E3 2005 – the defining moment when Sony and Guerilla Games (GG) almost convinced me to pick up a PS3 as soon as the shiny piano-black console with the Spiderman font would become available, southbound credit lines be damned. The now-infamous trailer blew the collective gaming world away – jaws dropping and tongues doing a very wet red-carpet routine with the realisation that the sky will soon be the limit, thanks to the almost-mythical power of the Cell processor quietly purring away under the hood of the sexy black beast. Unfortunately, heartbreak soon followed with the disclosure that contrary to what Sony had claimed, the trailer was, in fact, prerendered CG, created to show off what would it should look like when it would finally launch, provided things didn’t get screwed six ways from Sunday from now till then. Most PS3 fans felt cheap and used after all the emotional trauma they suffered at the hands of the Xbox 360 and Wii fans after defending the trailer across message boards all over the internet – sort of like marrying the gorgeous girl they’d dated for ten years only to find out she was a transvestite on the wedding night. Soon after, Grand Theft Auto 4 hopped on top of the Xbox 360 bandwagon and before long, I was putting my money on the Redmond giant’s offering, signing the contract in blood without reading the fine print about how it would occasionally keep reminding me of a reddish hell, which would happen, predictably, when I found myself completely getting drawn in by some game.

Fast forward to late 2008: GG and Sony jump-start the hype train once again with preview builds of Killzone 2 starting to show up on game-show floors all over the planet. This time around, PS3 fans, confident in the knowledge that the PS3 finally had its “killer app” squarely in its sights, pulled up their pants, reset their passwords and stormed forums and message boards worldwide with a new found vigor. The following months saw me wading through N4G-melting previews and an acute overdose of animated GIFs explaining visually why Killzone 2 will be the second coming of Jesus and how GG was all set to pull off a Kratos by kicking God out of His Almighty Throne and setting up a bitchin’ LAN party right there in the middle of heaven. Whoa, did I back the wrong horse there by siding with the Xbox 360?

Two days spent in company of Killzone 2 and my fears have been allayed. Yes, the sex was great and I am still basking in the dizzying afterglow and the supreme satisfaction that came after raiding the fridge, but wait, what about all the burning questions? Is it the great game that it was made out to be? Yes. Is it the best-looking, best-playing game yet on any console? You bet your sweet ass, yes! Is this the game that will have you selling your family into slavery, finding a second job at a gay strip club and selling a couple of useless body parts like your second kidney, your second lung, your left testicle and your only liver so that you can get yourself the PS3 and the game? Umm, maybe, but what about the Xbox 360 fanboys screaming from the rooftops about how Gears of War 2 will take a dump all over Killzone 2? Well, let’s just say they’re going to be so jealous and so mad that they didn’t get invited to the massive orgy happening right next door and they hear everything right through the thin walls. For the first time since the launch of the PS3, the Xbox 360 has come face to face with an opponent that can go twenty rounds with its champion lineup and not break a sweat. But if you’re really loyal and jaded, you can still go back and get back into the arms of the thousand and one awesome mistresses available on the Xbox 360.

Now that the PS3 and Xbox 360 fanboys have heard what they needed to hear, let the gamers amongst us have a look at the home-runs and strikeouts that have made Killzone 2 an experience to remember.

TRANSLATE

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• elveter Says:
  Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 06:14 pm GMT +5.5 at 6:14 pm

  What?? this “rewiew” is RIDICULOUS!! Who made it?? bill gates???

  xboxfanboy s*it-eater!!

• elveter Says:
  Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 06:15 pm GMT +5.5 at 6:15 pm

  fuck you…fuck all american bastards!!

• itchy18 Says:
  Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 06:20 pm GMT +5.5 at 6:20 pm

  look at the URL: http://theangrypixel.com/blog/2009/02/11/review-an-xbot-killzownedalmost/6/ hahahaha

• Ravi Sinha Says:
  Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 07:46 pm GMT +5.5 at 7:46 pm

  Hmm, don’t see any mentions of the bugs. If we got the same review copies (and we did), then I’m surprised you played through the whole game and experienced absolutely no clipping issues or missing sounds (though the no-lines-and-lips-still-moving-WTF part seems right) sounds in some places. Some even claim the game crashed on them, though this didn’t happen with us.

  The AI was good, but comparing it to Half-Life 2’s Combine? What about the enemies of F.E.A.R? They could actually lob grenades back, flanked you far more faster and didn’t mind pumping you full of lead even if you wanted to melee. Such was their viciousness that 3-5 of them posed greater danger than 5-10 Helghast soldiers.

• Abhinav Pattanayak Says:
  Thursday, February 12th, 2009 12:12 am GMT +5.5 at 12:12 am

  Didn’t really face any clipping issues except for just once in 18hrs when one of the characters heel clipped through the stairs. Except for that, it was all smooth sailing.

• Krishnan Rajagopal Says:
  Thursday, February 12th, 2009 12:55 am GMT +5.5 at 12:55 am

  I just snuck the Combine AI reference in because for some reason, every time I see exploding barrels, I expect to see a Combine party nearby. And for some reason, the Combine remind me of the Helghast, or vice versa, with their gas masks and everything. Purely for the sake of fun.

  And yes, the FEAR Replicants were brilliant. If any comparison is to be made with the actual AI routines, then they’d either have to be with FEAR’s enemies or with the Far Cry mercs, both of which exhibited great intelligence in hunting you down ruthlessly. I still remember the time when a lone Replicant actually hid behind a wall for a couple of minutes after I eliminated his squad, waited for me to go past him and then shot me at point blank range with a shotgun. I didn’t know whether to be mad or awed. I chose the latter after I remembered that this was just an SP game and I didn’t really get attacked by a human camper in a multiplayer game. Pity Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate didn’t give the AI pathfinding the same workout that FEAR did.

• Ravi Sinha Says:
  Thursday, February 12th, 2009 01:57 pm GMT +5.5 at 1:57 pm

  @Abhinav: There weren’t that many but the ones that were there were just weird. Everyone was solid while fighting tanks and RPG launchers atop a damn before an air-srike wiped out the Helghast but for after being shot by a few soldiers, my body falls through the fucking floor?

  @Krishnan: Yeah, I found the similarity a bit odd too. But then some one pointed this out on our site

  http://www.anime.com/Jin-Roh/images/01.jpg

  And now we know exactly how original thee Helghast were. Oh well.

  Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate? What are those?

• Abhinav Says:
  Thursday, February 12th, 2009 07:36 pm GMT +5.5 at 7:36 pm

  @Ravi: That reminds me….I did fall off the map once after I died but then again, the review code was not the retail code, so I give them the benefit of doubt. Guess we were just lucky with our playthrough.

• Sam Says:
  Friday, February 13th, 2009 02:53 am GMT +5.5 at 2:53 am

  @Ravi: If you got the review copy, you also got a press disc. The press disc contains a PDF which mentions “known issues” in the review code. It would be unfair to find faults in a game when the developer has clearly mentioned that they know about them and are working to fix them for retail. Dont forget, these review copies were sent out before Christmas, and a fair amount of bug-fixing would have been carried between than and when the game went gold

• Ravi Sinha Says:
  Saturday, February 14th, 2009 09:55 pm GMT +5.5 at 9:55 pm

  @Sam: Funny. I was told it was the retail copy but I took it then and I still take it as their way of saying that it was the complete game. I would agree that even in a gap of one month when I had the chance to play it and Killzone 2 is to release, a large amount of bug-fixing has been done. After we played through the final retail copy, no known bugs persisted. Hooray.

  On a completely different topic, how do you guys (TAP) plan to go about scoring Killzone 2 overall? You going to merge the overall scores or will it be more of a case of what people should really play the game for?

• Singh Says:
  Monday, February 16th, 2009 11:26 pm GMT +5.5 at 11:26 pm

  Something tells me someone’s fallen to the hype.

  *scratches beard*

  I will remain skeptical of this game until I get to try it out myself. Past experience has proven that the more hyped a game is, the worse it really ends up being. Regardless of the developer or how long it’s been in development, this will be no different.

• Anton Says:
  Thursday, June 4th, 2009 09:54 am GMT +5.5 at 9:54 am

  Cool! (added by Mobile using Mippin)

• tiffany schmuck Says:
  Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 06:13 pm GMT +5.5 at 6:13 pm

  Thanks for your posting, i am just a newbie in the internet business, need to learn a lot from the gurus