In addition to being weak, most of the weapons feature at least one crippling disadvantage that makes them ineffective. Normally the sniper rifle is the biggest crowd pleaser in a first person shooter and it could have been the case in Killzone had the designers fine tuned it a bit. A sniper rifle is only as good as its targeting mechanism so it's no surprise that Killzone's rifle is nearly worthless. The mechanism is too loose and it automatically recenters itself when you're not applying pressure to the analog stick. This means that you'll need to find your target in the scope; hold that position, zoom in with the d-pad and then hit the R1 button in order to take him out. The shotgun is especially weak and ineffective, leaving me extremely disappointed.
Killzone’s biggest downfall stems from the fact that it doesn’t really know what it wants to be. In one respect the game tries its hand at being a realistic shooter; playing the game like Rambo on acid won’t work. It employs you to utilize cover and play realistically as opposed to running into a room and mowing down the opposition. Then again the game does a lot of things that make it seem like an action-shooter too. You can take an exorbitant amount of damage and when you’re out of combat, you’ll gradually regain health. Then there’s the targeting reticle; in most realistic shooters the reticle grows larger as you’re performing actions that will affect your ability to hold the gun steady. This makes it harder to be accurate and increases the chance for you to miss. In Killzone you won’t have to deal with such a mechanism; the reticle always remains small and you will always hit the center of it whether you’re crouching, standing still or strafing. Alright, so the game wants to be action-oriented, right? Well not quite, because you can’t fire when you’re activating the run feature. It makes little sense to add in these artificial limitations when you’ve already indicated to the gamer that you’re going one route with the game.
At least the artists knew exactly where they were going with the look of the game. When you're wandering through the remains of a bombed out headquarters your mind really believes that this place could exist in your own world. You don't just see hints of fire and destruction here and there; the entire complex is devastated and the proof is in the level design. You can interact with an above-average amount of objects and each object behaves fairly realistically. When you shoot a window it doesn't just shatter; it spider webs and takes a few hits before the tension causes it to shatter to the ground. My only gripe with the look of the game is that it fails to utilize any sort of physics system and instead opts for a pre-scripted sequence for most of the objects. When you shoot a water cooler you'll always see the bottle separate from the cooler and then spin to the ground in the same fashion, no matter where you shoot it. After the bottle hits the ground it suddenly turns into the immovable force that is unfazed by your bullets or grenades. I'm not asking for Havok physics here, but at least make the object move and react a little.
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