Thursday, September 23, 2010

Killzone 2: Re-review


For the past week, I spent my spare time playing old games such as Killzone 2. And its enjoyable since it's not as chaos as when it first launched. There are less, mission oriented player that really love to play Killzone 2, so less leaver, less noobs, and less player (which is sometimes is a good thing). This makes me stay in the game longer than I was when I played it back when it launched. And it come to my surprise, that there are things I haven't notice in this game, that makes it different with other games.


1. Special Effect
Not much developer pays that much attention to details in special effect. Like smokes or lights. If you player MW2 or BFBC2, you'll notice that a smoke goes straight up no matter which map you're playing. In KZ2, pay attention to its spawn smoke. It defines the wind direction. Especially when you play in Phyruss Rise, the smoke does not go up straigt like there's no wind, but it goes to a direction as if there are wind effect on the scene. Whether this is precalculated art or physics tech, I admit I havent seen such effect in other FPS game. And dont even get me started with their light effect. Its just beautiful. What I also notice too is cloth effect in their multiplayer (eg: flags). Its an almost realistic flag simulation. Its not a real time rendered flag. I doesn't even react to physic effect. But its just beautiful to seen those little details.

2. Details, Polygons, and Textures.
Polygons define the details of an object. Yes you can cheat it with textures, but sometimes its hard to create such details with 2D image. I've been looking around the Wasteland Bullet multiplayer map, and I notice how careful they are with details. I found out they care enough to build details with polygon, not with texture only. Every engine, platform, or even the rail is detailed enough that from my point of view, there are no way those are textures. Or even if it is, they must have hell of a skillful artist.

3. Animation and Cutscenes
The story might not show much but the cutscene is well done. The expression is well animated, body language is nowhere near clumsy, its just beautiful. Its hard to pay attention to such thing when you first play it, but my revisit to Killzone 2 still shock me how much details they put in animation and cutscenes. Especially when the Vektan Cruisers falling down, its brilliant. If you player the multiplayer a lot, you'll notice lots of details like when the sniper cloaks, the head went off when having a headshot with shotgun, etc.

Scout, Probably the most memorable character in Killzone 2
Probably the biggest dilemma of Killzone 2 is, while other game use single player as the training for multiplayer, Killzone 2 is the opposite. My first experience of Killzone 2 single player (see my review) did not say much about the quality of it. But when you played the multiplayer, get used to the controller, know how to dodge, shoot, aim ala Killzone 2, you can experience the single player much better.

We live in the moment when FPS experience has already been defined by the bigger hitter such as CoD franchise. For better or worse, Guirella seems to put their FPS a little bit different by introducing a new control schema, a heavier one. While most people cursing about this (including the reviewer), some might be grateful to have another kind of FPS in their library. If you havent pick Killzone 2 yet, and willing to pick one, I suggest you play the multiplayer first, get used with the controller, and pick the single player afterward.

I think its safe to put the best game of all time crown to Killzone 2. At least that what I thought. 18 months after its launched, Im still shock how far a game can goes. Its hard to find any game that can match the quality of art and tech of Killzone 2. Despite of the complaint about the control and gameplay, Killzone 2 is very enjoyable, especially the Multiplayer part. There are some things to fix here and there but Im pretty sure our lads at Guirella can handle those things. Kudos to every single person at Guirella.

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