Killzone 2 opens with a landing that goes wrong, and it never really lets up from there. Guerrilla Games built a first-person shooter for the PlayStation 3 that treats war as a series of scripted disasters, and the result is one of the most convincing action games of its generation.
The game released in February 2009, published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is the second main installment in the Killzone series, following 2004’s Killzone, and it arrived carrying more anticipation than most sequels ever earn.
That anticipation was met. Killzone 2 drew acclaim from critics and fans, who called it a superior title to the original. The visuals, action, multiplayer modes, soundtrack and atmosphere all took praise. The narrative took criticism. Both reactions are fair.
Trailer, via BluRayTrailers.
Sev Lands on Helghan
The story picks up two years after the Helghast assault on Vekta. An ISA fleet under Colonel Jan Templar attacks Pyrrhus, the capital city of Helghan. The goal is direct: capture Emperor Scolar Visari and bring the Helghast war machine to a halt.
You play as Sergeant Tomas “Sev” Sevchenko, a veteran of the ISA Legion battalion. He is second-in-command to Ricardo “Rico” Velasquez, who leads Alpha Squad. Sev is battle-hardened, and the game wastes no time proving it.
Templar returns in a supporting role, along with Rico. Templar was the protagonist of Killzone and Killzone: Liberation, so his presence here ties the series together for anyone who has been following it.
The ISA expects resistance. What it gets is a planet that fights back on its own. Helghan’s fog-like atmosphere, gritty deserts and constant storms threaten the invaders almost as much as the enemy does.
Radec and the Arc Towers
The Helghast are ready. They have used their harsh environment to develop new weapons and equipment the ISA has never seen. Colonel Mael Radec, commander of the Second Army, is the man behind much of it.
Radec activates a network of arc towers hidden beneath Pyrrhus. The towers kill hundreds of ISA soldiers and break the invasion’s momentum in a single stroke. It is the game’s best turn, and it lands because the campaign has spent hours making the ISA advance feel earned.
Dante Garza, a member of Alpha Squad and a close friend of Sev, retrieves a piece of a destroyed tower. He sends it to ISA researcher Evelyn Batton. She learns the towers are powered by Petrusite, a mineral that can generate and channel electricity.
Batton also identifies an old mining outpost on the outskirts of Pyrrhus. The Helghast have been extracting Petrusite there in secret for military use.
The Refinery and Garza
While restoring the outpost’s communication antenna, Sev and Rico get separated from the rest of Alpha Squad. Radec’s men capture them. The two fight through the refinery where the captives were taken and stumble onto an interrogation run by Radec himself.
Radec demands that Evelyn hand over the launch codes to a set of stolen nuclear warheads in Helghast custody. Rico loses his temper and surprises Radec, saving the captives. Garza is mortally wounded when one of Radec’s men, killed by Rico, discharges his weapon and Garza is shot.
The squad returns to the New Sun blaming Rico for their friend’s death. Before Garza can be properly mourned, an elite Helghast battalion led by Radec mounts a surprise attack on the fleet. Several ships are boarded or destroyed, including the Sun.
This is where Killzone 2’s campaign is at its strongest. It does not stage a heroic last stand. It stages a rout, and it makes the Helghast look like the professionals.
Hollywood Realism in the Hands
Guerrilla Games described the gameplay as Hollywood Realism, and the phrase holds up. The campaign leans on scripted, cinematic set pieces rather than open arenas. The game is played entirely from the first-person perspective, with two exceptions: portions of vehicular combat with a tank and an exoskeleton.
Those two segments break the rhythm, and not always for the better. The tank and exoskeleton sections are the parts where Killzone 2 feels least like itself. The first-person shooting is the draw, and the game knows it.
The weapons carry weight. The action is deliberate. Killzone 2 asks you to fight from cover and to respect what the Helghast are holding, and the praise it received for its action was earned on those terms.
Warzone Holds Up
Next to the single-player campaign sits Warzone, a squad-based multiplayer mode. It runs five kinds of missions: Assassination, Search & Retrieve, Search & Destroy, Bodycount and Capture & Hold. Those missions are built on seven kinds of classes.
Warzone supports up to 32 players, with bots added to fill the remaining spots. That last detail matters more than it sounds. Bots keep a match full when the lobby is not, and they keep the mode playable long after a player base thins out.
The multiplayer modes drew praise, and that praise helped sustain the game’s audience long after release. Warzone was not a consolation prize, and it is a large part of why the sequel had an audience waiting.
What the Campaign Gets Wrong
The narrative drew criticism, and it deserves the note. Killzone 2 has a clear premise and a strong middle, but its characters are thin. Rico’s temper is a plot device. Garza’s death is a beat. Sev is a camera with a rank.
The game frames the Helghast as the more compelling faction, and Radec gets the best material. Visari gets the goal. The ISA gets the mission brief. That imbalance is the story’s real problem.
None of that sinks the campaign. It just means the story is the weakest of the game’s major pieces, and the praise for the visuals, action, multiplayer, soundtrack and atmosphere should be read as the fuller picture.
Why Killzone 2 Still Matters
Killzone 2 was widely anticipated before release, and it delivered on that anticipation in the ways that count. The game’s critical and commercial success led to a sequel, Killzone 3, released in February 2011. That is the clearest measure of what this one achieved.
Seventeen years after release, the visuals hold up better than most PlayStation 3 shooters. The atmosphere holds up better than almost any of them. The Helghan of Killzone 2 is a place, not a backdrop, and the fog, grit and storms do real work in the campaign.
The narrative is the part that has aged worst. It is also the part the game needed least. Killzone 2 succeeds as a shooter first, and it succeeds there with a confidence that few games in the genre matched in 2009.
It is the second main installment in the Killzone series, following 2004’s Killzone.
This is the part worth watching: the arc towers. Radec’s trap is the moment Killzone 2 stops being a war game and becomes a story about an army that walked into the wrong planet. Everything before it sets the table. Everything after it pays off.
The score is 9.0 of 10.
The Numbers
- Title: Killzone 2
- Developer: Guerrilla Games
- Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
- Platform: PlayStation 3
- Release: February 2009
- Series: Second main installment, following 2004’s Killzone
- Genre: First-person shooter
- Modes: Single player, multiplayer (Warzone, up to 32 players plus bots)
- Warzone missions: Assassination, Search & Retrieve, Search & Destroy, Bodycount, Capture & Hold
- Critical score: 9.0/10 (aggregate of 8 outlets)
- Sequel: Killzone 3, February 2011
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