Killzone 2 Review
I’m not even a third of the way through this game at 3 2/3 hours playtime, which is good, but there is something that bugs the crap out of me. Why did they have to make the Helghast British? I understand the need to make the voices clearly delineated, but this is just lazy and stupid. The accent doesn’t fit at all with the racial character of the Helghast- these are hard-bitten people, an entire planet of blue-collar workers, if you will. They’re not ‘proper’ or elegant, they’re disciplined and regimented, with a healthy dose of hatred to back it up. Besides, the British accent doesn’t work with the character designs either- they all wear respirators or gas masks, and normal voices don’t carry particularly well through those. I would have designed a completely new accent for the Helghast- something that cuts plosives, extends sibilants, emphasizes hard consonants. Look at the Helghast names- Scolar Visari, Mael Radek, Armin Metrac, Heff Milcher, the personal-name-less Colonel Cobar… The Helghast names are closer to German and Scandinavian languages than anything else (unsurprising, since Guerilla is based in the Netherlands). The British accent just doesn’t make any sense. As it stands, the accents makes them sound a little ridiculous, not scary at all, in direct conflict with their design.
Before I go onto my other issues with the game, I have to laud it- Killzone 2 is fun. Darn fun. Although I could blame it on the controls, (and I mostly will) I have to say that the game is appropriately tough, too. I’m playing on Hard, and I rarely come across a set-piece battle that doesn’t take at least two tries to get through. One mistake on Hard, you’re at death’s door. Two, and I hope your last checkpoint was not too long ago. In all other respects, it’s a standard console shooter. Melee, grenades, cover is a joke, shoot the bad guys, rinse and repeat.
Multiplayer is surprisingly good, too. More than anything else, though, the multiplayer makes me wish it was on PC- the formula is reminiscent of Battlefield 2 crossed with Call of Duty 4. You get points, you rank up, you unlock stuff, et cetera. It’s well-balanced and slow to introduce everything, ensuring that you get comfortable with the mechanics. The game-modes are refreshingly interesting- my favorite is Mission mode. Both sides persist on the same map, and various mini-missions are doled out one at a time, the next one commencing 30 seconds or so after the completion of the previous one. First you might get a keep-away mission, then capture and hold, then bomb defusal, then assassination, and so on until one side completes the target number of missions (5 or so). It’s easy to find a game, and the interface is well thought-out. I just wish they’d let me use a mouse and keyboard.
The visual style of the game is excellent- glowing red and black for the Helghast, blue and tan for the ISA, a dingy, windswept world that looks well-used and downtrodden. The weapons have plenty of punch in the sound department, and although the animations are nothing special, they do the job credibly. However, there are questions raised by the visual detail, such as: If the Helghast need to wear masks because of Helghan’s crappy atmosphere, how the heck do ISA troops breathe without similar gear? In addition, if the Helghast weapons use cylindrical magazines, why don’t they hold more bullets than the ISA weapons? They do roughly the same amount of damage, so they’re similar calibers, but it’s a well-known fact that a helical magazine can hold many more rounds than a traditional STANAG-type magazine. I’m not going to go into the crushingly obvious ones, like the glowing, because that’s unfairly picking on what was obviously a BLATANT gameplay decision.
My last problem with the game is the same one I had with G.I. Joe when I was little- the bad guys are way cooler! I hate the ISA- they’re a bunch of wimpy generic tough-guy clones. Visari is crazy, but awesome, and Radek’s fashion sense is good enough that, when combined with his ruthlessness, makes me think he’s a much better general than anyone in the ISA. Their weapon designs are also the more futuristic and interesting ones, unlike the ISA’s generic M16/M4/M60 clones.
All in all, a game with picking up. Too bad you have to fight on the side of the cliché good guys, though. I hope Killzone 3 has a Helghast campaign.
