Similarly much has been made of the enemy AI. The Helghast will flank you. Hunt you down. Be indistinguishable from real players. Oh no they won't. Try popping around a corner and having a pot shot at a few of them. Wait for a few moments then pop back round for a second shot. What are they doing? Ducking and covering? Radioing for reinforcements? Or even just ducking behind a box? No. They're still stood there waiting for you to stick your head out again. The brilliant new AI that prevents them from aimlessly running around the corner into your waiting line of fire also makes them stand around waiting to be killed. You just try coaxing one down a corridor from his preset start point or (heaven forbid) down some stairs. Similarly try and get one of your buddies who fight alongside you to usefully engage the enemy. No mate YOU go first... The whole game AI is here to give the impression of intelligence rather than deliver the real thing. Stop playing, or retread your steps and the game stops around you. Play like an idiot, shoot your own men or rely on them to kill people for you and you won't get anywhere. It's all well-programmed deceptive, superficial fluff.
Fortunately it's bastard hard fluff too. Don't think that beating the 'Zone for all its dumbness is a breeze. The painfully lengthy reloads of most weapons and tiny clips of others mean that the game has a unique - and brilliant - all-new duck 'n' cover gameplay. DO NOT play it on 'Easy'. Play on 'Normal' and taste the pain. Shuffle from cover to cover, pop up, shoot, reload, repeat. Don't taunt the guards or rely on your buddies to do anything useful - just single-handedly work forwards killing anyone that stands in your way and it's great.
Sure, there isn't the action/adventure/discovery gameplay of Half-Life but compared to Medal of Honor this is taking things to the next level. Side by side with the frivolous and fun TimeSplitters 2 though is a trickier contest. The bleak future setting will be instantly more appealing to many . And the delivery of true online play keeps promises TS2 broke meaning that, for this reviewer at least, Killzone comes out on top.
The new click-down-to-run feature (and stamina bar) make dashes for cover as exciting as shooting and the peering through the gloom trying to line-up the sniper weapons is laden with tension. But most of all it's the great level design, sheer number of enemy to kill and it's relentless NAILS toughness that makes you feel like you're actually achieving something rather than just playing another game.
We did throw the pad down a few times as Helghast refused to drop despite emptying clip after clip into them. And then go toes-up with a single faceshot... Something to do with the thickness of the armour? We don't care, it's not clever, it's annoying. Same your limited armoury making you sacrifice your sniper rifle for a fat noisy rocket launcher just before (what turns out to be) a sniping section. Ho ho! You got me! Smartasses.
But these are all (and we mean ALL) minor gripes. Killzone owes a debt to another FPS [cough, Halo] and can truly, proudly hold its head up as PS2's answer to it. From the strength bar that tops up as you rest to the nicking of weird weapons you find, there's a catalogue of brilliant (and stolen) ideas here. If you're the least bit taken by what we've described we implore you to buy Killzone. It isn't an amazing new concept - rather it's THE state-of-the-art PS2 game. And who could ask for any more than that?
Killzone is released for PS2 on 26 November
