems adding distinctive RPG flavour to a uniquely hardcore team-based experience. First impressions might be that everyone's dying all of the time, but perseverance pays off.
Thanks largely to its online play, Killzone 2 should find itself a fanbase no one can overlook. In singleplayer, it's a testament to craft and imagination, if only because one is so immaculate while the other barely exists. It fights a great battle, it's just a shame about the war.
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