Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Killzone 2 First Impressions

This is not a MMORPG post but if your interested in what I have to say on PS3's latest shooter read on!


Pros


Addictive ranking system, medals and ribbons. Give me an XP bar to track my progress and I'm in! Perfect carrot on stick. The medals and ribbons ala achievements are just plain awesome. The game also gives a special badge that you can show off if you are one of the top 1,3, 6 and 10% players in the game, they update this weekly.


Playstyle choices - Killzone 2 accomodates most playstyles. From Rifleman, to medics, engineers, snipers, and squad leaders. You'll start out as a Rifleman but as you rank up certain badges/classes will be available to you. Last night I decided to be the Medic and it was hella fun. I had my assault rifle ready but as soon as one of my teammates go down I'm right there to revive them! I just recently unlocked the Engineer badges where I can set up bot sentrys that will guard an area the only downside is I only get a shotgun, I can always pick up others people gun though.


Stunning graphics. Easily one of the best looking First person shooters out there. Seeing your shadow as you run thru an alley just makes you smile.


It's just plain fun. Maybe because it just released last friday but I don't think no one can say that this game failed to deliver. Yes I do get frustrated in playing this game from time to time but it's not because of gameplay mechanics but rather it was me who was trying to Rambo my way in thru 4 opponents.



Cons


My biggest gripe is that I can't remap my buttons. Seriously most players will use the default control scheme but for players like me who like to reconfigure control layouts ... please give me an option.


My 2nd issue is the framerate. There would be times that frames AND controls feels sluggish. This is not game breaking though. I only encounter this when I'm on a 32 player mode and everybody is just everywhere not all the time but 1 in 8 games would be my guess. To counter this sometimes I would pick games with the max of 16 players which is just perfect.


Last but not the least are the spawn points. You know it really sucks to run for a mile just to get back into action but I have a good guess why they did it *cough spawn campers*



Overall

It's not perfect but gameplay, pace, graphics is just right. It's another damn good reason to keep playing first person shooters. I give it a 9/10.




Progress so far


I haven't played Killzone 2 as much as I would have liked last weekend because my buddies from COD:World at War are evil and wanted me to play with them. So I did and we had tons of fun.


That being said I still managed to get to the rank of Captain and get 8/8 Good conduct medals, 8/8 body count specialist, 8/8 kill specialist, 1/8 sidearm specialist heck I even managed to get a 3/8Medic Ribbon!


I plan on spending more time playing this week. Finishing the campaign mode would have to take a back seat as I would like to ride the wave of the influx of players on the first few weeks aka more nub kills. I would also like to complete the 8/8 Medic ribbon so I get the medic's secondary ability. From there I will level up my engineering badge then sniper! A headset would be nice but $50 bucks(blue tooth) is kinda steep.


I'll do another review a month from now to see where the game has gone, hopefully the game is still in good shape and I'm done with the campaign by then.

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