Killzone 2 Multiplayer

Killzone 2's multiplayer is fantastic. The best description I can possibly give for it is to say that it is Halo meets Rainbow Six. If you know me on any level, or what games I have spent the most time on in the past, you will realize what high praise this really is. To break it down, Halo meets Rainbow Six is in the top 5 for game descriptions I can give a game; others include Doom meets Tetris, Starfox meets Battlefield (Warhawk), Mortal Kombat meets Zelda, and the highest of all is Tribes meets fellatio party (note that this is actually a trick comparison as Tribes was a fellatio party, so my highest honor is tribes meets tribes). KZ2's multiplayer takes the speed and frantic action of Halo, combines the importance of movement and controlled firing from Rainbow Six, sprinkes in the class elements from Team Fortress, and wraps it up with the intensity (obscure reference) of Delta Force 1.

I'll start with the Delta Force element since it is probably the least played game on this list. The weapons in DF were startlingly accurate, allowing you to be killed from anywhere on the map. While this specific element is not replicated by Killzone, the intensity and sense of terror from DF are present here. Because of the importance of movement and tactical decision making (the R6 element), combined with the pace of gameplay (Halo), Killzone forces you to not only be perfect in both your weapon usage and the choices you make, it forces you to act quickly since every second you don't act will likely result in the death of you and your teammates. Intensity is the best word to describe Killzone's multiplayer - it perfectly captures the feeling of having really powerful weaponry while simultaneously being extremely fragile.



I enjoy the random screaming in that video and I think it gives a solid, albeit tame demonstration on what the combat is like in KZ2. The class-based gameplay is ingeniously implemented as it forces you to earn the different classes you play as. This has two effects: first it ensures that there is a steady stream of people playing as the default soldier, avoiding a Team Fortress scenario where everyone is using grenade launchers and no actual fire-fights can break out; the second thing this mechanic does is that it forces people to play as the new classes they unlock as they progress, ensuring a steady stream of medics and engineers. As the game is still new, the online matches have a sort of embryonic soup element to them as the majority of players are low in rank so the advanced classes are rare and mystifying. The exciting element about playing now is that so many tactics are being discovered and the proper use of the classes has not been realized yet.

There is also a demonstrable difference in how the larger maps function relative to the smaller maps. Larger maps typically result in very tactical, fire and movement scenarios where a team can win if it has better knowledge of the objectives and where to surprise the enemy. Smaller maps resemble 1942 Stalingrad, often when pursuing objectives you will have a lifespan of under 10 seconds depending on where you spawn, and it is your sole desire to advance the position of your team a few feet before going down in a blaze of glory. Also ingenious is the rotation of game-types: each map turns into a competition of seven different game types from team deathmatch to capture and hold for approximately ten minute increments before switching it up, resulting in more competitive games as a team can stage a comeback if it gets trounced early in something.

The game is fantastic and I really like the fresh ideas being brought to multiplayer, it's still insignificant compared to: