Killzone 2 Demo Impressions

Okay, I just played through the Killzone 2 demo. It’s a very short experience. I died 5 times and had to redo parts, and it still took me less than 15 minutes. But it gave me a good impression of the game, and that’s what a demo is all about, eh?

First off, the menus are ANNOYING. Do they want me to have a headache before ever entering the game? The whole screen jerks around for every action you do in the menu. Why? Why oh why? “Let’s give everyone a bad impression of the game right from the start!”

The graphics were nice. They didn’t blow my mind, maybe because I’ve seen too many videos of the game. But they were nice. Sometimes there was some stuttering, which was a bit annoying. [Edit: Yes, yes, yes. The graphics are very nice. I am just so used to them by now, having seen a TON of videos, that they were nothing new and therefore didn’t impress me as much as if I’d been seeing them for the first time.]

This paragraph describes what the demo consists of. If you don’t want to know, skip to the next paragraph. Right now! Go! The demo starts off like the famous video, with you flying through the air on a motorized air car, or whatever it’s called. You land and have to shoot some baddies. There is no tuturial to speak of. This level is the tutorial, I guess. Anyway, after you land you can shoot some baddies on a bridge if you want to, but you’re really supposed to get the RPG and blow up the fuel dump on the bridge, which effectively destroys it. Then you wander under the bridge, turn a corner or two, have some more friends join you, and have a big fire fight with a bunch of Helghast. Once that’s done, you move into the building where you fight inside a warehouse area. You’ve probably seen it before in videos. And that’s it. When you exit that room, the demo ends. Then you get to see the death dance video with some text saying how great the game is.

The controls take some getting used to. Crouch is not a toggle, while ADS is. This is backwards in my opinion, though you can make ADS non-toggle in the options. Not so for crouch. Grrrr. Next time I play through the demo I’ll also have to tweak the turning speed, because the default made me feel like I was turning under water. I never have to play with these settings in other games. But I will here. All in all I have to say I was disappointed with the controls. I might still get used to them, but why don’t they have a control scheme that mimics the CoD one? It’s the best there is. At least give us the option. The last Alternate control scheme is the one that most closely mimics CoD, but the “most closely” ruins it. Having to play with both L1 for ADS and L2 for a non-toggle crouch was annoying. I’ll have to play experiment with difference schemes.

All in all? I would love to say that the demo was an impressive tour de force which blew my mind. But… well… it didn’t. Like most shooters I think I’m going to go straight to the multiplayer and skip the campaign. (Unless they release a co-op patch.)