In the Line of Fire
Killzone 2 is (almost) here. Find out what we thought inside.
Published: February 3, 2009
Sony did something simultaneously evil and amazing right around Christmas time, and juuuuust before everyone headed out to be with their respective loved ones for the Holidays: they sent out a "review" build of Killzone 2. Now, we could spend a bit of time discussing how odd it is to get a review version of a game (that clearly wasn't ready for proper review yet) almost a full two months before the game was supposed to ship, but I'd rather explain what it's been like to have this game for so long and not be able to talk about it.
Due to a magical combination of being at the bottom of a stand-by list, Seattle being hit with a major snowstorm for the first time in like forever, and me being down here in San Francisco, I wasn't able to head up for the Holidays to hang out with the fam. I was however, quite capable of digging into the code that was sent over and digesting it essentially in one sitting (something I would repeat a few more times before writing this review). The game definitely tips closer to the shorter side than the lengthier one, weighing in at about seven hours or so my first time through things.
In those seven hours, though, I experienced some of the highest highs and lowest lows I've ever taken part in with a first-person shooter. The former was usually the result of some absolutely epic setpieces (or even just the way wind would wick across the face of Helghan, the homeworld of the Jin-Roh-lookin' baddies from the original Killzone and the PSP's Killzone: Liberation) and the latter invariably came down to fighting the game's controls the whole way. It may not have been the controls explicitly that caused the problem, but they were almost always at least a contributing factor -- if not the whole of my frustration.
I promptly finished the single-player campaign for Killzone 2 about eight or so hours after it arrived, which left me well over a month until I could actually talk about the game and it was killing me. I can't think of a game... well, pretty much as long as I've been doing this -- with perhaps the exception of Metal Gear Solid 2 -- that's had this much hype behind it, and MGS2 arrived when message boards weren't nearly as choked with console warriors and folks desperate for the PS3 to finally have its trump card. Amazingly, I actually managed to hold firm, and now I can begin the love-in.
Well, not quite. There'll no doubt be pages of praise ladled on the game after voicing my disdain here, but there is a very, very serious issue that I pray will actually be remedied either before the game ships or shortly thereafter with a patch: the controls in Killzone 2 can be outright horrible at times. Even after multiple trips through the single-player campaign and double-digit hours online, I still feel like I haven't been able to pin down the game's sensitivity sweet spot, and it's for a very specific reason: the game offers zero in the way of assistance when aiming.
I'm not even asking for some kind of target stickiness, but whether because they were trying to replicate how movement would work on Helghan, a planet with more gravity than earth, or the bulky equipment the invading ISA troops are encumbered with, or just because they felt it would add more challenge, Guerrilla Games has made even the most basic task, just aiming at some dude's head, a monumental undertaking. I can't count the number of times I'd grab cover with the L2 button, pop up by nudging up on the left analog stick, draw a bead on a guy, click the right analog stick down to pull up iron sights... and then spend the next half-clip firing, re-adjusting, swinging just to either side of a Helghast trooper's head, and then over-correcting to do it all over again.
Due to a magical combination of being at the bottom of a stand-by list, Seattle being hit with a major snowstorm for the first time in like forever, and me being down here in San Francisco, I wasn't able to head up for the Holidays to hang out with the fam. I was however, quite capable of digging into the code that was sent over and digesting it essentially in one sitting (something I would repeat a few more times before writing this review). The game definitely tips closer to the shorter side than the lengthier one, weighing in at about seven hours or so my first time through things.
In those seven hours, though, I experienced some of the highest highs and lowest lows I've ever taken part in with a first-person shooter. The former was usually the result of some absolutely epic setpieces (or even just the way wind would wick across the face of Helghan, the homeworld of the Jin-Roh-lookin' baddies from the original Killzone and the PSP's Killzone: Liberation) and the latter invariably came down to fighting the game's controls the whole way. It may not have been the controls explicitly that caused the problem, but they were almost always at least a contributing factor -- if not the whole of my frustration.
I promptly finished the single-player campaign for Killzone 2 about eight or so hours after it arrived, which left me well over a month until I could actually talk about the game and it was killing me. I can't think of a game... well, pretty much as long as I've been doing this -- with perhaps the exception of Metal Gear Solid 2 -- that's had this much hype behind it, and MGS2 arrived when message boards weren't nearly as choked with console warriors and folks desperate for the PS3 to finally have its trump card. Amazingly, I actually managed to hold firm, and now I can begin the love-in.
Well, not quite. There'll no doubt be pages of praise ladled on the game after voicing my disdain here, but there is a very, very serious issue that I pray will actually be remedied either before the game ships or shortly thereafter with a patch: the controls in Killzone 2 can be outright horrible at times. Even after multiple trips through the single-player campaign and double-digit hours online, I still feel like I haven't been able to pin down the game's sensitivity sweet spot, and it's for a very specific reason: the game offers zero in the way of assistance when aiming.
I'm not even asking for some kind of target stickiness, but whether because they were trying to replicate how movement would work on Helghan, a planet with more gravity than earth, or the bulky equipment the invading ISA troops are encumbered with, or just because they felt it would add more challenge, Guerrilla Games has made even the most basic task, just aiming at some dude's head, a monumental undertaking. I can't count the number of times I'd grab cover with the L2 button, pop up by nudging up on the left analog stick, draw a bead on a guy, click the right analog stick down to pull up iron sights... and then spend the next half-clip firing, re-adjusting, swinging just to either side of a Helghast trooper's head, and then over-correcting to do it all over again.
