When we last left the Killzone universe, the ISA had
succeeded in driving a Helghast invasion force from the planet Vekta,
pushing back the futuristic fascists and their Emperor, Scolar Visari. Killzone 2
sets the stage for retaliation, with our ISA friends launching a
counter-attack on the planet Helghan in order to apprehend and detain
Visari himself. However, what looks at first to be an easy mission soon
turns nasty, and it's up to Sgt. Sev Sevchenko and his band of
inappropriately foul-mouthed pals to save the day.
While Killzone
has a rich backstory and plenty of depth, Guerrilla has always seen fit
to completely ignore such details in the games themselves, and sadly Killzone 2
is no exception. The plot is incredibly light, eschewing the
intellectual for the visceral, and simply tells a solid, if
unspectacular, war story. The main heroes are completely
interchangeable, unsympathetic and packing awkward, out-of-place
dialog. In stark contrast, the villains are about ten times more
likable, with the Brian Cox and Sean Pertwee providing the voices of a
pair of memorable bad guys in Visari and General Radec.
I've not had this much fun with a console FPS in a long time, and feel confident in saying that Killzone 2
is probably the best of its kind to come out this generation. While
some flaws are evident in the story and a number of design choices,
they pale in comparison to the purity of the gunplay and the meaty
action that prevails. If you own a PlayStation 3 and want to take
advantage of an online game service that you don't have to pay for,
this game is a required purchase. I won't tell you to believe the hype,
because it deserves to be free of such damaging nonsense. Standing on
its own and shirking the responsibility of a "PS3 killer-app", Killzone 2 is a simply superb experience. |
