The game's reception is unfortunately damaged due to Sony rushing the game two weeks before Halo 2. It was thus called the "Halokiller". How ironic considering Halo 2 also suffered from a rushed development.
Anyway, this is Killzone. It's pretty slow at first as it takes awhile before the plot really gets going. It has a long and challenging campaign mode with intense action, and a decent story about Earth going to war with a subspecies of humans called the Helghast. The Helghast are designed as blackened figures with red-glowing googles to give them a menacing look, which is a very unique video game character design.
You can play as four different characters all of which play differently:
- Templar: Plays like your average FPS character and starts with an assault rifle and pistol.
- Luger: She runs much faster than the others and her health and stamina recharge faster, but she is the weakest and can't take as much damage. Can use heat vision goggles to spot enemies. She's also the most mobile character, she can vault over stuff, climb ladders, climb wires and crawl through tight spaces. Generally has access to higher areas where she can snipe with ease. She starts with a silenced SMG and combat knife.
- Rico: He is the slowest, his running speed is low and his health/stamina recharge slowly. He can't really do anything agile like vaulting, but is the strongest and can take the most damage. He starts with a chaingun and pistol.
- Hakha: He moves the same as Templar, but because he is part Helghast he can slip through Helghast securities and infiltrate their bases and such. He can even reprogram sentry bots to fight for you. On top of that, he has increased accuracy and can store more ammo. He starts with the Helghast assault rifle, Helghast pistol and hunting knife.
In addition to having decent gunplay, voice acting (the sound compression is unfortunately pretty bad with the voices; it's even worse on the HD version as all of the sounds have worse compression than before), graphics (except for the terrible framerate, though this was fixed in the PS3 HD remaster) and character models, the game makes a good use of distance fog to give it a feeling of an apocalyptic war-like tone. Additionally, the soundtrack is composed of triumphant and gritty music to give players the feeling of war. The war scenes, however, are pretty boring and melodramatic since all you do is watch the enemy and ally NPCs fight, but nothing exciting ever happens. The level design allows the player to approach gun fights in a different way depending on who they play as. Additionally, Allies will aid you in battle, unlike other first person shooters at the time. The controls are somewhat slippery, though.
The enemy A.I. is inconsistent as the enemies will sometimes ignore you or stand in place. The enemy death screams can sometimes get annoying.
The plot twist of General Adams being a traitor isn't surprising as his mannerisms and way of speaking is villainous.
It has a fun multiplayer mode. Though offline multiplayer does not have split-screen.
This game is a high recommendation.