I wonder who started that "Halo Killer" phrase and just what they were thinking. I imagine that person has gained the disgust of Halo and Killzone fans alike. I also imagine that this person has gotten over it now since this is 2008 after all.
Anywho, the game. Killzone for whatever reason was hailed the aforementioned nickname. And it really didn't deliver. I believe part of it was caused by the hardware itself. This game is arguably one of the better looking games on the PS2. And that's just it. This game looked great and I don't think the PS2's hardware could take it. Now if it was released for the Gamecube or Xbox. Things probably would have been different. Obviously, Killzone 2 shouldn't suffer from this problem.
Through a few hours worth of play I noticed that there is some frame rate issues and the artificial intelligence seems to not be intelligent at all a lot of the time. The multi-player I wouldn't even bother with. It felt kinda slow at times and is of no comparison to what the first Halo had to offer, let alone Halo 2. The bugs people talked about are clearly evident too. Environment and even enemy pop-ups do occur. I even seen one guy fall through a flight of stairs as I was about to hit him. And so far, i've ran into a couple of types of enemies. And by couple I mean about 2 maybe even 3. If your going to live to the that stupid nickname "Halo Killer", you damn sure better have a good variety of enemies.
What this game does have is a pretty decent story. Yes, its another one of those "humanity is at war with a fairly superior opponent" games. But what they do with that concept, they do reasonably well. I also like the guns for each side. The point of view is cool. I even liked when the guy climbed up a ladder. Seriously, I don't believe I have ever seen that in a FPS. I mean I seen them go up ladders. But that's just it, they go up. They don't climb up. Reloading was kinda neat too. Took a little while but that's how you would probably reload in real life under those conditions. The only problem I found with that is when you shoot someone with like say the shotgun underneath the helghast primary machine gun. If you have an extra shotgun round it reloads automatically. Which can sometimes screw you over. I hate that, its not needed and for a game that puts quite a bit of emphasis on realism it should not be that way at all. The sound was exceptional. Only some of the characters voices bugged me. But the music and the sounds of guns blazing were awesome.
Killzone doesn't have the AI, multi-player, and frame rate that Halo had. Not to mention all the bugs. That's why it's no "Halo Killer". What Killzone did though is get a bunch of little things right and that was enough to get by. With Killzone 2, Guerrilla will be able to live up to the hype.