Killzone 2 picks up shortly after Killzone: Liberation ends. This time, you are controlling Sergeant Tomas "Sev" Sevchenko instead of Templar, who found himself promoted off the battlefield for this game. The ISA is taking the fight to Helghan, the homeworld of the Helghast.

But enough of the story. It is actually pretty hard to get very far into it with-out posting spoilers, so I won't. Instead, I'm going to dive into taking this game apart.

Graphics

Graphically, this game is quite impressive. I would gladly put it against most others out there right now. It is not quite as clean as MGS4, or as gory as Gears of War 2, but it's no slouch. It easily keeps up with the likes of Uncharted or even Crysis. Aside for the usual map glitchers that you find online, I have not seen or heard of any majour graphic glitches.

9.5 out of 10

Controls

First, I am going to talk pre-patch game-play, then I will talk about post-patch game-play.

Pre-patch, the controls are heavy, like the guns actually have some weight to them, making it hard to run-and-gun. In fact, you have to think a bit before just charging in. I strongly recommend playing your first play-through, at least, with the original controls.

The controls, themselves, are fairly straight forward. If you are playing pre-patch, you'll find that you have to practice a little bit to be effective. It works out in the end, though, because that practice translates into being that much better when you patch up to play online. Yes, the difference is noticable.

"Why did they ship a game with broken controls?" you may be wondering. In fact, that was the cry of a very vocal minourity. If you read the pre-release reviews, the guys who get the games before you and I do, not a single one of them mentioned any kind of control issues. Not even the sites that are openingly anti-PS3 complained about any kind of control issues.

Yet, because they actually had to think and learn a little bit, a series of crybabies bitched and moaned their way into getting a patch to remove everything unique about the controls. So, I will be giving a minour deduction for the modified controls.

9.2 out of 10.

Game-Play

The A.I. in the game is actually pretty good, a huge improvement over the first. It's aggressive and smart at the same time. It will take cover, pushing forward as best it can. Unlike older games, though, it will retreat and regroup as needed. This can make it difficult to make much progress in some places, but not if you take it slow.

For as good as the Helghast are at knowing when to push forward and when to fall back and regroup, they are not always so good at finding good cover. Sometimes they will try to duck behind a post or table for cover, but they will leave their heads or chests partially exposed. If you take the time to aim, you can pick them off with relative ease from this cover.

Still, over all, the A.I. is pretty good.

9.0 out of 10

Sound

I've never been a big fan of rating this category. To me, as long as the effects match up, and the background noises fit, then I'm good. I turn the in-game music off 99% of the time, usually with-in the first 10-15 minutes. That is not to say that the developers don't do a good job with the music they pick, but it's hard to find music that not only fits the game but makes everybody happy.

Still, I have to make a special mention of the random comments of the Helghast soldiers. You can find some of them by hitting F5 and reading the page title.

9.0 out of 10

Fun / Replay Value

This category is something that is objective, at best. This is why I posted the information in the "About the Author" page. The more you understand about the games, movies, books, etc. that I like, the more you will know about how much of my opinion would match yours.

The single-player has enough collectables that, unless you are paying perfect attention on your first run-through, it will take multiple runs to find everything and earn every trophy. At the same time, the game is fun enough that additional run-throughs are not going to be that bad of a deal.

I did get bored with multi-player pretty quickly after the patch came out. I just had virtually no challenge, which lead to my quick boredom.

Still, the campaign is fairly short, so if you don't care for online gaming then this game is a rental. Unless, of course, you find you just love going through the single-player campaign. I know it sounds odd, but people did that for 20 years before online gaming really caught on to consoles.

9.3 out of 10

Final Score

So, we have a 9.5, 9.2, 9.0, 9.0, and a 9.3. That is 46 points out of a possible 50, making the score:

92%, or 9.2 out of 10.

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