This game is beautiful, with one little deal breaker.
A friend of mine has been screaming "Killzone 2 February 27th!!!" in my ear for about the last month, so I decided to come over to his house to see what all f the hubub was about. I checked this game up online beforehand and saw that all of the hardcore PS3 fanboys were touting this game like it was the second coming of Christ and like buying the game will get you laid and cure cancer.
I've played some of the campaign, and some of the multiplayer, and this is my opinion of it: this game does not kill Halo.
While Killzone 2 is very graphically impressive (it's ridiculously beautiful) and while the campaign is great, with epic firefights there was something that's missing, a story. Granted I didn't play the first Killzone but I have to say, there wasn't much of a story to this game, which is completely forgivable, I don't really need motivation to kill things with glowing red eyes who are shooting at me, but I would have liked to know a little more about the character's and their motivation because it would have made the game more immersive. Regardless, the campaign really drew me in with it's great presentation, and interesting to use weapons.
Now lets move on to the multiplayer, that thing that keeps us playing games years after they come out. The multiplayer is good, but not great. The whole class system is a lot of fun, and the rewards system is great, and the game modes and maps are fun to play. the maps hold up surprisingly well for every gametype, but this great game is hurt by poor controls.
I didn't notice the controls until I started to play multiplayer because people are a lot harder to kill than AI. The biggest problem here is that they have encoded lag into the game, so you don't have 1:1 controls. I'm going to quote g4's Brian Leachy here, because I think he says this better than I can:
" Many times during the game, I felt like I was fighting my controller. It removes that feeling of being a badass when you execute a perfect flank. Or surprise three enemies that have no idea you're there only to struggle to kill more than one of them because the game's aiming system is broken.
Why would you ever ADD lag to your game? Since the dawn of multiplayer gaming, we've been fighting a war against lag. We play video games for 1:1 controls. Adding lag is one of the worst design choices ever. Guerrilla Games was attempting to add weight to the character, but all it does is hurt the way the player actually controls the game.
Think about trying to line-up a quick headshot. You move the analog stick to the right, but overshoot the person just a tad bit so you let off the stick. You've just racked up two instances of the input lag. Now, you re-aim, hitting left on the stick. Another piece of input lag on top of the pile. While the controller is sweeping back across their head, you hit fire! Except, by the time the game registers the shot, your controller has moved beyond your target. Now, you attempt to readjust, but you're still going to be dealing with the lag. By the end of that, you're running a delay of about half a second, which is like pinging 500ms to the server."
That's all I have to say about that. If there isn't a fix for this you shouldn't be buying this game. It definitely deserves a rent for now, and if the controls are fixed I would definitely tell you to buy this game, but if the controls aren't fixed the multiplayer won't hold your attention as long as the Halo 3 multiplayer has (and will continue doing so). if you just want to keep going through the campaign, it's fun, and you will enjoy it, but for those who on;y go through a campaign once, and then stick around for the multiplayer you are out of luck for now. If there is a fix for this go ahead and by the game, and the moment there is I will retract this review and give the game a 10, but I love multiplayer and laggy controls in multiplayer is a deal breaker for me.