REVIEW: Killzone

May 13, 2006

Killzone has been killed!

As I have said to grayscale when I was playing it, this game was the "meh" heard around the world. It was an alright game, but there were just some serious problems with it that just kept on bring it down. It seemed like after every mission, I would just be like "eeeeeehhhhhhhh" and then just continue with the game. Nothing like "oh man that mission was so sweet" or something. It was just "meh" over and over again.

First off, a "Halo killer" this game is not, and I don't even like Halo. It just felt like a pretty bland FPS with a pretty crappy story. To be honest, I didn't really understand the story until I had to look it up on GameFAQs. Before that, it was pretty much just killing who ever got in the way. Come to think of it... the only FPS that has a story that really interests me is the Half-Life series, but this about Killzone, so lets just move on.

There seemed to be a big problem with the graphics in this game. There were some huge texture pop in going on, and even then, the texture looked muddy as hell. There is something to be said when during the last level, you can't even tell where the hell bullets are coming from because the enemy BLENDS IN with the back ground they are against. This was indoors on a space station, so I don't think they were going for a camouflage thing, but it was really stupid to see a gun that seemed to be floating in the air. Plus, if you ran up too fast to an enemy to maybe pistol whip them, they would look like a big lego piece until the game was able to catch up and make him look right. This also happened with your team mates as well... even if you are standing right next to them. I don't get it.

The A.I. for the most part was alright. There were some parts where it was pretty dumb, but for the most part, they put up a decent fight. When I started playing though, I was just getting my ass worked by it. This is mainly due to the fact that this was the first time I have played an FPS using a controller in a long time. I was just wishing I could of hooked up my keyboard and mouse, but I got back in the swing of things, and I was able to deal with it. Although, now that I think about it, they were very stupid if you did a melee attack on them. What would happen is when you started your melee attack, all his teammates around him would stop shooting their weapon while they just watch their buddy get a huge gun right in their face, and then start to fire to a second after the attack was finished. So there would be times where I could be a room with a ton of enemies, and then just attack them one at a time and not even use any ammo or lose any health. This was a great way to cheese through most of the game when things were looking bad, but really, you shouldn't have been able to do this. Plus it was really funny when some one was standing too close to a wall and I was able to attack them THROUGH the wall. Awesome.

Moving on, this so for all you people that might make a FPS in the future.... when I see something that looks like cloth, such as a tent or something. I expect to be able to shoot through it, and vice versa for the enemy. I don't know how many times I had my ass saved by the little cloth tents that you would find along the way because nothing would get through them. 5 guys shoot at you? Saved. Rockets? Not even a dent. Huge ass artillery strike? Did I just hear something outside? Come on people... get with the program. Plus it doesn't help when one of the characters you can pick has a version of the M60/L.A.W. in BFV before it was patched. 800 round machine gun with a rocket launcher built in, AND I can take damage like a tank? Hell yes I will hit that shit! But ooohhh still can't shoot through that wall.....

After all that though, there are a few things I did like about the game. The voice acting was pretty decent, nothing fantastic, but it fit the characters well. The music on the other hand was great. Really epic sounding stuff although you never really heard any of it until you got to a cut scene. Never the less, it gave a nice mood to the game although I wish the gameplay would be just as epic.