Early 2009 Shooters To Be Dominated By... Guerillas?!

I happened to notice today that two of the most-anticipated shooters of the coming months involves the word "Guerrilla." First up is the PS/3-exclusive Killzone 2, which is due out in late February and comes to us from Guerrilla Games. This impressive-looking First Person Shooter has had many of us figuratively holding our breath since E3 in 2005, and now we can, finally, say that it arrives... next month! (Around the end of February, actually.)

Sticking with the Guerrilla theme, we also have a sequel to a couple of my favourite First Person Shooter PS/2 games in the form of Red Faction: Guerrilla. I loved Red Faction and Red Faction 2, first and foremost because each was a pile of fun, but also because they offered up the chance to destroy a lot of your environment! For this 3rd installment (which will be released for XBox 360 and the PS/3), the game is morphing into a Third Person Shooter. I'm still on the fence as to whether that's a decision that will keep me invested in the franchise, but it sounds like they had some good reasons for making that change. For one thing, with the objects all around you potentially being affected by people other than you, you need that third person perspective just to make sense of some of it! (Imagine that the floor under your feet suddenly gets blown away, for example!) You can read an interesting interview with the game makers on that very topic right here, if you're so inclined. The release date for this one hasn't been announced yet, but it sounds like it'll be in the March/April timeframe.

So will 2009 start off as "the year of the Guerrilla?" I kind of doubt it, but if KZ2 and RF:G live up to their hype, you just never know!