Killzone 2 for PS3 - It's No Call of Duty

Pretty much every gaming website and magazine that I've seen has given Killzone 2 stellar ratings and called it one of the best first person shooter games ever. I beg to differ! This game is good, but it certainly isn't great. Once you get past the awesome graphics, it's a very basic first person shooter that fails in comparison to the recent Call of Duty games. It's worth playing, but I don't think it deserves all the praise it keeps getting.

What bugged me so much about this game was how simple it was. The maps are laid out in ways that create a couple of bottlenecks, and there is hardly any strategy to the gameplay. What it all amounts to is a dozen or so people all rushing toward the same spot and gunning each other down, but it's too chaotic to be fun. In the Call of Duty games, you get sort of the same feel, but the layout of the maps and the variety of weapons greatly increase your chances of survival. In this game, it's pure run-and-gun from beginning to end.

Perhaps the ease in which one can jump into this game is why it is getting so many rave reviews. Inexperienced players of first person shooters will probably like how it works, but seasoned gamers like myself find it rather boring. For example, you have a handful of weapons available, but there is very little difference in how they perform in the field. On top of that, I found the gun that you start out with to be the best one.

My first impression of this game was, like many others, a very good one. I instantly liked it, but after playing for several weeks, I quickly got bored of it. I wonder how many of the 'professional' reviews based their opinions entirely on first impressions and never took the short amount of time to let the game get old. The multiplayer online action does give the game some staying power, but even then you will get tired of the handful of maps it offers.

The graphics in this game are very impressive, and turn out to be one of the major selling points of the title. I daresay it has some of the best graphics I've seen so far on the PS3, and that's saying a lot. The animation is very smooth and the details of the environments are quite complex. On the downside, the environment is not at all interactive and there's lot of places you just can't get to. It's eye candy with little to no utility.

In the end, I will admit that I still had fun playing Killzone 2 for a brief time. It's certainly not a bad game, but it fails in comparison to most other popular first person shooters. I recommend that you rent before you buy, because you can see all there is to see in a very short time. Some map expansion packs are also available for the game, but I don't see why I should pay more money for a brand new game because they felt like skimping on content.