Anyone tried Killzone?

I haven't been following console games lately, so I was surprised to hear the the "PS2 halo killer" was allready out. I wasn't buying into the hype, and I rarely expect much from console FPS's anyway, but I was curious to see how this one would turn out.

IGN gave it a 7.5, said the AI was really bad and the graphics were full of polygonal seems, bugs, and framerate loss. They did admit it would have been a good game otherwise, a "good game with problems". The funny thing is, most of the reader reviews disagree with IGN and give it 9's and 10's.

I was just curious if anyone here had tried it and what they thought. Again, I tend to not expect a lot out of console FPS's, but this game seemed to have a creative sensibility lacking in a lot of console FPS's, and even a lot of PC FPS's, so I thought there was a small chance it could be good. All in all, even if the bugs weren't that bad, I still don't think I would like it that much simply because the multiplayer is online only. The whole point and sole advantage to console FPS's over PC FPS's is the ability to play at home with your friends on split-screen or system link.

Rostam, not to turn this into a console vs PC debate but I have to disagree with you on the point about the controller. IMO, the controllers are one of the leading reasons why console FPS's don't work, there's just no where near enough precision compaired to a mouse. Most games have to either rely on auto-aim or slow game speeds to compensate for the lack of mouse control, which really diminishes the quality of the action. For an extreme example, if you look at games like Quake 3 Revolution and Unreal Championship, there is just no where near the amount of depth as their PC counter parts because players simply cannot execute the advanced manuevers integral to the games' combat or perform even general aiming at half the speed. Control sticks may be just good enough for realism/tactical games like Socom where ambushing from a hidden location or sniping is more prevalent than intricate split-second combat manuevering, but any game that is more action based automatically has it's potential for gameplay depth limited to a fraction from the get-go.

Furthermore, the limited buttons of controlers almost always cause atleast one or two complications and prevent the use of any commands that stray outside the bare-bones necessities of running, aiming, shooting, switching weapons, and opening doors. Perfect example- in Halo things like doing melee attacks, throwing grenades, and jumping cannot be done while controling your view or aiming because you have to take your thumb off the stick and use the face buttons.

Ultimately, it all comes down to personal preference, but I really don't like the sacrifices to control and resultingly gameplay loss that come from using controllers, and I'm only willing to forgoe the problems of the controller if the game is particularly good or more commonly, when I just want to blow up my friends for a cheap thrill and don't really care about skill (which doesn't happen all that often.) For me, trying to play an FPS with a controller is like trying to player Street Fighter with a 2-button NES controller (or for that matter a keyboard) instead of a 6 button pad or fighter stick.

Rostam- I wouldn't say games like Unreal and Quake don't require outsmarting your opponent. It's just that outsmarting your opponent also requires split second actions. Also, on Halo, I would say being able to jump directly after turning to change your direction is pretty important. And forcing players to choose between aiming melee attacks and aiming grenades is an unnessecary sacrifice.

Defcon- thanks for the report. I think I may look for a demo, or if I get curious enough, just buy it and see if it's any good. I barely buy any console games these days anyway and I've got some cash to spare.

LOL, they dropped MP in Gran Turismo!? Christ, that's like dropping VS. mode in Soul Calibur. I really wonder how the **** developers come up with these ridiculous gimicks. BTW, what does OPM stand for?

Ok, I bought it, cause I got bored. Overall, it's not a bad game, it's just not that great either. It has some nice features in some cases, and then a lot of points that are just weak.

The AI is basically just SLOW. They'll run for cover, but then they'll just kind of stand there for a while not doing anything. Then don't react very quickly, so much of the time, you don't even have to take cover, you can just stand out in the open and gun everyone down. Of course, eventually, they throw so many guys at you at once that atlreast a few guys will be shooting at you at all times, but it's just a matter of using cover the block the guys that are shooting at you while you kill the guys that are asleep. Overall, they throw enough guys at you that it's not too bad, but it's still not really hard in the slightest.

The weapons are mostly unremarkable. The basic assault rifle that you start with is pretty good, because it has first shot accuracy and recoil, but almost all the other weapons just have static conefire spread that doesn't change at all. Annoyingly, they don't give you a lot of ammo for your assault rifle, so you have to use the enemy assault rifle a lot, which doesn't have any first shot accuracy, so you have to resort to spraying and praying, and occasionally using the buckshot alternate fire.

Multiplayer actually DOES work offline with bots and split screen, so I played with my sister a little. Unfortunately, the bots have a ridiculous amount of health in multiplayer. In single player most of them have the same amount of health as you do, and will go down with 2-3 headshots or 4-6 bodyshots, but in multiplayer the bots seem to take entire magazines point-blank without dieing. At one point I was up on a sniper tower shooting at guys with my assault rifle, they were just standing around in the open easy targets getting shot, and I was shooting with accurate single shots, but I used my entire 300 rounds of magazines and only made 3 or 4 kills. This makes bot play extremely boring, because the bots take forever to find you/for you to find because they are so dumb, and then it takes forever to kill them.

Health for players is fine though, so if you had enough people for a good split screen match it would probably be OK. So far I have only tried team deathmatch and domination. Team Deathmatch has random spawn points, which doesn't make a lot of sense for a tactical realism-oriented game. You don't have a radar or arrows either to find your team mates, so even playing split screen you spend most of your time with all your team mates scattered randomly around the map; it's very difficult to co-ordinate. In domination, I haven't even figured out where the control points are yet. They aren't marked with large colorfull icons like in UT, so unless you have played before, you have no idea where to go or what to do.

On the plus side, the maps seem to be pretty cool. Unfortunately, the non-linear, random nature of play kind of brings them down, but there are a several outdoor, very realistic, but moody and stylized outdoor maps. With good gametypes, they would be fun to play around in. There are also some indoor maps I haven't tried, and several other game types.

Anyway, overally it's one of those games that's frustrating because there's parts that are cool and show a lot of potential, but then other parts that are just incomplete or half-assed. I think the direction that the developers TRIED to take the game in is a very solid concept. It's a combination of sci-fi and realism, and of futuristic technology with archaic dirt and grime. A lot of the weapon designs are pretty cool, conceptually and visually, it's just their implementation in game isn't quite right. For example, the enemy "Helgast" assault rifle has a bull-pup design with a 50 round helical magazine, an infra-red scope, and an attached shotgun under the barrel. Unforunately, it has ****ty static accuracy, making it a complete bore to fire, the shotgun only holds one shell, and doesn't seem to pack the real punch of a 40mm buckshot round, so it's not really as cool as it could be. The developers spent a lot of time on making things like reload animations look really realistic, but then they make the oversight of having the player pull the charging handle every time he pulls out the weapon, even though it should allready be ready.

Anyway, it's one of those games that makes you really WANT to like it, but then it just doesn't deliver in enough places so you can't really like it that much. Overall, it's not a bad game and it still probably one of the best FPSs on PS2, but unfortunately that's not saying a lot coming from PC games. It really seems like the game just wasn't finished when they shipped it and they just rushed it out to meet sony's demands. Maybe they will make a sequel that improves on all the undeveloped areas of the first game.

EDIT:

Ok, I figured out Domination and tried Assault. They are much better because the spawns are fixed; each team spawns at a specific point on opposite sides of the map. Also, the objectives make for more concentrated action. The weapon balance is rather quirky though. The basic ISA ("good guy") assault rifle is one of the only 3 weapons in the game with real first shot accuracy, but all the other weapons overpower it with sheer firepower. Why take the time to aim and make carefull accurate shots when you can just spray your heavy machinegun at the enemy's general direction from 200 meters and make the kill 3x faster? On the other hand, the hellghast ("badguy") assault rifle is completely dominant at the 1 or 2 CQB maps in the game because of the undermounted shotgun. The ISA can get a shotgun if they look all over the map for it, but the helghast spawn with it, so i CQB situations they can just insta-kill any enemies (which is very overpowered because most other weapons take atleast 5-6 rounds to kill average).

Overall though, with the exception of the 1 or 2 CQB maps, Domination is pretty fun. The weapons become less of an issue as you can just kill the enemy with more or less anything you have reasonably fast if you get the drop on him or use team work. It's still a little frustrating that you can just anhilate everybody from any range with a super-powered high ROF heavy machinegun with RPG alternate fire, but it's not so bad. It's more about the course you take around the map and how you work with your team than what weapons you use. So multiplayer in Killzone may be pretty fun if you can find a bunch of people to play with you (I don't really feel like getting a broadband adapter or signig up with sony, so right now for me it's just splitscreen).

Ok, I just beat Killzone last night. My feelings about the game have changed a fair amount:

On multiplayer:

I've come to like domination a lot. The maps work pretty well with it. Most of the them are nice and open, with fields, hills, sand bags, towers, MG nests, trenches etc and have good layouts. If I didn't say it before, in all the modes besides Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, you spawn with your team on a specific side of the map, so that really helps with gameplay.

The weapons are not as bad as I thought. Even the Helghast assault rifle is accurate if you crouch and fire in 1-2 shot bursts (yes, Killzone has posture based accuracy, or atleast, crouching increases it). Most of the weapons, even the heavy machinegun, have some first shot accuracy or muzzle climb and are more accurate fired in bursts. The light machinegun in particular is pretty effective over long range if handled well. While other weapons have more firepower, you can kill faster with the assault rifles than almost any weapon, eve the HMG, from almost any range, if your accuracy is good. I don't think the explosives are too overpowered because the grenades are very hard to arc and the rockets are very slow. Unfortunately, the bots are cheap with them because they have perfect accuracy at arcing and leading the 'nades, but with humans I think they're pretty balanced (although a minimum arming distance like real life 40mms would be nice). Once you learn the weapons, they are actually pretty good, and even though they all seem the same at first, almost all of them do have a specific role or use.

singleplayer:
some of the missions gets better toward the late middle of the game. There is one set of jungle missions in particular which actually worked out well. You end up in a larger variety of situations, the enemies actually end up pinning you down sometimes, and in general it's a bit harder and takes a bit of thinking to make it through (although later on most of the challenge comes from the fact that so many enemies have grenade launchers). Toward the end the game lames out though, as they start just throwing lots of "elite" guys at you that are just as dumb as the grunts, but take tons of bullets to kill, and it starts to get very redundant, like playing Halo on legendary.

Overall, I have come to like the game. The single player was not great, but it was pretty fun. I like the muliplayer a lot. The maps are cool, the low first-hit-decisiveness, high value of shot placement, and slow movement speeds, make for fairly tactical gameplay. The weapons are realistic enough in the right areas (accuracy and recoil) while at the same time, they are different enough from real life to be more creative and interesting than a simple sim/realism game. Overall it's similar to Halo in terms being a slow paced sci-fi tactical shooter, but it has more realistic and dynamic weapons and maps. Killzone's assault rifles are what Halo 1 and 2's assault rifles should have been.