- To beat a dead horse, the game is absolutely gorgeous. Best looking console FPS? Yes. Best looking console game ever? Probably. It is sometimes hard to appreciate how beautiful the game is during a normal play through, the action is so intense you never have time to just stop and admire the scenery, but believe me, it is very, very pretty.
- Even online, the game does not downgrade the visuals; and this is with 32 player battles. Very impressive engine indeed. Good job GG.
- I don't think the single-player story is as terrible and non-existent as others have made it out to be. If you have followed this series close enough, there is a lot at stake here. I was invested enough in what was happening to care.
- The controls take some getting used to. Not their layout (even though after plenty of CoD4, there is an adjustment period to that too) but in the reaction and feel of the right analog stick. It is not as quick and responsive and you might be used to. This is intentional, to give the game a more "realistic" feel. It does give the weapons a greater feeling of weight, but it also makes aiming kinda tough at times. I have emptied entire clips trying to take out one Helghast out in the open but who was a moving target. I guess that is realistic right? The developer has already mentioned they might consider addressing this in a patch. I can deal with realistic, slower controls in the single-player game. But in the competitive multiplayer arena, you can toss realism out the window and give the player as much control as possible. So far it has not been too big of a problem, but if they do give you the option to adjust settings such as look acceleration speed and some "dead zone" issues, I'll be the first to tweak them.
- The sound effects in the game got the job done, but it wasn't as impressive an audio experience as say, Dead Space or Battlefield: Bad Company, two games in which you can't help but notice the stellar audio work since it adds so much to the experience. Not saying Killzone's audio was bad by any stretch of the imagination, I just never stopped to admire it during my time with the single-player game. Voice-acting was good, even if the dialog itself was maybe a bit too "macho" for my liking. Like the reviews mention, plenty of F-bombs will be dropped for seemingly no reason other than to drop them. The musical score was actually excellent. A bit busy though, as the music can be playing a very fast section meant to enhance the tension, but you are not engaged in any combat at the time.
- The single-player game is very straight forward gameplay-wise. The game is linear, no branching paths, no secondary objectives. It is also all out chaos. Don't expect to be able to catch your breath at any time. You enter one battle almost immediately after finishing a previous one. Some sections seem to have CoD's "infinite enemy" syndrome, where enemies will just continue to respawn until you push forward. I hate this but I let it slide. Enemy A.I. is fantastic however (I played on hard, not sure on normal). They immediately seek cover, run away from grenades and flank you. When in cover, they don't keep popping out of the same spot too, they move around, so you can't just wait for that headshot with your cross-hair's aimed at one spot, chances are, the Helghast soldier will reappear from the other side of cover and get a few shots in himself.
- You can only carry one large weapon along with your pistol. This worked for me. Don't fall in love with anyone weapon though, since you will constantly be swapping them out. One of my favorite weapons was the regular Helghast assault rifle. It packs a much bigger punch than the ISA Rifle, although it is far less accurate. But, I took the stopping power over accuracy. Maybe this was because I was playing on hard. Those Helghast take a beating!! But I found myself constantly swapping weapons for whatever was available or what I felt the situation called for and I enjoyed using all of them. That Lightning gun was so over-powered it did feel kinda cheap, but it sure was fun to wield. I didn't use my knife the entire game. It is way too cumbersome to use. You have to select it with the d-pad, then use it like a regular weapon. I actually have no idea why this was even included in the game, since you have to go out of your way to use it. There are ZERO stealth sections where maybe you think "Ok, I'll sneak up on him and take him out with my knife". It was either added for some unlockable trophy, or just because CoD4's knife was so popular.
- There are a few sections that break up the standard gameplay. There are optional turrets to man throughout the game, but there is one mandatory turret section that was pretty cool towards the end. Also towards the end (spoiler warning . . . maybe?) you get to man a mech and that level was fantastic! The way the mech controlled and felt was just superb and it really did feel like you were in a mech. It felt so good I'm surprised that you only use it in one small section of the game, because it felt very polished. I wouldn't mind an entire game in one of these things!!
- The cover system works for the most part. I am glad they tried something different and kept you in the first-person perspective when in cover, but sometimes it just didn't work right. I would sort of spasm in and out of cover sometimes when trying to peak out to shoot. Also, sometimes I would get shot while in cover, even though I should have been fully covered. This lead to a few frustrating deaths.
- I actually wish they would have added a few quite sections where there was no action and you could just take in the sights (and catch your breath). I really liked the opening of the game when you are in your ship and and can just walk around and listen to people's conversations, etc. I would have really liked a few more of those.
- I haven't delved into multiplayer too much, but I've enjoyed what I have played. The leveling system is pretty deep and very rewarding. The class based system really rewards you for playing to your class's strengths, lets just hope people online realize this and take advantage of it. The default game type (which cycles between the different game types every 5 minutes on the fly) is pretty fun, but I'm a team death-match kinda guy so I'll probably be spending the bulk of my time there.
That's it for now, I'll write further online impressions as I get more
playtime in.
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