Killzone Screenshots   The Final Say! Gameplay 6.0 Graphics 9.0 Sound 9.0 Value 6.0 Killzone  - reviewed by Tory Favro  Review Date: December 2004 Review Score 6/10 Not Based on an Average  Distributed By: Sony

Highly anticipated, unfortunately Killzone fails to deliver all round as a must have title on the PS2. I must admit, I was the same as the rest of you out there salivating at the thought of getting your hands on this title when I first saw the insane level of detail that the game has to offer, however it has come at a price my friends that simply is one that I would not be willing to pay. There is a group of humans called the Helghast who left Earth to do their own deal on another planet. Mutated by the new environment, the Helghast became a stronger race as a result. They have one plan now funnily enough, to come back to Earth and take it for their own. You play the role of one of four characters (you get to choose which one down the track) who are fighting for Earth and all who live there. One interestingly enough is a Helghast traitor. First thing I should say is that this game does look impressive until you start moving. The way that they've achieved such good looking graphics is to have compressed models and textures in the background that gradually swap to high detailed ones as you approach them. The timing on this is horrendous and often I would jump as a dead body would all of a sudden twitch right next to me as it made the all too late switch to the hi res model. This was a common occurrence during gameplay that I simply found unacceptable. Killzone is amazingly linear with you lacking the ability to jump the lowest obstacles that are scattered in your way. To say this was annoying was an understatement of the highest nature, it damn well sucked. The rest of your squad don't help matters by getting in the way, not shooting at the enemy and generally hampering your progress. The enemy is just as dumb, firing one minute and then just standing around while you pick them off. In an early level you first get the sniper rifle which I always love using in shooters and you have to take out some Helghast across the street. At first it was all good with the enemy fairly ably ducking in and out of the way. Then two of them clipped straight through a wall and started firing. After taking them out they continued to stand, clipped in and out of the wall. If the game environments weren't so limiting you would be over the moon with how good they look up close with some of the best particle effects that I've seen in some time on any system. Dust rises and settles and there is steam in swamp environments. There is a real feeling of mood in the gaming world but the rest of the game destroys that totally. One thing that I did like was the way the camera moved with your character when climbing ladders and hurdling the odd obstacle that the game allows you to. Another thing that really jacked me was that non player characters could move razor wire barriers by lifting them and setting them aside but you couldn't do it. It just seemed to be too inconsistent with what I would expect from a game with visuals this good. Audio is the only part of this game that is not flawed with some brilliantly composed themes and general gameworld sounds were vibrant and assisted in immersion. The music struck me of some World War Two tunes I had heard in movies, spiced up a bit when the Helghast come into the fray.

If I had to complain about the audio at all, the only thing I could fault is that the Helghast have a very limited amount of dialogue that they speak and it does get quite repetitive.

All things said and done Killzone is a game that most likely won't be played again after the first time it's complete, even though you get to play as other characters the difference isn't enough to encourage a repeat performance. Killzone appears to be a game that could have verged on greatness but either deadlines or shoddy testing have really wrecked it for the Guerilla team. There are various multiplayer modes available online, but with the problems that I mentioned throughout the review made it simply annoying to play.

After all that knocking, I can tell you however that I am really keen to see if they ever do a follow up type game as Guerilla had a really good vision for this game and if more time had been taken with quality control and programming issues, this game would have been right up there with the best of them. I strongly recommend that you rent this one before committing to a purchase

- Tory Favro