I spent a lot of time playing Killzone 2 over the past few days and thought I’d chime in on what seems to be the latest craze… giving my impressions of Killzone 2.  There will be NO SPOILERS in this article, so feel free to read it even if you haven’t played or finished the single player campaign.  A funny thing happened to my impressions of the game last night though… keep reading to find out what happened.

First, let’s get this out of the way; visually, Killzone 2 clearly rocks.  It easily compares well with the best of the best console games.  I won’t get into the “best looking console game ever” hype, or “better than Crysis on a PC” talk… it should be enough that it’s one of the best looking console games ever.  I mean really, does anyone think the 2nd or 3rd prettiest girl in the world is somehow flawed or lesser because there is someone out there prettier?  No, you’d still crap yourself if she asked you out on a date, so let’s leave it at that… the game’s gorgeous (and you’re not getting a date from the 2nd or 3rd best looking girl in the world… although I hear the 5,341,992,493rd prettiest girl in the world would like to go out for hot-wings with you… I think her name is Bruce.)

To be fair, due to an unforseen division of personal property, my sound system is, well… no longer mine.  I’m using my TV speakers at the moment.  No surround sound for me, so I can’t really give my full impressions of the audio work here other than to say what I’ve heard in old-fashioned stereo sounded great.  The dialog was well written and well delivered.  William Shakespeare didn’t write the story, nor did Uwe Boll… it sits in a nice applicable, comfortable spot somewhere in the middle (closer to Shakespeare than Boll if you must know.)  The weapons all had appropriately chunky sounds, the voice acting was far above average in my opinion, and while I can’t specifically remember the music, that tells me that it must have been appropriate as it didn’t stand out as being bad.

A lot of folks are down on Killzone 2 because they say it’s derivative and didn’t really innovate, but I have to ask you how important innovation really is?  I go back the the “pretty girl” analogy.  We view beauty in people by a different set of rules than we’re using here I guess.  I personally don’t get caught up in the “innovation factor” if a game is a really great example of the genre and style it’s aiming for.  Frankly, that’s exactly what we have here.

I’ll go on the record as saying anyone dogging on Killzone 2 for not being innovative is being a nitpicky, attention-seeking whiner.  I hope you never enjoy any movies, music, television shows, books or any other form of entertainment again until you realize how silly that viewpoint is unless you’re comparing something that is a blatant copy of something else.  If a game like Killzone 2 was completely innovative, it wouldn’t have the FPS fan base chomping at the bit for it, it would somehow be different due to all the innovation.  Guerilla Games hit their mark with the game and while I won’t use the word “perfection” here, the phrase “best of class” might be a very appropriate and easily defendable label to use.

Okay, I promised I’d talk about “something” happening during my playthrough of the game so I’d better get to that before I forget.  Let me preface this by giving a little bit of background on my thoughts of linear gameplay and general gameplay difficulty.  Linear gameplay is not an automatic negative to me when playing a game.  A highly scripted linear vision of a game can still be extremely enjoyable.  I enjoyed the heck out of Gears of War 2 but it was super linear at the same time.  Being linear didn’t detract from my enjoyment of Gears of War 2 one bit.

Game difficulty is another area I may differ from other folks.  I expect easy/novice/amateur/whatever to be a given that you can just play through the game beginning to end without much hassle at all.  I expect normal/regular/default/whatever to be relatively easy to get through with some skill and/or perseverance.  It shouldn’t require super-human skill or endurance.  A typical player shouldn’t have any real problem getting through the game.  I expect hard/advanced/expert/veteran/whatever to be a real challenge even for experienced players… I would always prefer to see better skilled enemies rather than simply having more enemies or enemies that don’t seem to take much damage.

What I experienced in the Killzone 2 playthrough (on the normal skill level) was exactly what I expected… until… well, until I got to the last level.  Remember, I promised no spoilers here and I’ll keep my word.  The last level (which I verified as the last level by looking at a walkthrough after dying oh say 20 times) has such a difficulty spike over the entire rest of the game that it’s currently tainted the entire experience for me.  I’ve never claimed to be a super-skilled FPS player, but I would think being able to work my way through the rest of the game without any real showstoppers should somehow attest to the fact that I should be able to beat the last level.  I think part of the issue is the choice of checkpoints in the level because I had to replay minutes long sections numerous times because I hadn’t magically triggered whatever checkpoint marker that would allow me to continue further into the level after dying, but eventually… and I almost believe it was by dumb luck at times, I advanced checkpoint to checkpoint until I finally got frustrated and quit after playing the last level for over two friggin’ hours.

While not giving away any plot points, I’d like to generally describe for the folks wondering where exactly I’m having my problems; it’s in the two-story room after clearing the courtyard.  The courtyard was, in my opinion, a significant ramp-up in difficulty, but I was able to make it through by taking it slow and steady which I’m sure is the intended strategy.  In the room I’m in, I have no idea how you’re supposed to get through it (even after reading the walk-through, mind you) without a healthy dose of luck and in my case, a suspension of my tendency to put a game down after failing a level some 20+ times.

Don’t get me wrong… I’d LOVE to be one of those guys that fights through that level and gets that serious sense of accomplishment.  One of those guys that can talk about how tough that level was but how I somehow fought my way through it tooth and nail.  After over two hours on that final level last night, I felt much more like one of those guys that gives up at the end never to come back and finish the game for fear the frustration would completely outweigh all the fun I had throughout the rest of the game.  For the night at least, that’s exactly what I did.  I gave up and went to bed.

If you’ve already beaten the campaign mode I would encourage you to email me your personal strategy for this level (please don’t post it in a comment and ruin it for anyone else) by sending your tips to rothbart at sarcasticgamer dot com.  I’m sure there are a ton of people out there that will claim the level is “easy, once you know the trick” to which I’d simply counter with “I didn’t need to know any tricks for the other nine levels!”

To sum it up, impressions for Killzone 2 levels 1 through 9: wowsers!  Impressions for level 10: wowsers!  I even liked the vehicle sections of the game.  It’s safe to say we will see Killzone 3, I just hope we see it sooner than the length of time it took us to get from the E3 target render to the game we’ve got right now.  Killzone 3 in 2011 would make me happy!  A patch to bring level 10’s difficulty in line with the rest of the game would make me even happier!  If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go off and whimper in a corner trying to forget level 10 and remember how much I liked the first 9 levels…

Click here for multiplayer impressions from Lono and stay tuned for a “second impressions” write-up from Yamster.  We’re nowhere near being done with our Killzone 2 coverage.  I wouldn’t even be surprised to find Lono and his team working on a survival guide!

UPDATE: I can’t believe I totally forgot to mention the SIXAXIS controls in Killzone 2… Guerilla Games, kudos for your SIXAXIS choices.  Planting explosives was decent and sparingly used, but the sniping aspect…  bravo!  You need a steady hand and can quickly make slight adjustments to your aim.  It’s one of the best uses of SIXAXIS control I’ve seen yet.

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