A Few More Thoughts On Killzone 2

Having played a few more hours now (although not anything excessive yet, since I don't want to repeat the Resistance 2 experience where I overdid it), I think that I've gained a better feel for the game. I've been splitting my time between the campaign and online play about equally because I'm enjoying them both quite a lot at the moment.

The campaign is proving to be fairly challenging to get through so far, even on the middle difficulty setting ("Trooper"?). It's not that I'm getting stuck anywhere, but rather that I'm just dying a lot and therefore it's taking me several attempts to get through pretty much every new encounter with the Helghast. I'm still struggling a little with aiming, mostly because I end up changing weapons a lot (as the one I start with runs out of ammo and I can't find any lying around) and some are harder to sight with than others. That problem notwithstanding, it's a very entertaining storyline to date. I'd definitely rate this single player campaign above Resistance 2's (but below Resistance: Fall of Man's). It feels like a game that I'll probably end up finishing and potentially even playing through more than once (as I did with R:FoM).

In online play, I've been successful at finding maps that are filled with players more at my skill level (and thus, less likely to kill me before I even see them). I imagine I've also gotten a little better, especially in terms of figuring out the layout of the maps (always important in multiplayer!) and adjusting my gameplay to be somewhat more cautious. When I checked this evening, my kill-to-death ratio for online was slightly below 1.00, but nothing like the bad start that I had with both of the Resistance games.

I like the rank-up system for online, although I've certainly been moving through it quite slowly to date. My next promotion will allow me to play as a Medic, I think... but I just achieved the rank below that, meaning that it could be awhile before I find out. I've noticed a real sparsity of Medics in the games I've been in since the first day, which now I understand: I've been staying within my own rank and we're all too low for anyone to be able to play that role. Because there's never anyone around to heal me if I get critically wounded, I find that I tend to stay to the edges of the action and try to pick enemies off rather than heading into the middle of the fight. Even with that, though, I'm still dying about as often as I score a kill... so who knows if that's even the right approach!

They need to introduce a party system for online and there are others bits that bug me (not being able to map the controls is annoying) but those are minor gripes against a very solid game. Right now I'd put Killzone 2 up on the same level as the Halo and Resistance franchises in terms of how much I enjoy it (offline and online), and it definitely has the most impressive graphics of any console game I've ever played. One or two new offerings each year of this calibre is generally enough to keep me gaming, and I expect that I'll be engaged with KZ2 for quite a few more weeks (Resistance 2 kept me busy for over 3 months). And that sort of thing makes it well worth the $60 price tag, unlike disappointments like Haze and many of the comic book-based ones I've bought. Way to go, Guerrilla Games!