Killzone 2

[Killzone 2]

I've beaten the game twice. Playing through levels like Salamun District, Suljeva Village, The Cruiser, and Visari Hammer makes me question some of the gameplay criticism levelled at this game in the previous Idlehands podcasts.

Firstly,the turret complaints were over exaggerated. There are five situations in the entire campaign that force you to use a turret. Two in the intro level Corinth River, one on Salamun Bridge, one in Tharsis Refinery,

and the big AA section in The Cruiser. (On Elite difficulty, it's actually advantageous to avoid turrets as you need to stay mobile and move from place to place quite often in order to deal with the AI. Man a turret on that difficulty and you die very fucking fast.)

The rest of the time, turrets are completely and 100% optional.

Which leads me to my other point. The levels are typically laid out in a manner that gives you a lot of options.

There are almost always multiple entry and exit points in any given space and verticality is reinforced in just about every area.

The game constantly allows you to tackle a firefight from flat ground or higher ground. That's one of the reasons the firefights are so fun.

Not only is the AI very dynamic, just about all of the levels give you at least half dozen ways to approach the combat. Complaints

about the level layouts don't resonate with me at all. The map designs in the campaign allow you more freedom of movement than most linear shooters, certainly moreso than COD and Half Life.

The complaints about the storytelling and narrative and unambitious game design (blow up this pillar, turn this crank, defend this area,etc) are perfectly legit, but all the talk which implied that the game was putting the player in a straitjacket of total linearity (hey,COD style!) was fairly misleading. This game has dynamism in spades. Although I understand that somebody could miss out on some of it if they played the campaign on the default difficulty and allowed a directional pointer to herd them through the levels.

I'm blown away by anyone choosing to rely on object marker to find their way around a level.

Seriously? I played this game on veteran and Elite with no Hud whatsoever (not even a fucking crosshair), and I was able to find my way around most maps with little difficulty.

Lastly, I rarely felt burdened by the two weapon limit. It forced me to experiment with different weapons in different scenarios. You simply have to learn when to use the combat knife and when to fall back and rely on your pistol in tight situations. The two weapon limit encourages experimentation.

[Killzone 2]

Killzone's AI is good, but the rest of the game design--in particular much of the level and weapon design--didn't actually encourage me to take advantage of that.

And it's true what you say about Half-Life 2 for example. The thing is, Half-Life 2 has tons of other stuff I find interesting instead--the way the world looks, the atmosphere, the non-shooting sections of gameplay, the pacing, and so on. Killzone 2 is literally nothing but shooting for the entire game, in a world that I find very generic, and it didn't really succeed as a nothing-but-shooter for me.

As far as the CODs, I have only cared about COD4 recently--again, you are correct about its combat and encounter design, it's completely scripted. However, the things that game does in terms of framing its missions, adhering strictly to the Valve-style first-person perspective at all times (which I always find interesting as a gamer), moving control from character to character depending on the plot (with some really cool and unexpected justifications), the inclusion of things like the AC-130 gunship (which is one of the only times playing a video game I've actually thought about what it would be like to be an actual soldier killing in real life, and been disturbed by it), and so on, are all things that hardly any other game is actually doing.

Basically, I don't need every FPS to follow the same formula. But I do want it to do something interesting beyond just put guys in front of me and have me fire bullets into them. If the game is going to be nothing but shooting ever, I'm totally fine with that, but it must do it in a really cool way. To me, Killzone 2 did a decent job of it, but not one that actually made me excited or compelled for the majority of the game.

Thanks for the response.

I feel that good, dynamic AI is still annoyingly uncommon in the major console shooters, so I'm pretty enthusiastic about any shooter that actually has an interesting, dynamic AI.

[Killzone 2]

I'm not understanding Remo's complaints about a lack of "dynamism" in Killzone 2, since the enemy AI functions at or near Halo levels. They have very dynamic behaviours, the harder the difficulty level, the more you'll notice. Each gunfight plays out differently, they flank aggressively, chase you down when you reload, throw grenades, and take advantage of the environment. (by shifting around behind cover or shooting explosive barrels)

I also dont understand how anyone that favours dynamism can cite a COD game or HL2. HL2 vanilla has completely scripted AI, and the recent CODs are the epitome of total linearity and a lack dynamism!

Respawning enemies, scripted AI, invisible trigger points, COD4/5 not only direct the setpiece, they script the actions of every NPC it!