Killzone

As it stands though, Killzone isn’t a triple-A title. It is, on the other hand, a sporadically entertaining and perfectly adequate FPS which any PS2-owning fan of the genre will probably enjoy.

While it's a competent shooter that can provide some great thrills, it's simply not in the same league as this holiday season's best first person shooters.

Buggy but not broken, generic but not ghastly, Killzone lacks anything beyond an average amount of appeal.

The FPS gameplay is a little on the mediocre side and the game is rife with flaws including a really bad slowdown glitch that permeates both the single-player and online modes.

The sound design is bad, Plan 9 From Outer Space Bad, meaning that it's so bad to the point that it's unintentionally hilarious. Without a doubt, this is the most memorable soundtrack of the year, but for all the wrong reasons.

The multiplayer is solid but the offline play just doesn't carry its fair end of the deal.

The game is just too ambitious for the aging PlayStation 2. The frame rate, control and save game issues make the game a hard unforgiving slog rather than fun at times. But despite that there's a lot to be admired about the game.

You'll not appreciate the "on-rails" feeling that Killzone provides. You will appreciate the wonderful graphics and score that ' barring the enemy voices ' is one of the best I've heard in a long while.

The hardware simply isn't powerful enough to consistently process what Killzone wants to do, in both single-player and online multiplayer modes. Similar to how Rare's "Perfect Dark" stressed the N64 near the end of that system's life, a game with otherwise excellent attributes finds itself arriving much too late for one party and a little too early for the next.

Combat, simply put, just doesn't feel right. The pacing feels too sluggish, and as a result, is largely unexciting.

The game is also a trying experience online. Apparent lag, even though you're playing on broadband, is everywhere. Character animations are limited and it's difficult to target someone from long distance.

Your allies are invulnerable for some reason, but that doesn't make them any more useful.

This disregard for some details feels somewhat connected to the lack of full story development as well.

Above average- it's just far from amazing.

You PS2 owning FPS junkies are no doubt going to love this beast, and the rest of you will have some fun with this game too, just don’t be disappointed when you realize that Killzone's not the ground-breaking experience I think we were all expecting.

I can only hope that when Guerilla gets around to making the sequel they obviously have planned for the PS3, they can make it the beautiful, polished experience they obviously wanted this one to be.

There's still some fun to be found here, but ultimately Killzone is a barely adequate game that probably won't hold your attention for very long.

The game just doesn’t scream “play me” after the first time or even after a few hours. The interesting little hooks are just too few and far between.

The strong multiplayer aspect may keep it barely afloat, but unless you simply must play a first-person shooter on your Playstation 2, we recommend Killzone for a rental, at best.

Our final issue with the game is that, there is no variety in what you are doing each level changes your location, immersing you into another lush environment, but the aim is always the same; whatever Helghan party you come across – kill them and move on.

Stunning visuals, intense audio and an interesting backstory can't quite make up for the mediocre gameplay and technological glitches.

As the game stands now, it’s just too mundane, slow and...well...gray (either literally and/or figuratively, depending on your palette preferences) to really merit much applause.

The innovative controls for the sniper rifle don't allow the player to pull off precise headshots when they're needed most, which leads to rising frustration.

While there is scope for each skirmish to play out differently, it's simpler to respond in kind to cheap deaths by lobbing pre-emptive grenades into scripted entry points - and in doings so, you're not so much numbed to the shock of Killzone's war as anaesthetised. [Christmas 2004, p.84]

An entertaining but sporadically inept first-person shooter whose shortcomings (crummy frame-rate, lackluster AI, etc.) are slightly outweighed by the things it does get right (intense firefights, great atmosphere, good sound, etc.).

An ambitious, interesting game, but it's badly undercut by terrible AI and annoying and very distracting graphical glitches. They're bad enough to make the game feel like a chore.

It has plenty of style, but the aged PS2 hardware sometimes can't keep up with the game's intensity. Online play is highly addictive, but the weapons lack proper balance to make it more competitive.

While Killzone is fairly satisfying, with suitably gung-ho action, there's never any variation, meaning what seems fun becomes wearisome after an hour or so. [Christmas 2004, p.96]

Aspirations aside, the gorgeous screenshots represent a game that is distressingly mediocre in motion...Without the ambitious graphics engine, Killzone's linear run-and-gun combat would vanish into the swarm of generic shooters.

Killzone's cool features such as enemies recognizing the threat of a grenade and running from it, secondary fire modes on weapons and the ability to play offline against bots in some creative forms of multiplayer would normally make a game fun, but most of these details are overshadowed by buggy graphics and monotonous sound.

Small innovations such as the camera jostle and dash screen blur would normally indicate a developer's attention to detail, but a slew of minor frustrations add up to make Killzone a cardiac in a jewel case.

Whether head shot or grenade to the feet or shotgun blast at point-blank, aiming your weapon never feels efficiently precise. [Dec 2004, p.60]

But at no point does it feel like anything but an old fashioned arcade shooter with a few more controls. When there are so many first person shooters available that offer opportunity for strategy ' with wide open levels and options for how to approach an objective ' it's disappointing that Killzone is so thin in that dimension.

After witnessing and playing through some of the most incredibly well designed, and fantastically vast levels in Halo 2, there's nothing but disappointment to gain from Killzone.

Whether the controls were intentionally made sluggish to make the game feel more realistic or if shoddy programming is to blame, the result is just horrible.

That Killzone doesn't live up to expectations shouldn't come as a major surprise to anyone; that Sony has chosen to release such a damp squib at this outrageously competitive time of year most definitely is.