Killzone 2

Released in February of 2009, Killzone 2 was meant to be the "Halo" of the Play Station 3.  The first Killzone (2004) was originally released to compete directly with the first Halo game, Halo: Combat Evolved, but fell incredibly short and didn't amount to the level of success Halo had, let alone to a very good game in general.  Killzone 2, however, was released on the Play Station 3, a system that meant worlds for the competitor of the Halo franchise.  With a three year gap in between the first and second game, designers, developers, and the like had plenty of time to improve upon what was lacking in the original Killzone.  It suffices to say that Killzone 2 more than exceeds its predecessor and is a worthy competitor not only for the Halo franchise, but likely for the Call of Duty multi-console franchise.

In Killzone 2, you're placed into the game as Sev, a veteran member of the ISA, in a special forces unit known as Legion.  Along side you are several other characters that seemingly are important, but throughout the game, you don't care much about them, so I'm not going to bother naming them.  Legion is placed on Vekta, the home planet of the Helghast, the enemy that invaded earth in the first installment of Killzone.  Now taking the fight to the Helghast's front door, your mission is fairly straight forward: capture the Helghast leader, Emperor Visari.  While the characters aren't incredibly memorable like in other games (*cough* Bad Company *cough*) you still manage to remember where they fit into the story and why they're important, more so in the latter half of the game rather than the first.  The plot isn't entirely complicated and is a little mottled, but is easy enough to follow and understand what your primary objectives are.  In the end, one doesn't necessarily play Killzone 2 for the incredible story line.

The gameplay in Killzone 2 is relatively smooth.  Enemies don't flood you an unnecessary amount, but if you do stay in cover for too long, they will stab you.  Friendly AI tends to be a little stupid, providing you with little to no cover or walking away to the next check point and waiting for you while you're still under fire.  As I said, while all of the people in the Legion squad aren't just jar heads, you'll definitely end up treating them that way seeing as how you easily can complete the game without them.  Dialogue amongst characters in the game both in cut scenes and in-game aren't too exciting either.  Emotions between characters seem forced and even when one of your squad mates dies, while you may feel a tinge of regret, your character's emotions seem a bit painted on.  The one character that does manage to stand out in the game, however, is Emperor Visari.  As an ominous, looming figure, Visari's voice is ever-present throughout the war zone, whether it be far off in the form of a wide spread warning or a radio placed on the ground.  Furthermore, out of all of the enemies you face, he's the only one whose entire face you see and one of only two enemies whose eyes you see.  This being said, Visari stands out among the crowd and some of the speeches and monologues that come from his character are incredibly well written and powerful.  I will say, that while the story of Killzone 2 isn't very strong, it does have an unexpectedly powerful ending.

The controls for Killzone 2 are a bit infuriating at the begging.  This could be in part because I'm used to a 360 controller when I'm playing a shooter, but it is also due to the fact that the control layout is counter intuitive, at least to today's standards.  Where in most contemporary shooters, the left trigger is aim and the right is fire, in Killzone 2, there is no configuration that gives you those controls.  There is absolutely no way to make L2 aim and R2 fire.  The closest you can get is to have L1 as aim and R1 as fire, but that configuration is just as counter intuitive.  What I ended up settling with was using R2 as fire, L2 as grenade, and a click of the right joystick (R3) as aim.  While this took some getting used to, by the time I finished that game, I had gotten pretty well adjusted to it.  Another controls issue is the running; while its placed where one would think (as a click of the left joystick [L3]), you don't stop running once you let off.  If you try to stop and aim, you'll run right past your enemies and get stabbed; if you try to run up to cover, but don't click L3 again, you get stabbed.  Motion controls are also tacked on when you need to set a mine or turn a valve.  By rotating your controller, your character twists a valve; sort of useless in my opinion.  One thing that stands out among the controls, however, is the cover system.  By holding L1, I could get into cover, stay there, and with a simple push of the left joystick, I could lean over, lean to the right, or lean to the left to get a better shot at my enemies.  When I let off of the joystick, I would immediately drop back into cover. 

If anything though, there are two primary reasons to play Killzone 2: the multiplayer and the graphics.  The multiplayer in Killzone 2 is what one would expect: it has your standard kill everything games; your capture the object games; your protect this dude because I said so games, etc.  What is different about Killzone 2, however, is that you can play all of these games together in one huge match.  Once one team wins one mission, it switches to the next without going to a lobby or anything of the sort.  For instance, your first mission will be to get a collective total of fifty kills.  Once one team has achieved that, they get a point, and the next mission pops up: defend the objective, so on and so forth.  For each mission that a team wins, they get a point.  In every game I played it was a best of seven style, which provides for long matches with incredibly varied gameplay.  Two things, however, hurt Killzone's online.  The first of these is its connectivity issues; when I went online for the first time, I couldn't connect at all.  Searching online for a solution for almost an hour, I found hundreds upon hundreds of people with the same issue.  Luckily, I came across someone who said to disable the UPnP, which ,surprisingly, worked.  The second thing is the community, which is on par with the Halo community.  Not only is in-game chatter annoying and obnoxiously loud, but being able to mute someone isn't nearly as fluid as in Halo.  Even worse is tea bagging.  For anyone who hasn't played Halo with me, tea bagging is just what it is in the real world; its when you kill an enemy and then while they're re-spawning with a clear view of their dead body, you stand over them and dip your crotch right into their face.  Tea bagging has been taken to a new extreme in Killzone 2.  When you die in Killzone 2, you can "bleed out" and lay on the ground, gasping for air until you decide to re-spawn, someone revives you, or someone kills you.  On several occasions, I was crawling on the ground, waiting to respawn, only to have the guy that had killed me tea bag me for ten seconds and then pop me in the head right before I was about to re-spawn.

With tea bagging aside, the graphics of Killzone 2 are by far some of the best I have ever seen.  Everything in the game seems incredibly fluid and life like.  Textures on all of the guns are incredibly detailed, human characters look exceptional and, oddly enough, almost life-like when their eyes are closed.  The environments are vast and expansive and seem to take a bit of influence from the grand landscaping designs seen in Gears of War.  The environments are incredibly moody and dark, with bits of ash and fire flickering through the sky.  Lighting is also astoundingly well done, setting the mood for every environments you find yourself in, whether it be a desert or an underground passageway.  Body movements of enemies are incredibly fluid, but not so much so that they have that rag doll effect once they're dead.  All of the movements in the game, such as running and reloading, are incredibly smooth and life-like, and carry the weight that would seem necessary for such actions. In the end, Killzone 2's graphics top many that I have ever seen, managing to create vast environments that span miles, while still defining fine details such as stitching and hair.

Before I close I would like to mention a couple of other quick points.  The guns in Killzone 2 are fairly limited and the good guns don't start to make an appearance until almost over half way though the campaign.  Boss fights are pretty fun, but can be a little easy, save for the very last one.  The Helghast enemies, while there are fifteen different types of them, all look similar enough that its hard to really distinguish which is which, something that is unfortunate because, upon closer inspection, many of them have unique looks.

Overall, Killzone 2 is an incredible game that any PS3 owner should at least play.  The game play is fun and can mold to first time gamers as well as veteran shooters.  The story, while a little weak throughout, manages to end incredibly well, really creating anticipation as to what will happen next.  The multiplayer, while it has its faults and the community is unbearable, once you get on a roll and play for a while, it is a lot of fun.  The graphics for Killzone 2 are beyond amazing and I could just sit and look at my screen for hours in awe.  Now that I've played catch-up with one of the major PS3 titles, I can finally start anticipating Killzone 3, which will be released on February 28th, 2011, and will be in 3D!  Lets hope that works out.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Battlefield: Bad Company 2, released just this past March by EA DICE, is the much anticipated sequel to the original released in 2008.  With a returning cast of characters that include Sarge, Sweetwater, Haggard, and Preston Marlowe, gamers could expect to have a serious FPS accompanied by the humor and wit that was seen in the first Bad Company.  Added to the mix is a little more comic relief in the form of a pacifist, hippie helicopter pilot named Flynn.  The game starts out a little unexpectedly, placing you in Japan on an extraction mission just a few hours before the atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima.  That being said, the player is placed in 1945 as opposed to modern day, which only livens up the overall game.  EA DICE manages to toss in some older guns to keep the time line straight, but then afterward, the players returns to modern times standing amongst Bad Company as Preston Marlow.  The story line of the game, while well done, isn't nearly as fun as the first game.  In the first it is a lot of fun to go AWOL and search mercenary camps for gold, knowing that while you're in the army, they just sort of drop you and pick you up as needed.  In the second, the story line is much more heavily based on a sort of weapon of mass destruction that Special Ops has recruited you to find.  This makes the story line much more straight forward, but Bad Company is much less the "runt of the litter" that it was in the first game.  However, in the second game, the antagonist is much more sinister and plays a bigger role than the one in the first game did.

Graphically, the series has improved significantly.  The various landscapes in which you're placed are much more varied than in the first one ranging from blizzard torn tundras to lush green jungles riddled with trip wire explosives.  While the campaign of Bad Company 2 is significantly shorter than Bad Company, these creative environments help to spice up the single player experience and make it just as enjoyable.  Certain things are a bit choppy such as shadows that seem overly pixel-like, which tends to distract from the incredible textures and lighting on the guns and various other elements in the game.  Ground textures for the most part are pretty good especially in the snow and desert, but the jungle environments consist of flat leaves and twigs plastered to the ground.  The character figures in the game are more or less the same, but look a little sharper than their predecessors.  Certain things still feel a little off, but nevertheless it isn't a huge issue.  Visually I didn't run into any glitches like I did in the last game, I never saw my team mates flying through the air or anything of the sort.

The controls in Bad Company 2 are much more friendly than in the first release.  The controls have adapted to what is more common nowadays, placing the melee attack with a click of the right joystick and making use of the "Y" button to switch weapons.  On that note, the weapons system has had a huge change.  Where in the first you were limited to a set of weapons, either containing an assault rifle with a grenade launcher, a sniper with a pistol, a light machine gun with grenades, etc., in the second you have something called supply crates.  Every so often when you come to a check point there will be a supply crate which is filled with every gun you have yet to find in the game.  Furthermore, you are allowed to take two weapons with you, no matter what they are, enabling me to carry around my sniper and assault rifle combo.  The gadgets in the game have taken a step down and aren't nearly as common or numerous as they were in the first game.  Gadgets are also only provided to you when they are needed, as opposed to always being at your disposal.  While this makes the game slightly less interesting, it also makes it more challenging.

Destructive environments still play a key roll to Bad Company's game play, but the feature has been upgraded from two years ago.  Where in the first game basic structures such as supports, roofs, and the like were the only things that could be left standing, now even those basic elements can be torn down.  If you wait too long undercover of a house being bombarded with explosives, be sure that the roof will eventually collapse on top of you and kill you (In fact, there's an achievement in online multiplayer that you receive for getting twenty kills in such a way).  As in the first game, with destructive environments comes great sound, which has also been upgraded to Dolby Digital in Bad Company 2.  Sound is incredible making your every movement life like and making every situation, whether it be fleeing from an aerial drop or slowly creeping down a jungle river, that much more intense and suspenseful. While the sound effects have gotten better, unfortunately, the music has taken a hit and, while still impressive, isn't nearly as fun or creative as in the first game; it just ain't got no flava.

The AI of the game is a lot better than in the first game.  Stealth is much easier without super soldiers lurking around every corner in a tank.  In several instances you actually have to sneak up behind someone and take them out without anyone noticing.  The best example of this is a moment when the squad comes upon a sniper post outside of a military encampment.  After silently taking out the sniper, two of your squad mates approach the camp masked by darkness, rain, and thunder.  As they approach, you use your sniper to take out all the guards in their way.  However, in the dead of night, a sniper is something that makes a lot of noise. "Sarge: Time it and use the thunder to mask the sound of your sniper shots.  Sweetwater: Is it bad that I wish I had thought of that?  Sarge: Yes."  AI still has some difficulty, however, in concerns to your squad mates.  I understand that while playing on hard I am supposed to receive less help from them, but I expect them to at least run to cover.  Several instances placed me under fire, waiting for my squad members to reach a me because they had decided to walk instead of RUN.  This wasn't a particular issue throughout most of the game, but was a bit of an annoyance at times.

The multiplayer experience is much more polished than in the first, making everything seem a bit more organized and structured.  There are four classes players can play as, Assault, Engineer, Medic, and Recon, all of which have their own unique weapons, upgrades, and special abilities.  This style combines the cutomization of the Modern Warfare 2 online multiplayer with a load out system much like can be seen in Team Fotress 2 or the upcoming Halo: Reach.  Multiplayer maps are just as huge as the first, pitting you against several players in various missions which either involve planting bombs, capturing locations, or just killing everything in sight.  The server also seems to be relatively smooth seeing as how I have experienced little to no lag at all, even while my computer is hooked up to the internet and downloading things.

Overall, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a worthy successor to Battlefield: Bad Company.  Although it doesn't have everything players loved about the first game, such as music and play time, it manages to suck you in just the same.  The members of Bad Company are just as loveable if not more so than in the first and really make you feel like you could just go out and have a drink with them.  Graphics are a little choppy in areas, but overall are stunning.  The sound, as always, is incredible and simulates each and every beautiful environment to a "T."  While the campaign is short (and also less difficult) than the first, the multiplayer is something that is sure to suck you in with its immense maps and epic battles.  Bad Company 2 is a game I highly recommend to anyone who loves first-person shooters and, as the hype has said time and time again, is a worthy competitor to the Modern Warfare series.  In conclusion, I would like to leave you with my favorite quote from the game: 

"Sarge: Hags, come on now, if you leave, no more T-Bone steaks, now.  Preston: Yeah, no more buying AR-15 ammo at the mall.  Sweetwater: No more shootin' trespassers on your porch. Sarge: No more biscuits and gravy.  Sweetwater: No more Super Bowl Sundays... No more Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.  Haggard: Shiiiiiiiiiiiit.  That's terrible.  Get outta my way!  Gotta save me some cheerleaders."