Nostalgic Rage

In light of Killzone 2 dropping this Friday I have decided to dig through my old games to play through Killzone 1 once more. At first I figured it would be cool to transition right from the first to the second and refresh myself on the background knowledge. All it’s really doing is making me contemplate breaking my Dulashock 3 over my knee. I’m not really sure how I beat this game on normal a couple years ago, I must have hated my life. Either that, or I am progressively getting worse at games.

The checkpoint system makes the game feel like it was tossed together with no second thought to flow or for that matter the player’s mental health. You very rarely get a checkpoint before a large encounter or particularly hard spots. Instead you’ll either receive a checkpoint for no apparent reason, or you’ll go entire mission chapters without a single one. Tip: 35 minutes of gameplay without a checkpoint is a bit much Guerilla.

Controls are something that have been brought up a lot in the press regarding Killzone 2. Now while I do not believe the controls in 2 are by any means perfect, they are far from the wrestling match I go through with the controller every time I start to play 1.

Other then those two things I love the game. I think the world, weapons, characters (except Rico), sound design, and mission structure is very cool. It just feels like Guerrilla went through the initial ambitious design process and Sony wasn’t there to bring them back down to Earth. I can’t wait to see what this team can do on the new hardware, so in an odd quasi sort of way, Killzone 1 made me even more excited for the second by being such a let down.

P.S. The site will be going through some changes here shortly, including a domain name change and a template change. It will not be staying this same default look, I just need time to wrap my head around all this crazy code stuff.