Killzone (PS2) - First Hour of Gameplay

Tuesday 13th January. 10PM-11PM
First Hour of Gameplay (One Hour) :D
Stage 1

OVERVIEW

Killzone is a First-Person Shooter for the PlayStation 2. The story takes place in the 24th century on two planets, Vekta and Helghan. Both planets are colonies of Earth, but when human settlers moved onto Helghan, they struggled to survive due to the harsh environment. They had to adapt and they have mutated so much that they can no longer be considered human; they are stronger, faster, and more resilient than humans. So basically, the Helghast want revenge on the rest of the human race who refused to help in their time of need. So, they launch an all-out assault on the neighbouring human planet of Vekta. In contrast, Vekta is a land of plenty; considered a utopia in comparison to Helghan.

TITLE SEQUENCE (DESIGN)
Before the main menu the game begins with a speech by a military leader, he appears to be the leader of the enemy, and he is speaking in front of a vast amount of troops who are wearing gas masks. The dark imagery and depressing backdrop convince you that these troops are the enemy.

CAMPAIGN START (GAMEPLAY)
I choose the option to start a new game, and have to create a profile. I arrive at the name entry screen, but it's unfamiliar, yet very simple and effective. You have to press a direction on the d-pad (including diagonal), then a button(X, Square, Circle, or Triangle) for each letter of your name. Statistics are kept with your profile; this includes kills, deaths, headshots, shots fired and shot efficiency, plus total playing time so far.

CAMPAIGN (DESIGN)
A short one minute cutscene opens the first level which is a wasteland smothered in pale brown, with burnt trees scattered across the landscape. Sitting in a trench is the main character played by you(Jan Templar), and a few NPCs. One of the NPCs stands out, he talks with Templar and discusses the battle situation. The level begins and your character progresses through the trenches, encountering a few enemies and generally learning what to do with some help from the tutorial.

Almost everything around you is brown or pale brown; the only bright colours I can pick out are the green reticule when aiming your gun at an ally, and the glowing red eyes of enemy troops wearing their gas masks. These colours are distinctive for a reason, but the developers could have put a bit more colour into the background, or put something colourful into the trenches, e.g. fire.

One thing that did stand out was the design of the grenades. When throwing a grenade you can hold it in your hand to "cook" the grenade, which decreases the time to detonate after throwing it. This feature is widely used in FPS titles, but when "cooking" in Killzone, small lights on the grenade show how far the grenade is from detonation. This is particularly useful if you don't know how long you can safely "cook" the grenade for. Another interesting element is the blur effect which occurs when sprinting. This makes the action look very cinematic, and it is refreshing in comparison to walking around looking at brown backdrops.

I managed to progress to the end of the first level, and finish it as my hour of gameplay came to a close.

CAMPAIGN (GAMEPLAY)
The tutorial of the game is within the first five minutes of gameplay, but it doesn't seem to work very well. I already knew how to use the controls; it's very similar to other FPS games, but that's not the problem. The tutorial is too slow at giving you information. It tells you how to move, then how to fire, then how to zoom-in before firing, but it doesn't tell you how to reload until you've unloaded about three clips of ammo onto the enemies and the auto-reload feature has reloaded for you. If you had switched off the auto-reload in the options menu beforehand, you would be hammering buttons in blind confusion. It also fails to mention how to look around until the end of the tutorial; by which time you've probably already figured it out.

At first sight, enemy AI is intelligent. The enemies attempt to flank as a unit, and also switch to short range weaponry when you get up close to them(their assault rifles have a shotgun attachment). The problem with the enemies is, they don't use cover effectively, even though they try to get in better positions to shoot you. They do use cover most of the time, but often jump out of cover for no apparent reason, then jump back again, even when they could shoot you from a covered position, and you could shoot at them too.

The health system is realistic, more so than recent FPS games in my opinion. Your health regenerates, but very slowly, so you can also pick up health packs to boost your health. This can keep you on your toes due to the slow regenerating, but also give you confidence and encouragement to move forward as you don't have to backtrack to find a health pack.

Your HUD is simple yet useful, as it shows the health bar which changes colour from green to yellow, then red as you lose health. The HUD also displays your weapons's ammo and has an image of multiple bullets which deplete as you fire, this gives you a good indication of when to reload, rather than just looking at numbers.

NEXT TIME
In my next Glog post, I'll be analysing the second level of Killzone. Hopefully there will be less brown and more colour!