Killzone 2 Demo Review

A demo was released today for Killzone 2 (available in Europe, but if you made a Europe account you were able to download it).

The demo is roughly 1200MB in size. The first thing I noticed when I started Killzone 2 was the menu system. Very cool the way they did things for navigating. You can only play through a small portion of the full game and there's no multiplayer component to test out. No complaints about that though, it is after all a demo.

After messing around with the settings to customize it the way I wanted, I started the campaign. Unfortunately you can only pick one difficulty setting. It starts with a cinematic where your transport vehicle is going down and you crash land near a beach. After navigating with your troops for a small distance, Helghast troops immediately come down around you and the action begins. The demo lasted roughly 20 minutes from start to finish. You make your way from the beach to an indoor facility, then back out and it is over.

In between are plenty of enemies to shoot and the action is plentiful, but there is only one complaint regarding the combat. The aiming seems like it'll take some time to get used to, nothing major, but you might be missing enemies when you first start playing.

I was playing Killzone 2 in 720p and it was probably the best looking console game I have ever seen. Animations, textures, setting, lighting...all looks amazing. Blasting off your rifle and seeing the bullets impact metal is sweet. The bullets hit and seem to turn red hot then dissipate. Ragdoll is present with plenty of blood. Enemies react pretty realistically to getting shot. Overall, this game looks incredible.

Speaking of the Helghast, they are actually really smart in terms of combat. They take cover, try and flank you, and if you think they'll pop out one spot, they might show up where you're not expecting them. The only difficulty was the second out of four levels and I was getting hit pretty good.

Overall, Killzone 2 looks like it's going to be a very intense, graphically superior, fun, and fast paced shooter considering what is being offered. Highly recommended.