Review: Killzone 2

I’m typically a tyrant about big-ticket rehash video games—hyped sequels, tried-and-true formulas that stay the course—but a lot of people assume that’s what all video games are, anyway, and virtual comfort food has its merits. March sees the release of a few big games like this, and I’ll post looks at Street Fighter IV and Halo Wars in the next couple of days. For now, let’s look at the latest PlayStation 3 game to desensitize us into murdering dudes with bloodshot eyes.

In Killzone 2, you’re running and gunning in first-person, combining the hefty, “realistic” control of Call of Duty with sci-fi macho-man nonsense—if Gears of War were darker and even more generic, I guess. Bunch of guys in weird helmets hate humans, but they’re pretty human-like, and someone is ordering you to kill them, even though the person giving those orders might be one of the bad guys. And yet, no sign of Keanu Reeves. Whatever.

Even though the game’s plot targets Red Bull-drinking man-children, I really want to like Killzone 2’s basic experience, or at least its attempts to refine squad-based killin’ games. KZ2 makes you feel like you’re running around real, war-torn environments, rather than blatant “go-this-way” corridors in most other games. It has a notable variety of routes and vertical sprawl to kill off that feeling of running from point A to point B. Its squads of enemies are generally tactical and intelligently aware of what you’re doing. And, on top of art direction that does “gritty” without looking like mud, the game’s tech is pretty top-notch, though the impressive bits are usually more subtle things like smokescreens. Those shits are hard to code.

But they make it way too tedious to kill in a zone that is advertised for its killing. Nitpick time: First-person control with a gamepad already feels awkward enough, but KZ2’s joysticks suffer from a massive “dead zone”—unlike similar games, you have to push these sticks a third of the way before aiming begins. Combine that with a super-slow aim speed and a bizarre delay on recognizing your joystick taps, and good luck lining up a clean shot on a bunch of uber-tactical freak enemies. Also, if you want to duck behind something and fire, you have to perform a goddamned ritual: first, hold down a shoulder trigger button to crouch. Then, hold upward on the left joystick to peek from cover. Then, click down on the right joystick to steady your aim. Afterward, jump five times on a DDR pad. Can’t the game automate this? If a dude with glowing eyes is coming at me with a rifle and I’m standing behind a barrel or a big rock, why wouldn’t my default decision be to hide my fucking heart behind it?

Online killin’ fares better, at least. The eight online levels are just as massive and memorable, feeling like natural environments and making the most of vertical space. The CoD-style unlock system tilts a little more to the hardcore, forcing lots of work for new abilities and weapons, but even my impatient ass found it fun to work my way up its ladder. Most online fights revolve around a rotating objective system that is light years more fun than what Resistance 2 attempted. As far as controls, online-only games nix the crappy duck-and-cover mechanic, and while the joystick still sucks, at least everybody else is suffering from the same thing.

But I can’t soundly approve KZ2 online, either. I hopped into games with a certain bald nerd on Monday night, and he went into great detail this morning about how much of a pain it was to join an online game together. The short version: It took us 30 minutes to trick KZ2 into letting us kill on the same team, and that was after we’d already gone through the effort of starting an in-game “clan.” Ugh. Still feel unclean. Oh, and those in-game crashes he bitched about are no joke.

I refuse to play this game’s single-player mode again—the aim issues made me break my “don’t play games that make you angry” rule too many times—but I might go back online when Sony gets around to fixing it.