craven.fr (.ox.ac.uk)

If there is any genre in video games today that is overdone, it is the first-person shooter—and the most clichéd sub-genre of this most clichéd of genres is the bald space marine type of first-person shooter, in which realistic battles are fought in a sci-fi setting. Just as in the 80s space shoot-'em-ups cloning everything from Space Invaders to Galaga formed a glut of mediocrity in arcades, today, faced an increasing number of mediocre Halo clones, a first-person shooter has a lot of resistence to overcome if it is going to merit atteniton.

And yet, from early on Killzone 2 (in which the protagonist space marine, to be fair, sports a military haircut rather than being bald) held my interest in spite of my all-too-apparent reticience to play this kind of game, because the programmer in me just had to see what has long been acknowledged as a supreme technical achievement. In terms of raw graphical beauty, Killzone 2 currently sits atop the PS3, and is without reservation the best first-person shooter I have played.

That's not to say that it has won me over to the genre, though. And not because I don't like war games on principal: Metal Gear Solid 4 in fact is my favourite video game of all time. But that game tackles the moral questions surrounding war in a thought-prevoking way, even while putting together an awesome action tale. Killzone 2 has no such pretensions—but it compensates through faster gameplay and more intense action. In "video-gameyness", that probably counts for more for most people than a thought-provoking plot, though, so my preferences may be in the minority.

This really comes to the fore in online play, where teams of 16 players confront each other in a variety of missions. These battles are a lot of fun—and definitely a game, not a serious war story like the single-player campaign (you respawn after eight seconds, after all). In online play, it is the scoreboard that matters, not who prevails in the science fiction saga of the invasion of planet Helghan. Both the single-player and especially the online modes have a ton of replay value as well, so Killzone 2 provides a huge value for entertainment: I definitely prefer it to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and since owning one realistic first-person soldiering game is enough for me, it is Killzone 2 that I would recommend.

All in all, then, I would not hesitate to recommend this game as a core element of anyone's PS3 library, especially for those who are more predisposed to first-person shooters and war games than I am personally.