Killzone 2

The hype for this game was unreal. Supposedly Killzone 2 was the Halo killer and a new killer app for Sony’s console. I heard this all before with the first game in the series on the PS2 which turned out to be an absolute stinker. However this time the professional review scores seemed to agree with this assessment. I saw the game recently for 10 Euros and thought I’d give it a go for that price.  Well turns out it was 10 Euros too much, Killzone 2 is an overhyped triple A dud.

The plot involves hanging out with a group of generic space machines that are the most boring companions in videogame history and spout some of the worst written lines in videogame history since FFVII botched translation job. You’re sent to take on the capital city of the generic space nazi enemies on the brownest planet in the galaxy. Everything in this game is brown, you won’t believe how many shades of brown the PS3 can generate and be equally amazed when the game changes palette to equally mundane shades of grey. For all the hype about how amazing the game graphics are this is a terrible looking game. You can have the best technology but it means nothing if your art direction is as poor as in this game. Even at that I’m not impressed by the technology at all. Environments in the game are absolutely tiny compared to the vast open spaces expected of today’s games.

The game itself is equally as monotonous and bland as the visuals.  Weapons are unexciting and boring with the exception of the flamethrower which looks awful but is actually fun to use when it appears. You will fight the same enemies over and over in similar settings with little to differentiate them. The game also includes terrible vehicle and turret sections that would have felt dated 7 years ago. This game really is nothing special at all and pretty damning of the press that they could get caught up in the hype for such a lousy game and give it such high review scores showing just how shallow and without backbones they really are. I think I’ll be giving Killzone 3 a wide berth.