Killzone Series

[Weasel]

Having played the demos for Killzone 2 and 3, I am actually somewhat curious. These games seem to get a pretty negative stigma throughout parts of the gaming community, because a lot of people consider them Halo clones, and others believe that Killzone 2 was little more than a PS3 tech demo (even before its release, what with the infamous pre-rendered gameplay "footage"). But if one were to ask the crowd of PS3 fanboys, they all seem convinced that the Killzone games are the second coming of their personal gaming Messiah.

I'm somewhat interested in the series myself - I wonder if, ignoring all of the fanboy hype and anti-fanboy trolling, the Killzone games are actually any good as first-person shooters. I eventually plan to pick up the series (as cheaply as possible) and analyze them to figure out what works about them and what doesn't. My intent is to ultimately prove whether they're worth wading through all the hype and crap to enjoy.

Anybody else's thoughts?

[TheGunheart]

I honestly didn't see the resemblance to Halo when I tried the demos. They seemed much slower paced, with the second adding a cover system.

I guess they must be okay as cover shooters, but they aren't my thing.

[retr0gamer]

Take away the flashy graphics and they are a bit bland. Well Killzone 2 has some good set pieces and is a decent game but Killzone 1 is really poor. Not played Killzone 3. I think it's the lack of variety in the weapons enemies and locations that didn't impress me. It's worth playing KZ2 for a rainy weekend but I think with hindsight those 95%+ scores are going to look a little overated. However I think the totally negative remarks are pure hyperbole. Take that with a pinch of salt, I'm very picky with my FPS games and think Halo is similarly bland and even more over rated. If it's not Half-Life 2, System Shock 2or Stalker then I'm not impressed

[roushimsx]

I really enjoyed Killzone 1 despite the technical issues it had. It ran at a consistently low framerate, the AI had some serious pathfinding issues (and liked to get stuck on world geometry), and all sorts of random physics glitches would pop up out of the woodwork as you played (including one common gamebreaking bug that forced you to reload the level to try again), but I thought that the core gunplay, theme, and mission design more than compensated.

It did a pretty nice job of taking elements of pretty much every major conflict in the 20th century and transposing them into a futuristic sci fi setting? You want trench warfare? You got it. You like jungle warfare? Killzone's got your back. What, you want to be on the other side of an amphibious assault? Shit yea, let's go! Oh, what's that? You want to take the fight to the frozen Chosin? Ok! Ahh screw it, let's go house to house while we're at it!

Additionally, depending on who you played (as each character played distinctly differently!), there were minor differences in the paths through the levels. Kind of reminded me of Deep Space Nine: The Fallen in that regard. Nothing super huge, but it was a really neat thing for them to pull off. While the framerate wasn't stellar, the graphics did look quite nice. You just had to get used to the speed at which it ran...which I admit, took a little bit for me.

Really liked that game, far more than I thought I would. Never spent much time with the multiplayer. I think that was mostly because I didn't want to have to buy a separate memory card just to download patches and stuff to. The PS2 wasn't a very good machine for that kind of stuff, you know. The memory card access speed was such shit and they were only 8mb a pop

Killzone: Liberation was one of the reasons why I bought a PSP. Incidentally, it was internally considered Killzone 2, so when Killzone 2 was in development they were actually referring to that one as Killzone 3. Ended up changing the name for marketing more than anything. It was a pretty enjoyable top down action game, though the free expansion pack (which basically gave you the final episode and the true ending) was really weak and filled with cheapness. If you like boss battles that are epic only in that they take like 30+ minutes then you'll enjoy the expansion pack, otherwise I'd recommend not wasting your time with it and just enjoying the base game as is.

Haven't gotten around to playing Killzone 2 or 3 yet. Interested in givin' them a go at some point, just been so backed up with other projects.

[kitten]

I own both 1&2 but haven't played them. Every time I consider it, I consider how everyone I know who has really enjoyed them has generally been an idiot who refuses to play games outside Playstation, how they were hyped to death, even by Sony, as a "Halo killer" and how they deceived us with the "game footage" they showed for it. It just seems like a series I'd be unable to shake the "corporate hunger" taint off of.

But I could be wrong. Maybe it's really good. When I'm out of this game funk, I'll likely play them.