Is 7/10 a low score to give Killzone 2?

[Wargamer]

The review tastes of hypocrisy.

The fact is, if you substituted the Killzone References for Halo references, you'd have a perfectly fair and valid Halo 3 review. Everyone proclaimed how fucking awesome Halo 3 was, and it wasn't. Now we're seeing people try and be 'cool' by slagging off Killzone 2. I obviously haven't playing anything bar the demo, but I seriously doubt it's a Halo 3 repeat.

So, your telling me that Halo is terrible, but got great reviews, and the same thing is happening with Killzone except Killzone is a "good" game?

Subjective

They are both great games, how can you possibly say Killzone 2 is great, but Halo 3 is not?

Very easily.

Killzone was crap. There, I said it. The controls were unintuitive to the point of actively making me cry 'what the fuck?', I never once related in any way to the protagonist (though comparing him to Master Chief with hindsight I actually prefer Killzone), and overall the game struck me as being a very bad attempt to recreate Perfect Dark's greatness; yet another very pretty, yet very shallow inclusion to the overstuffed, crap-filled world of First Person Shooters.

However, Killzone had one element that did survive, and stuck with me long after I'd returned the game to its owner. No, it wasn't the Multiplayer, that was passable at best; it was the Helghast. There was something about them that called to me, that made me say "God, they are bad-ass. If only the game were better..."

To call me a fan of Killzone would be a mistake; I enjoyed the Multiplayer, but that is as much because of the people I played with as the game mechanic itself - I'd have enjoyed myself just as much playing Duke Nukem 3D.

What got me excited about the sequel was, simply, the Helghast. In the same way Resistance won me over by the line "Aliens In WW2", Killzone drew me in by inserting an extremely bad-ass enemy. The Demo destroyed all doubts by taking the control system I never liked and throwing it in a fire, replacing it with something that felt very familiar and instantly accessable. Killzone 2 has taken the one element I liked about the original, ditched the rest, and thrown in some clever Cover mechanics to convince me I don't need five Gigs worth of memory taken up by MGS4 to enjoy a bit of tactical combat.

The problem with this review is that I cannot possibly be the only one in this situation. I respect the mechanical excellence of Halo, but to view the series of a whole it has, as I said, tanked. Halo 3 is a piss-poor solo experience with a very generic multiplayer attached and a sea of howling Fanboys to push it into the gaming top-spot. Killzone, like Halo, is being pushed by hype. However, rather than actually admitting it deserves its hype, having won back people like myself who actually didn't like the first game, reviewers have donned the Retard Hat and declared 'it can't be any good!'.

Halo 3 was shit. Killzone 2 is not. The worst criticism you can level at Killzone 2 is that it is not doing anything new, but that's a completely invalid argument. Sometimes, people don't need, or want, the FPS genre to be reinvented. Sometimes, we buy an FPS to play an FPS.

 

[D_987]

*Snip*

Weren't you the person who wrote that demo review of Killzone proclaiming how amazing it was going to be?

Edit: I seem to have gotten confused...I originally assumed you were calling Killzone 2 "crap". When you mentioned Killzone.

I stick by my statement, you can't, as a gamer, call Halo 3 crap and Killzone 2 otherwise.

 

[RAKais]

The review tastes of hypocrisy.

The fact is, if you substituted the Killzone References for Halo references, you'd have a perfectly fair and valid Halo 3 review. Everyone proclaimed how fucking awesome Halo 3 was, and it wasn't. Now we're seeing people try and be 'cool' by slagging off Killzone 2. I obviously haven't playing anything bar the demo, but I seriously doubt it's a Halo 3 repeat.

So, your telling me that Halo is terrible, but got great reviews, and the same thing is happening with Killzone except Killzone is a "good" game?

Subjective

They are both great games, how can you possibly say Killzone 2 is great, but Halo 3 is not?

Very easily.

Killzone was crap. There, I said it. The controls were unintuitive to the point of actively making me cry 'what the fuck?', I never once related in any way to the protagonist (though comparing him to Master Chief with hindsight I actually prefer Killzone), and overall the game struck me as being a very bad attempt to recreate Perfect Dark's greatness; yet another very pretty, yet very shallow inclusion to the overstuffed, crap-filled world of First Person Shooters.

However, Killzone had one element that did survive, and stuck with me long after I'd returned the game to its owner. No, it wasn't the Multiplayer, that was passable at best; it was the Helghast. There was something about them that called to me, that made me say "God, they are bad-ass. If only the game were better..."

To call me a fan of Killzone would be a mistake; I enjoyed the Multiplayer, but that is as much because of the people I played with as the game mechanic itself - I'd have enjoyed myself just as much playing Duke Nukem 3D.

What got me excited about the sequel was, simply, the Helghast. In the same way Resistance won me over by the line "Aliens In WW2", Killzone drew me in by inserting an extremely bad-ass enemy. The Demo destroyed all doubts by taking the control system I never liked and throwing it in a fire, replacing it with something that felt very familiar and instantly accessable. Killzone 2 has taken the one element I liked about the original, ditched the rest, and thrown in some clever Cover mechanics to convince me I don't need five Gigs worth of memory taken up by MGS4 to enjoy a bit of tactical combat.

The problem with this review is that I cannot possibly be the only one in this situation. I respect the mechanical excellence of Halo, but to view the series of a whole it has, as I said, tanked. Halo 3 is a piss-poor solo experience with a very generic multiplayer attached and a sea of howling Fanboys to push it into the gaming top-spot. Killzone, like Halo, is being pushed by hype. However, rather than actually admitting it deserves its hype, having won back people like myself who actually didn't like the first game, reviewers have donned the Retard Hat and declared 'it can't be any good!'.

Halo 3 was shit. Killzone 2 is not. The worst criticism you can level at Killzone 2 is that it is not doing anything new, but that's a completely invalid argument. Sometimes, people don't need, or want, the FPS genre to be reinvented. Sometimes, we buy an FPS to play an FPS.

Killzone is so full of generic things it makes me rage when you compare such generic rubbish to Halo.

The original Halo revolutionised Console FPSs, it was original, the storyline was well put together with a variety of unique enemies and weapons and an amazing backstory to do with the Forerunners and the Halo rings.
Then Halo 2 arrived (with an admitedly poor ending) and revolutionised console multiplayer and then Halo 3 came along to finish the excellent story.
The multiplayer experience is fun and I'm sorry you can't find friends to play it with or you lack the technical abilities to press a mute button. If you have a ps3 and not an Xbox, then you have no right to criticise a multiplayer experience that is critically acclaimed.

killzone has one of the most boring story lines going... oh who couldnt have thought up an uninteresting storyline as a down trodden sub race of the human species rises up and repeatedly trys to conquer the human race they hate so much blahdey blahdey blah.

Killzone cannot and never will be able to hold anything against the Halo series.

 

[McClaud]

Halo 3 was shit. Killzone 2 is not. The worst criticism you can level at Killzone 2 is that it is not doing anything new, but that's a completely invalid argument. Sometimes, people don't need, or want, the FPS genre to be reinvented. Sometimes, we buy an FPS to play an FPS.

No, it is a completely valid argument. I'm not saying it is a piece of shit, but I am saying that it is not deserving of a 10/10 from what I got from the demo. The demo did little to impress me except for the improvement over the last Killzone game and the graphics. Otherwise - like Halo 3 - it is passable as a decent multiplayer FPS.

I think you are confusing or re-interpreting what I'm saying (and a few others are saying) for your own ego here. It doesn't have to be re-invented, but it has to be significantly different in experience and function for it be the best FPS of all time. If I wanted to repeat every motion and function of Gears of War (for example), I would go play Gears of War. Same for Halo 3. Same for Battlefield 2. Etc.

And since it still has a ways to go, forever it will be a 7/10 for some people.

 

[KDR_11k]

Do FPSes really need a story that goes beyond "They're not you! Shoot them!"?

 

[D_987]

*snip*

Well, besides Halo's innovation in Combat Evolved, the series hasn't really innovated since then. My argument is simple; the two games are so alike, you cannot argue one is better than the other.

Halo 3 has a fantastic multi-player mode, so much so that it has been the most played game on Xbox Live, a year after its release. The storyline in the third was nothing spectacular, and Halo 3 : ODST is their way of apologizing.

Killzone 2 is very generic, it looks good, it plays good, but its nothing specular. Its gameplay mechanics are similar to that of the Rainbow six : Vegas series. Yes, its a very good, well polished game. But to honestly argue one is better than the other (especially if you include when the games were / will be released. ) is absurd.

 

[Wargamer]

*Snip*

Weren't you the person who wrote that demo review of Killzone proclaiming how amazing it was going to be?

Edit: I seem to have gotten confused...I originally assumed you were calling Killzone 2 "crap". When you mentioned Killzone.

I stick by my statement, you can't, as a gamer, call Halo 3 crap and Killzone 2 otherwise.

Oh yes I can. As I said, Halo was made out to be some kind of insanely awesome BEST FPS OF ALL TIME NEVER NEED ANOTHER game. It wasn't. The solo play was extremely disappointing, and the Multiplayer don't count because it's a solo game with multiplayer as a bonus feature.

Killzone 2 feels right in every sense. Wow, I don't pick up the controller and feel like I've never played this kind of game before... no shit! It's an FPS! You point the gun, pull the trigger, things die! I've been doing that since DOOM! All that's changed is the Portable Armoury is gone, Health Bars have become Red Rings of Death, Demons became people and Real is Brown these days.

I say again; where did I say I wanted Killzone 2 to be totally groundbreaking? I didn't. The Cover mechanic is more than enough 'innovation' for me. People claim it's just 'polishing existing mechanics' like it's a bad thing, and that is where the bullshit begins.

Xbox Retards proclaimed Halo 3 was the greatest FPS of all time, and it wasn't. It still got empty praise.

Killzone 2 is the greatest FPS of all time. the FPS mechanic has been polished to a mirror sheen, and all anyone can do is turn up their nose and say "First Person? Darling, that is so last generation!"

I can only conclude this attitude has been spawned by Xbox Fanboys and assorted gaming retards who cannot accept perfection, and wouldn't understand it if they could. Killzone 2 brings nothing new to the table. Who fucking cares? Over half of my top five FPS games are almost a decade old, if not older. Believe me, I could go through your entire library and dismiss every single game as shit by using the words "Perfect Dark did it first". Clearly, if games had to have something totally new and innovative each time, we would not have any more FPS games; we'd all still be playing Perfect Dark.

So, I say again, to mark down Killzone 2 for lack of originality is rediculous. It is a Shooter so solid you could use it as a foundation block for a skyscraper. It's mechanics are so fine tuned the developers must work for Beugatti, and the graphics are absolutely beautiful. More important than this, Killzone 2 has salvaged the best FPS villains I've seen since the Chimera (discounting the Dreddverse, naturally) and re-used them in a game that is actually playable.

Killzone 2 is not trying to say "this is how the future will be". That's the job of DOOM, Perfect Dark, Halo: Combat Evolved and whatever the next big thing is that doesn't involve some tosser in green plastic armour. Killzone 2 is saying "This is Pure FPS Perfection. You won't do better."

I mean that. I do not believe there will be another FPS to top Killzone 2. New games will come with 'innovations', and they will 'revolutionise the genre', but ultimately that will be just another way of changing the rules; changing them just enough so they no longer have to compete. Before Goldeneye, all FPS games were Doom Clones. Until Perfect Dark, all FPS games were Goldeneye Clones. Then we had Halo, and Halo Clones followed. We won't get any Killzone Clones - we will get Halo Clones that fail to live up to Killzone 2, and then there will be the next big shift in the genre, and we will have the Next Big Thing Clones.

But DOOM is still god-like, Perfect Dark is still god-like, and Killzone 2 will be god-like. I'm not going to automatically promote it into my Top 5, not yet anyway, but going by the repeated run-throughs of the Demo, and how the game looks, sounds and feels, I know Killzone 2 will stand the test of time. Feel free to go off and find something more 'cutting edge', but real quality doesn't need a gimmick.


For the record, I would not give Killzone 2 a 10/10. That rating is reserved for 2017, if I can still pick it up and love it just as much as the day I bought it. That's why Halo 3 gets a nice round 3/10 from me - I've already found far superior Multiplayer.

8/10 at worst for Killzone 2, based off mechanics and assuming a single-player game. 9/10 if the Multiplayer is solid.

 

[D_987]

Feel free to go off and find something more 'cutting edge', but real quality doesn't need a gimmick.

...You are truly deluded by your fanboyism...

 

[searanox]

Killzone 2 looks like an utterly forgettable, completely unoriginal game with decent but unexceptional combat, passable storyline, etc. Maybe the gameplay is done very well, I don't know, but it looks to me like a slower Call of Duty with a cover system that rewards the player more for tactics than raw accuracy and reflexes, which is a good thing, but not enough to push the game over the top for me. Even if you do something really well, if you don't bring anything new to the table then I don't think you should be getting rave reviews these days. We need to really reward the industry for more than just technical achievements (not to say those aren't important), and with games like Killzone 2 receiving accolades, that won't happen anytime soon.

What really gets me is the reaction of all the fans to reviews that are anything less than perfect. I've seen the game given respectable scores like 8/10 and 9/10, and the amount of hatred directed towards the "Xbots" who make it their job to critically evaluate games has been absolutely stunning. Killzone 2 may be the first true bragging rights the PlayStation 3 has over the Xbox 360, which probably gives most PlayStation 3 fans incentive enough to defend it. But let's be honest. The game has very good graphics, and that is the major reason people are looking forward to it. Those visuals alone are enough to increase its average review score by at least 20%, I'd wager, and impressive enough to really stand out despite the bland art style. PlayStation 3 fans and graphics whores alike have been looking forward to this game for months, and now that the reviews are in, they can't accept the fact that the game isn't actually a revolutionary, breathtaking experience. Oh, and I should mention that it isn't on shelves yet, so nobody singing its praises has actually played it yet.

Ah, the Internet. Where reason goes to die.

 

[McClaud]

Killzone 2 is the greatest FPS of all time. the FPS mechanic has been polished to a mirror sheen, and all anyone can do is turn up their nose and say "First Person? Darling, that is so last generation!"

Okay, delusions aside, you're kidding, right?

I'm a PS3 owner, and I love my PS3. I liked playing KZ2 but even I don't think that it's the greatest FPS of all time. Or that it will be unbeaten.

It's people like you who actually cause stagnation in games. Everything can be improved. When something comes out that beats KZ2, you've given people every right now to hang this post in your face for time infinite. Because you are a fanboy wandering awfully close to the "fantard" zone.

Don't be that guy. Honestly, we have enough fantards as it is.

 

[Kiutu]

No score is too low for any game because ultimatly a score is merely an opinion and any opinion is valid as long as it truly is theirs. Killzone 2 though already is gaining the same kind of hate I have for Halo 3 because of those who like it so much being well...fanatics who need to stop treating their repsective game as some sort of earth-born deity. I do not hate Killzone (never played it and likely never will as I am not a PS3 owner) but I do hate it's fans.

 

[The Black Adder]

The demo sucked. But I'll probably rent the game and beat in a day.

 

[Wargamer]

Killzone 2 is the greatest FPS of all time. the FPS mechanic has been polished to a mirror sheen, and all anyone can do is turn up their nose and say "First Person? Darling, that is so last generation!"

Okay, delusions aside, you're kidding, right?

I'm a PS3 owner, and I love my PS3. I liked playing KZ2 but even I don't think that it's the greatest FPS of all time. Or that it will be unbeaten.

It's people like you who actually cause stagnation in games. Everything can be improved. When something comes out that beats KZ2, you've given people every right now to hang this post in your face for time infinite. Because you are a fanboy wandering awfully close to the "fantard" zone.

Don't be that guy. Honestly, we have enough fantards as it is.

I have already said I expect a game to beat Killzone - but it will do so by changing the rules.

DOOM is not Perfect Dark. Perfect Dark is not Halo, etcetera etcetera.

It is not possible to claim Perfect Dark 'beats' DOOM. It doesn't. DOOM is a very different breed of game; it is technically a 'First Person Shooter', but pluck out ten random FPS games today and they will be so unlike DOOM you'll have to make up a new genre for it. This is the point - Modern FPS games are Halo Clones; red ring of death, two guns max, and so on.

Killzone 2 represents as close to perfection of that format as we have yet seen, and I think it's as far as we'll get. I am a die-hard Resistance fan, but playing through the games again made me realise how FPS games as a whole are getting stale. The FPS is due to be reborn, and Killzone 2 isn't it. Killzone 2 is the swan-song for the Sixth Generation of FPS games, the Masterwork to place to one side and admire whilst the Seventh Generation gets going.

I don't know what all the FPS games will be copying next, but that's largely meaningless - I'll still be playing the older classics. It will take a lot more than Captain Dumbass - Space Awesome Guy to stop me blowing away Cyberdemons.

 

[McClaud]

Well, I tried being as nice as I could, but it appears that my words fall on deaf fanboy ears.

So I'm leaving the discussion, hoping that someone can talk sense into Wargamer.

 

[samsprinkle]

Games like this tend to get 10's simply because they got da hookup...I think it's refreshing to see a company take them down a notch, while still telling it how it is...

So you're automatically assuming that everyone other than Edge is right simply because they're the ones who say its not good? Brilliant deduction.

Look, the fact of the matter is that this game actively made a group of people who are paid to be 360 fanboys say its a great game. If people who are paid by how anti-Ps3 they are say the flaws are negligible, then the flaws are negligible and its a great game.

Cool your jets. I didn't say it was a bad game. I just said it's refreshing to see a overhyped shooter be recognized by reviewers as just that, overhyped. All the media you would have thought that god and chuck norris got together and put this game together...

 

[RAKais]

Well, I tried being as nice as I could, but it appears that my words fall on deaf fanboy ears.

So I'm leaving the discussion, hoping that someone can talk sense into Wargamer.

Tried too. You see, Wargamer can't see any sense because all Wargamer is seeing is from the inside of Killzone 2's arse. ^^

Look, Killzone is nowhere near the pinnacle of anything, except being perhaps one of the best looking generic shooters so far.

I rate Halo 1, 2 AND 3, FEAR and FEAR 2 (judging from the demo), The Darkness, Left 4 Dead and such FPSs better than what Killzone 2 will be because they all tried something new and original and they all pulled it off.

Killzone 2 has amazing graphics but amazing graphics can't give you originality or a great story.

I am leaving this discussion. It's going to go round in circles.

*leaves*