An impressive package of online and offline first person shooting is hampered by an abysmal control scheme.
Developer Guerrilla Games set out to create an FPS experience where weapons have weight and realistic handling. While realism is a laudable goal, their implementation of this goal comes at the price of playability and fun.
The Killzone 2 campaign is an action-packed machismo romp with absolutely stunning graphics. The story line is serviceable at best but doesn't hamper the game's overall fun-factor. All the ingredients are there for a superlative shooting experience except for the shooting. The combination of dead zones on the analog sticks, jerky aim acceleration, and severe control input lag make for a frustrating experience of constant over and under aiming that hearkens back to last year's Turok. Surely the core payoff in an FPS is the ability to accurately aim and fire your weapon. When the player is denied that payoff for any reason the experience suffers. Such is the case with Killzone 2.
At the risk of fanboy backlash the PS3 controller's mushy analog sticks only add to the frustration.
The multiplayer experience is exactly what you would expect from thousands of players trying to adapt to sub-par shooting controls. The player adaptations found in Killzone 2 are excessive pray-and-spray shooting with the SMG, an overabundance of camping, and the always super fun experience of spawn killing. I don't know about you but that sounds like the very definition of hell to me.
A highly anticipated game quickly found its way into the trade-in pile in the span of one weekend. Rent it for the amazing graphics in the single player campaign and then rid yourself of this disappointment.