It's Wednesday. Which means two reviews for the price of one! It also means that I'm going to review games for consoles of the current generation. And while Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat came out only yesterday, I don't have the money or opportunity to play either of them. So that being said, here are my reviews for Killzone 3 and Crysis 2.
Killzone 3
Killzone 3 is the final installment of the series, and while I haven’t played the other two, KZ 3 is pretty OK. The story of KZ 3 takes so many twists and turns in the first act of the game it’s easy to lose track of the timeline, as it flashes back and forth. However, it’s easy to see that the Helghast, or whatever, are the bad guys and the not Helghast are the good guys. It’s pretty generic. The Helghast are a super militaristic society and whish to rule the entire galaxy by wiping out everybody that isn’t wearing a gas mask. This is where the rag tag group of stereotypes comes in. I mean, the heroes of the game come in. With a gung-ho attitude, and zero tolerance for waiting around, this group of Dues Ex Machina get the ball rolling. It’s not like there’s a whole army of humans to fight the Helghast…
Lame story aside, the gameplay of Killzone 3 is solid. It’s cover based, which is odd for an FPS. Players spend almost all of the game crouching behind some form of cover. Once players get to a piece of cover, they are planted there and cannot move. Moving requires getting up and exposing oneself, which means getting oneself filled with bullets. Speaking of bullets, there aren’t that many different kinds.
There are only a handful of weapons and not many of them differ from their counterparts on the opposite side. There’s the good guy assault rifle, which is just like the bad guy assault rifle. The only bit of cool weaponry is the heavy weapons that players are allowed to carry along side their primary and secondary weapons. At least KZ 3 allows for more than two different weapons. The heavy weapons are mostly found as turrets, which the player can miraculously dismount and carry around no problem. Another problem that the player doesn’t have to deal with is lack of ammunition. There are ammo boxes located everywhere throughout levels. While they are full of ammo for the Helghast weaponry, it’ll work just fine for the human weaponry. Also, side arms have unlimited ammo, but are completely useless, because of the aforementioned ammo boxes and quite simply because they deal miniscule amounts of damage. But they all look really cool.
The art direction of KZ 3 isn’t necessarily unique, it does look nice. When compared to other modern day shooters, you probably couldn’t tell the difference between the two. However, KZ 3 does have some unique looking guns. At least all the Helghast guns look different. All of the human guns look like modern weapons and aren’t that interesting to look at. Every gun at least sounds different, and the sounds they make are super satisfying at that. Every pull of the trigger releases a loud bang that echoes in the sky, letting you know that you have unleashed a force of extreme pain.
Despite all this production value, Killzone 3 falls rather short of the mark, in my opinion. Enemy AI is rather dull, at least on normal mode it is, and they rarely rush the target. It isn’t until about halfway through the game that Killzone 3 introduces new enemies that actually pose as a threat to the players. However, these new enemies are few and far between. For the most part, players will have to deal with enemies that just sit tight and occasionally pop their heads out of cover only to throw grenades. Lots and lots of grenades. Ally AI isn’t too smart either.
The allies which are given to you in Killzone 3 are useless. They don’t provide any support what so ever. They never kill the enemy, and they always die right at the start of the level. This here is a one horse show. Unless of course that ally is a main character, then that ally cannot die. Also, apparently people can be revived in Killzone 3. The game never told me this. So it was rather frustrating to me when I was just lying there for about twenty seconds, until I heard my friend say, “I can’t reach you!”, and he’ll be saying that a lot. The path finding for the AI is lame, and cowardly. Allies will not risk their lives to save yours, nor will they stick with you while you, and only you, push through the enemy lines. Which is strange because of how the bromance between the two male leads is portrayed.
Every single interaction between the two male leads, or rather any character, is draped with some form of romantic tension. Even in game, when there are moments when players get a boost up a ledge and help their buddy up the ledge. I’m not really sure if this is intentional, and the games story isn’t supposed to be taken seriously or not.
All in all Killzone 3 is mediocre. Plain AI, plain guns, plain level design, plain story, plain characters. There’s nothing particularly new here that breaks ground or defines the genre. If you have a Playstation 3, then that’s the only reason, and the only way that you’re going to get a hold of this game. However, it isn’t particularly worth it, as there are other, third party, shooters out there for the system.
Crysis 2
Crysis 2 is a first person shooter game that comes to us from Crytek, the company that developed the first Crysis and Far Cry. The original Crysis was released only for the PC, Crysis 2 on the other hand is out now for the PC, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3. Crysis 2 is a game about a Marine who is sent, along with the rest of his squad, to investigate the goings on in New York City of all places. It turns out that there is an alien invasion that is going on in New York City, of all places.
The game of Crysis 2 starts out with less than a minute of gameplay, followed by a cinematic of all the cool things that you are about to do. Why am I not doing these things right now? This cinematic is not a tutorial or even a direct demonstration of the gameplay, it’s just a movie. Which occasionally cuts in and out of the first person view-point. This just seems like a direct insult to the player. The first experience gameplay that the player actually gets to interact with, the aforementioned less than one minute, it a tutorial that tells players what button is crouch. Once things actually get going and players are inside of the super suit, it doesn’t get much better from there.
The gameplay of Crysis 2 is that of any other current first person shooter on the market. The controls are immediately familiar and coincide with that of Call of Duty. The enemy AI is thick as mud, with frequent glitching they often run into a wall with their backs turned to the player and continue running once they get there. There is your standard fare of enemies here: big guys, regular guys, and quick guys. None of this is new. The single player experience is basically a shooting gallery. The kicker with Crysis 2 is that players have a super suit, which allows them to accomplish inhuman feats of strength and skill. The fact is that there are two basic functions to the suit itself. Cloak and armor. Each one, once activated slowly drains the energy gauge. If an enemy attacks the player, causing the power gauge to drain faster, it takes less than five seconds for the gauge to fill all the way. This means that players can basically do whatever they please. They don’t even have to hide in cover. They character can sustain enough damage long enough for the suit to recharge and become invulnerable again. There are some nice things about the game though. For example, it looks really nice.
The thing with games by Crytek, is that they always look good. Crysis 2 is no exception. The environments are really pretty, like really really pretty. Every single element of the world is detailed to such a degree that it almost looks real. It’s uncanny how good this game looks. The games soundtrack was composed by the duo that did the soundtrack for the movie Inception, Nick Deleplane and Kawczynski. However, because of it’s intense graphics and sound, Crytek must assume that you also own a 40” HDTV, because the text and font in the game is incredibly hard to read on a normal television.
All in all, Crysis 2 is the Michael Bay of current first person shooters. Really shiny, full of explosions, booming soundtrack, and plenty of gun fights, but it just lacks the depth that makes a game like this great. Stupid AI, a story that was so bad and confusing I didn’t even bother seeing the game through. Cardboard cutout stereotype characters with a script written by a fifteen year old, Crysis 2 just doesn’t cut it.
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