Killzone (PS2) - Guest Post

I've played Halo already. It's time for the PS2's triumphant Halo-beater: Red Faction.

No, wait, it's Killzone. Bugger.

But first, an apology.

I don't play console games for Super AIG very often because they're a right pain the butt to capture compared to computer games. When I played Red Faction, I used a signal splitter to send the signal my computer's TV card and the pictures turned out awful. When I played Halo and Red Faction II, I said there was a delay in the controls in both games. I was also running the signal through my new DVD recorder into my TV. This introduced a noticeable delay in the picture and I should've realised it before. I only had the revelation after four solid hours of trying to complete the final level of Stuntman.

So, let me put the record straight. Under the same circumstances, I would rather play the final level of Stuntman, which is nothing but a two minute sequence of luck-trying pain and suffering, over and over for four hours than play either Halo or Red Faction II again.

But enough about Halo. I'm playing the PS2's Halo-beater: the mighty Killzone!

These dark gentlemen are the Helghast. Ten years ago, they fled the Earth when they were attacked an oppressive, all-conquering enemy. And now, with an overwhelming military force a decade in the making, they're back! To take it back!

Character select! I can pick Jan Templar, a human... and that's it.

WHAT? OH COME ON! I don't even get the option to play as the Helghast? They're just 'the bad guys' and that's it? I could be jumping the gun on The Big Twist here where the humans and the Helghast work together, but I doubt it. They'd have to make up a whole third side, together with guns, 3D models, etc. Who could be bothered to do that?

Sure, they might have a sinister insignia and like to hold rousing speeches in the middle of the night and they might be led by the Penguin....

...but when you put a character in the intro and have them tell the player how they've been oppressed and driven out of their home, in the absence of any information to the contrary, I start to think they're the good guys. Maybe their sinister evil speech was too compelling? Or maybe I'm too trusting? Even if they're committing unquestionably evil acts, they might be the best of the worst in a harsh, brutal future. Clearly, we've got to know more about these guys.

I think the problem is that I think playing as the humans is boring. Or maybe I'm biased against the humans because what they did to the Helghast (taking what the guy in the intro said at face value) sounds an awful lot like the plot of Interpose. They might be cute kitty cats underneath those helmets! Or maybe I'm biased against this game because my protagonist looks like Lazarus Jones from Ghost Hunter, which is a great game that I'd much rather be playing.

Oh, 'ey up. Game's loaded.

So, I'm supposed to be rooting for the humans then? Great. Woo. Go humans.

Here's a human. A human that doesn't sound as young as he looks.

Captain Jan Templar and friends are in a beige place under attack by advancing Helghast troops. The smiley guy is going to lead us back to HQ because Templar's bored of shooting things.

This gun is... awful. It's got a low rate of fire that's very offputting. When I try to fire in bursts, the gun's reactions don't match up to my button presses. Sometimes Jan just shakes the gun without firing it.

Here's the zoom mode. Look down that shiny scope, Jan? Hell, no!

I'm stuck in a small area surrounded by sandbags, so I shoot some advancing waves of bads while I wait for something better to do.

After shooting blindly into the fog for ten minutes, smiley guy moves a couple of impenetrable barriers aside and leads me to the next sideshow attraction: a bunker. Oooh.

Thud thud thud thud thud. I could simply copy and paste this picture a few more times to give you an accurate Killzone experience.

We seem to be tuned into the Helghast radio frequency: we can hear absolutely everything they're saying. They're easier to make out than my own men, thanks to their silly English accents and ALL CAPS radio voices.

No music still.

Now I have to use the machinegun turret. I think this level may have been intended as a tutorial. I'm not in the mood for a tutorial right now.

Smiley guy hides around the corner and shoots carelessly into the fog.

This machinegun is waaaay better than my assault rifle. It shoots fast and the bullets are doing noticeable damage to the enemies! Can't I take this with me, please?

I'm stuck in a linear trench, yet I keep getting lost. There's no subtitles and everybody likes to only tell me important things while explosions are happening. The game keeps track of objectives and helpfully flashes up the message 'Objectives Updated' when I complete one, but it doesn't tell me directly what they are. There's yards of screen space they could have used for a caption. Y'know, like Halo.

I can press Select to view the Objectives screen, but there's a couple of seconds loading to get there and even more loading to get back.

In the intro, Templar says they've got to get back to the main force or they'll die out here. What's he going to say to his CO when they meet? "Hi boss, I was out there shooting the bad guys but I came back because it was dangerous."?

Throwing a grenade takes considerable time and the screen rocks all over the place while you're doing it. Can you guess where this grenade is going to end up?

If you said 'into the trench wall to Templar's left and back into his face', you'd be right!

The computer characters seem to regard Templar as somebody of importance. I can certainly take a lot more hits these guys... except the ones that are invulnerable. They've got to be invulnerable so they can open the doors/move the jacks out the way/cut the barbed wire so I can advance. Which makes me wonder: if these guys are indestructible, why the hell do I have to be the one to go out there and shoot the Helghast?

Here's the bit where I'm introduced to the sniper rifle.

Somewhere down there, a sniper has one of my men trapped. I haven't a clue where. So I change my position. And then I change back. And then I slide down the ladder. And then I mosey up to the limit of where I'm allowed to go.

Then the whole screen starts violently flashing red. I must've got Templar's liver caught on some barbed wire.

EVENTUALLY, I find the sniper. One shot and he's dead.

I thank the heavens for giving me a gun that bloody works.

And I know I shouldn't use it, because video game sniper rifle bullets are made from unobtainium so they're absurdly rare and you can only carry one bullet at a time.

Hey, would you look at that, I can carry three guns!

My starting third weapon is a pistol! And it fires even slower than the assault rifle. Well, that was a disappointment and a half. I was almost getting somewhere.

I think I'm discovering a major problem with this game. This blasted fog is everywhere. I like a nice big level, but if your level is so big you have to make the enemies into ghosts three pixel tall, it's too big.

I really have to use the sniper rifle at this point, because the assault rifles have mind-bogglingly low accuracy at this range.

I find a Helghast trooper hiding in the darkness, but his glowing goggles give him away. For a split second, the game actually lets me get on with the business of being cool, rather than forcing me to stand on the spot like lawn sprinkler spewing useless at the enemies until they die of having wet clothes.

Isn't it funny how the debris always lands in such a way to make a perfectly straight route?

Do you see that pipe down there? That's an invisible wall. Well, if you approach it from the SIDE on an elevated platform it's an invisible wall. To get past it, you have to face it directly and press X to vault over it. It's not even a foot tall.

Templar lopes from spot to spot like he's on stilts. It's worse when you're crouching. He drives like a robot spider, moving in thrusts and bursts to islands of stability. It's nothing like the wacky, slidey, fun world of GoldenEye 007. Or Perfect Dark. Or TimeSplitters. But, hell, the multiplayer on those games sucked, right?

I think I've got it! Templar is some kind of crude prototype humanoid combat robot. Every one of his actions is a complex combination of mechanical motions; any attempt to combine two different actions at would result in a critical strain on his components and must be avoided at all costs. And he has to get back to HQ because... his techno-arachnid cyber-core is... special.

It's a tank. There's a dead rocket guy. Who'd have thought?

Reloading sucks. There's not enough urgency to it. Maybe Templar is as fed up with his useless guns as I am. The worst part is the screen tilts about 30 degrees to the bottom right when you reload. I instinctively attempt to centre my view back on the enemy (trying to avoid them by constantly moving, and all) and when the reloading finishes I'm aiming up at the sky. Hold your gun a bit higher or something, would you?

This is the 'shuttle repair bay'. We've got to blast our way through to get to HQ.

I'd like to simply run around like a madman, blasting all the enemies as well as I can with these lousy guns. But the route is blocked and first we have to enjoy an unskippable dialogue sequence.

And the way to unblock routes is to kill the badniks.

Did that guy say "Over their heads!"? Why would he say that? I must've misheard. He must've said "Aim for their heads!".

No, the Helghast say it too! And they're shooting above my head. And my guys are shooting over the enemies' heads! Is this supposed to be their way of communicating target positions?

I've got a better idea. How about my guys shoot at the enemy rather than above them! Lord knows I'm trying my best here and it's not doing any good thanks to this... everything.

There's a dude on the stairs. Eight bullets he takes at this range.

At least this definitively proves there's no auto-tracking! No sliding around in spirals trying to detach myself from enemies instead of heading in a straight line to cover! No auto-aim either... that I can notice...

The Helghast assault rifle isn't much better than the ISA one. It's got a slightly different crosshair and that's it. It fires similar crappy ammo with the same crappy accuracy at the same crappy rate and its got the same crappy zoom mode.

The alternate fire is a shotgun round which does work after a fashion, but it takes ages to reload and prevents you firing the primary weapon while you're (automatically) reloading it. And sometimes it just plain refuses to fire.

I'm dead. When I crossed the bridge, this scripted jet bike flew across the air and shot the snot out of me. I was busy trying to fight off the enemy soldiers that had suddenly appeared on the other side of the bridge. They like to do that, a lot.

Even with the zoom mode on, hitting the enemies at this distance is nothing but a lottery. The crosshair lies, by the way. I would love for my gun to be that accurate. It would be nice if I could order my team mates to go over there and do the shooting for me.

If shooting enemies is supposed to be the fun part of the game and it simply fails to be fun to the point where the player actively avoids doing it because it's so tedious, it's not looking good.

I'm not getting along with these gun controls at all. There has to be a knack to this reloading. There simply has to be. I'm training myself to move my thumb away from the right analogue stick when I reload, so I don't move the camera 'back' to where it's supposed to be.

Ooh! Fully customisable controls! Ingame! This is good! Except the D-Pad, which is bad. You get three guns but only one weapon switch button! I thought the point of having two guns was to simplify the weapon controls so choosing a weapon was no longer like solving a Rubik's cube. But three guns? Now you have to hammer the button to cycle through them.

The most egregious mistake is that the player character pulls the bolt back on every weapon when he draws it. And when you ready the Helghast rifle with shotgun attachment, he cocks the shotgun part. EVEN WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE ANY SHOTGUN SHELLS. AND YOU CAN'T INTERRUPT THIS ANIMATION. TO SHOOT WITH THE MAIN GUN.

I died again. Two massive anti-tank turrets on the ground level below, when I was aiming at the sky thinking I was under attack from another scripted jet bike.

Thanks, my super helpful team. They're more than ready to announce that they're going to take advantage of their invulnerability to deliberately miss my enemies, but they're not going to warn me about the GIANT TURRETS aimed at me.

I'm through with these assault rifles; I'm going back to sniper rifle. As I mentioned, it's a one hit kill no matter where it hits. And, unlike some other (UNSPEAKABLY STUPID) games, you are allowed to fire it while outside of scoped view. It fires slowly (ARGH), but it fires exactly where you aim it. There's no crosshair but I can manage.

For the next eight bullets at least, this game just got a whole lot better.

This is the HQ is it? It's rubbish.

And instead of giving me something super cool to do, the guy said 'we have to hold them off until our vehicles get here'.

And then the enemy arrived. And then the guy said 'Here they come'. And then we shot them. And then another APC arrived.

And then more enemies came out of it. And we shot them too.

Magic-super-kinetic-cyber-hydraulic-melee power GO!

Guess where this grenade is going!

If you said 'bouncing off the destroyed piece of wall to the left of the screen and back into Templar's face, killing him instantly', you'd be right!

Award yourself thirty seconds staring at a blank screen and then rewind the game back a couple of unskippable dialogue sequences.

My new plan is to not stand around in the destroyed building full of invisible walls, but instead move to the extreme edge of the level and shoot all the bad guys as they unload from the back of the APC. Big mistake. During that time, they're stuck in place and are completely invulnerable. It's only after they've fallen slowly to the ground and started walking that you can hit them.

According to the manual, the Helghast troops outnumber the ISA by at least eight to one. It wasn't lying.

Now all I have left are my stupidly underpowered assault rifles. I run over to the nearest hole in the ground and alternate between the two guns until I run out of ammo.

I've had enough of this.

But mecha-neko! You might like it when you get to the good guns!

I looked in the manual. There's a crap pistol I don't have, some knives I don't have, some heavy weapons and one 'Shadow Submachinegun' that I was quite looking forward to using (of course, I know that it's going to have pitiful damage to make up for any rate of fire increase it has).

So I had a couple of multiplayer matches against bots. I couldn't find any of these other guns anywhere. I found a ridiculously anaemic grenade launcher that seemed to work more like a railgun, but that's it. If the single player is going to be as stingy with the guns as the multiplayer was, then I don't think I'm missing much.

OH FINE. I'm setting back this post a couple of hours To See If Killzone Gets Any Better.

Wanna hear something really weird?

It does.

I've completely given up on using the weapons' useless primary fires and now use the ISA grenade and Helghast shotgun secondary fires exclusively. Now that we're inside, there's no more God damned fog! I can see the enemies! When there's stuff to hide behind, I can safely get closer to the enemies as well, which means I can pick up the special ammo that they drop and not have to resort to the useless primary fires.

I don't know if working around the guns' limitations is supposed to be what Killzone is about, but it seems to be the majority of what I'm doing. I always assume that, in games, all the player's guns are supposed to be equally awesome, transparent representations of the player's will into the game world, and they're all vying for your attention. In Killzone, it's the exact opposite. I'm constantly reminded of the many limitations of the useless lumps of metal I'm carrying around, and have to carefully decide which guns to use and when, and if I can be sure that firing the gun is worth it to sit through the reloading animation. I'm sure that if somebody was watching me, they'd be screaming at me to stop cycling the guns and reloading all the time and just get to the shooting.

It's hard to believe that just half an hour ago I was wandering around in a yellow-tinted haze getting lost in a linear trench, and here I am making progress, finding grenades and having fun.

They really ought to have cut that first level entirely.

After wandering about on those roads, the game mostly stays inside. Where it's nice and bright and there's no fog.

There's still no music in game so far, which is lame. There was some music in a cutscene, which was refreshing. I'd forgotten what music sounded like.

There's lots of things to hide inside or behind. I don't have to wait for guys to open doors or move barbed wire. There's nowhere I can't reasonably go.

Hell, even the primary fires seem to work in here, killing people in two bullets rather than six.

And here, you can sit there like a melon and shoot the enemies with the mounted machinegun.

Or get down there and blast the hell out of them with the shotgun. A gun that works.

Hooray!

And then the game goes and ruins it all by having a stupid level in what looks like a sewer and you can't see anything and there's no shotgun ammo.

Let's think positively. They've got lots of ideas to work with for Killztwo.