Killzone

"HALO killer? Maybe on Vekta....."

After Guerrilla Games released a small article on there maiden game KillZone, the hype started to spread throughout the world. From the article came amazing screenshots with beautiful lighting effects and story about a war of two worlds.

On the world of Vekta, peace is kept by the ISA, a security force throughout the world to keep the crime down and wars won. Then came the Helghast; outcasts of vekta that were thrown out to uninhabited planet then called Helghan. After years of adapting to the deadly planet and its poisonous atmosphere, the Helghan army was at it's fullest potential- and headed back to Vekta. Their outer-defenses failed and the Helghast landed without trouble, emerging from their dropships and killing everything in their path.

You begin the game as Templar, a lifer who leads a small unit of ISA regulars that patrol the trenches, although you will continue through the game and be able to gain extra playable characters that all have their own special abilities and talents. Rico- A heavy weapons specialist who jad to watch his whole unit being wiped out by the Helgast, and now he swore revenge, Rico is often armed with a ISA chaingun with a rocket launcher mod. Luger- a female assasin part of a shadow unit is familiar with Templar and offers her help; she is able to use thermal vision and fire a silenced SMG. The final member of the four-man squad is Hakha- a defect from the Helghan army. He is able to go behind enemy lines and supply confidential information to the ISA militia.

First off, this game did not live up to its hype- people brought too much attention to the scene with only a short demo to play and short videos to watch. The actual gameplay is much more sloppy, you have no jumping abilities, or manual melee options- there is an action button (X) but it will only perform certain abilities when it decides too. Vaulting over barriers, climbing a ladder or even rifle-butting an enemy can be much more difficult than thought because the icon will not always appear- you may sneak up behind an enemy and wait for the melee icon but it will not show, then the helgast will notice you, turn around, and kill you.

The cinematics in this are amazing, the lighting one the thousands of helghast will leave you stunned, and the orange glow of their goggles adds the "wow" effect. The animations in this are decently well done, again some will happen a little too late or not at all. The visual in this game is in general the only thing they did do right. The many different choices of very well-designed weapons and character models are a nice change from the linear enviroments and repetetive firefights.

The sound in this game is repetetive and bland, and sometimes glitches up. I found when I was Templar and firing his assault rifle the sound would wuit on me when firing and the bullet sounds would be replaced by what sounded like tictac's being dropped on a tiled floor. The same goes for the music, sometimes it would seize up and quit only to leave an odd silence filled with gunfire. Along with all this the voice acting doesn't exactly make up for all of it, but then again, it's not the worst I've ever heard.

The game has about 10 levels broken up into 3-5 parts each that will take a good amount of time. But once you have finished them there are 2 other difficulties that prove even more of a challenge. So this game does have plenty of replay value, if you enjoy and are a true FPS fan I suggest you purchase this right away.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/28/04