"A Non Biased, No Comparison, and Honest review from a once Killzone fan. (Offline modes)"

This review is only of the off-line modes of this game, including Single multiplayer, 2-players multiplayer and story mode. This review also contains NO COMPARISON between certain games, no Halo, no Medal of Honor, no nothing. Just a few small mentions of games in general, oh and ICO. So no need to be pissed about me calling it something-killer and others.

Graphics

They weren't BS'ing, this game has some of THE best textures the PS2 can ever do, and the character faces are GREAT. The faces are so detailed they look like they are made for a PC FPS. Environments are also extremely detailed and have lots of atmosphere with the fog, lightning and other effects.
The sunlight in a several areas in this game are also inspired by those of ICO's, and we should all know already how amazing ICO's lightning is. Soft, bright and beautiful. Guns are very detailed, even your hands are, and they all react to the lightning around them. Like going darker when going into shadow areas and lighter in light areas. The running effects only adds to the goodness of the graphics.

Aside from those, the framerate is mostly pretty smooth in the single player game, but when in the multiplayer games, it lacks. Several of the smaller mulitplayer maps has pretty bad framerate when playing 1 player battle, and if you go for 2 players... it runs at 5-10 fps. Making it barely playable AT ALL, no wonder why they took the co-op out. The animations in 2 players multiplayer also sucks. Three or four frames for walking and death animation... that's all. It make it so it seems as if they are skating on the floor. However, they are not bad in the single player modes (including story). When you hit them with small impact weapons, they go through a death animation. While rag-dog physics take over when big impact weapons hit them. But the the rag dolls usually hang onto the most unusual places, such as hanging in the middle air on a flat wall...

Though the face details are awesome, the emotions are horrible, if there are any at all. Also, the mouth doesn't move according to the dialogue, all it does is open and close repeatingly with minor animations so it seems like the character is talking. The textures also need some time to load up, so there are cases where all you see is a bland textured ground or wall. This also happens to character models. Not too often does this happen, but enough to be noticeable. In the end, the graphics in this game is some of the best the PS2 can do, props to it.

Gameplay

A.I., the most hyped up feature in this game aside from the graphics, so how is it? It's not as bad as some reviews say they are. There are cases where they come to find and shoot me while I try to hide to recover my health, instead of just waiting on the other side. They hide when they need to reload. They run away from threats such as bombs. They use secondary fire often.
Sometimes, they hide on purpose, after a few seconds they pop up with a strong secondary fire immediately, leading me to death. They walk around while shooting sometimes to make themselves harder to hit, instead of just stand still. They organize and work as a team, some will reload while others fire; and sometimes they gang up on me and shoot me to death, etc.

However, they ain't ALL good though. The A.I. gets confused often, not knowing what to do, looking around while I am shooting at them. Stopping and crouching sometimes while they should be running. Waiting a while and not shooting AFTER they spot me sometimes. The main problem with the A.I. tough, except getting confused often, is that they are just NOT aggressive enough. Such as: waiting a second for every 2 bullet they shoot. Yes it is more accurate, but they do that even if I am only a meter away. There are times that they don't shoot back while they are taking hit, so if you have a lock onto them, they are as good as dead. Instead of running towards to battlezone and fight, they sometimes stop and crouch or run back and forth (as if they are guarding an area, an area with nothing of interest) while they should be going over to the other side and destroy something in order to win, etc.

These are a few examples of how they aren't aggressive enough. When playing Team Deathmatch or other Team modes with them, it'd be VERY quiet because most of them are just walking around and stopping instead of charging and attacking. You can see what I am talking about if you go to the "Extras, War Scenes" and see the A.I. battling it out. This make the game much more slow paced and boring than it should have been. This problem isn't so obvious in small maps, but the bigger maps are just very boring playing with the A.I. However, the A.I. is overall good and is so much better and smarter than many other games in general out there. I think the only reason why people say the A.I. is bad is because of how much it's hyped up.

The main problem of the game, is that it just isn't TOO fun. It just lack the fun factor that some other FPS has. Maybe because it's basically the same enemies over and over again. Maybe because all the characters are not that much different at all, and that stealth is useless in this game. Maybe it lacks the open environment and intense and fast action some other FPS have, but it just doesn't feel TOO fun. It's pretty good though, just not "great" fun-wise.

There are some places where you can press the "action" button and leap over a fallen tree, a pipe or others. This is really useless , you can only leap over what you are suppose to, which is not much at all. They basically adding the tree or pipe or others in the game just so they can show you how cool the leaping animation is. All this can be solved by a simple jump function in the game, but it doesn't have any. Since if you can jump, then you would be able to jump over the small trenches, fallen fences, etc., and be free! But you can't, you are only restricted to one road and one road only. Yes, this is a very linear game, and it only has a small road for you to walk through more often than not, with the exception of some bigger areas in the game like the forest. Because of how linear and narrow you path is in this game, you are not allowed to use vehicles. This is really a shame since the vehicles in this game are well designed and seem to be very fun to have a ride in. However, occasionally you can take over a mounted gun and fire upon on-coming enemies. At least it's better than nothing.

Another thing I was excited about are the scripted scenes, which are, in fact, disappointing. They are actually very minor stuff that happens very often and naturally in other games. Such as dropships dropping soldiers, stuff blowing up, plane crashing, etc. Sometimes they are so minor I didn't realize what I saw were actually the hyped up "memorial sequences" the developer was talking about.

Sound

Awesome. The wind blowing pass my ears, the explosions, the gun fires, they are all recorded very well. Talkings and screams in the battlefield while gun fire and explosions are going on adds to the atmosphere. Every guns sound different, be it reloading or firing. The voice actings are also actually very believable. Especially in the CG cut scenes, they scream and yell out, and talk with the feel like they are actually in a battlefield. Just one thing though, there are NO music whatsoever! Some, but they only happen every so often. You can hear the great sound effects and feel the seriousness of the game with no music, but a little more music ain't a bad thing! Especially in multiplayer with the A.I., it's so quiet I can hear flies flying in my room.

Conclusion

This game is a Rent, not because it's bad, it's just that you should rent it and see if it meets your expectation. It doesn't meet mine, but I can see that it's still a good game. If it does, buy it! If not, have fun with it for the weekend (or buy it just coz it's a good FPS on PS2). Afterall, it ain't bad. It isn't GREAT, but certainly not bad, it's a good game with obvious flaws. Hope the flaws will be fixed in the next FPS Guerrilla will be making!

7/10 - Good game with obvious flaws.
However one of the very top PS2 FPS you can get.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/10/04