@@ExeErdna It was so crazy reading up on the lore and going "wait what? The Vectans did _what_ to the Helghast??? We are the baddies!?" And the games did _nothing_ with it. So damned disappointing. Call of Duty has had more nuanced plots. Guerilla was sitting on a storytelling goldmine the whole time.
I guess the problem is that these games always had as a priority the gameplay. That is, the "just shoot the guys with masks". And it first it worked, but then they got ambitious with the story without having the commitment with the games themselves... and now Killzone is a moral mess
Thats because Sev doesnt read book, he preaches being up close and finette for kills. So wtf is ... a shakespear but a shake spear ... Lofl ionno bra killzone was good times huh.
The AI in killzone 2 was insane. I remember i got my ass beat by a helghast that got OUT of his scripted role to come to the cargo elevator i was descending on at ISA hq, he fucking jumped down 3 meters from the fence as i was trying to shoot him to stop him, made a tactical roll landing and ended up on my face to instantly knock me out with his rifle stock on my face. Then he proceeded to humiliate me on my dying screen... I never shot at his raid squad during that part ever again.
The AI was so good in that game. They'd also be more aggressive if you backed off, provide cover fire for advancing allies, and throw grenades if you were camping.
BRUH YES On my gameplay yesterday, I was in a room, and there was an open door, leading to the open, and there in the open was one of those faster helghasts. So I changed to my revolver since I was out of ammo, and I shot like 3 or 4 times at close range, but the fucker just kinda tricked me dodging left to right and shooting my ass, not only that but when I retreated to take cover and reload HE JUST FUCKING FOLLOWED ME BERSERK MODE AND MELEED THE SHIT OUT OF ME taking advantage of my low health. Never got my ass so beat by a fucking bot like that b4 lol
Wow, seeing how good Killzone 2 still looks is astonishing. Even after the massive “downgrades” they still produced something that rivals games made even 5 years later.
There were never any "downgrades", because the original trailer literally wasn't actually footage of the game. It was a cinematic made to LOOK like gameplay, but in actuality is was basically just a glorified cutscene meant to trick people.
@@Dev-nr4dw man you're all drunk, Killzone 3 looks way better than 2 and they've always been generic looking shooters. Killzone 2 looking good??? On PS4 with the HD remaster it might look decent enough, on the PS3 its terrible.
Evidence First · 12 Years Ago it wasn’t made to trick people. They sent it to Sony before a lot of development to show what they hoped the game would look like. Sony then released it as a “gameplay trailer.”
@@HOTD108_ Yeah, that's why i put "downgrades" in quotation marks. Even despite the pre-rendered bullshot the game looks positively amazing, and in many ways better than that original trailer.
The Enemy design was the cool thing in these games. The Helghast even had Mechas. They easily could have continued the Series by making you play as a Helghast Revolutionary.
Killzone was the last first person shooter that me and my dad played together so it will forever have a very special place in my heart. The co-op campaign was incredible and the super badass multiplayer with bots that we could fight, it was perfect game at the time to play together. Miss that guy a lot. Cancer sucks
@@1pikman thank you man! I had buddies who unfortunately never had and or lost theirs very early, so it helped me with a perspective to be thankful of what I had.
Cancer does very much suck, but you know what doesn't tho? Being able to look back on your memories with him with fondness and gratitude. Sounds like you had a great relationship with him and that'll never change no matter what. Happy for you my man, may good fortune continue to come to you and your loved ones 🤟
If you look into the lore of Killzone they do have a reason for the Helghast suddenly getting those crazy weapons. The Stahl Arms corporation had been holding its best equipment back because Jorhan Stahl wanted more political power and Visari wasn’t giving it to him, but with Visari dead he began dealing out his weapons to the generals in the war council in hopes of getting the power he wanted and sure enough he got it. he was the complete opposite of Reddac, disloyal, ambitious, and absolutely drunk on his own power
Thank you for mentioning this, thats all i could think of everytime he complained about it being too sci-fi I get it, its not for everyone. But the games straight up gives you this knowledge. Glad I wasn't the only one paying attention.
@@djphat94 Yeah I also thought it was a little strange. I have seen one commenter further down saying they picked up KZ2 specifically cause of this video but, it's highly probable that's a niche. Unless they remaster them at some point, which doesn't seem to be a thing anytime soon, if at all.
Despite being the epitome of the mid-2000’s gray washed out trend I do still appreciate some of the heavy grunge and industrial aesthetics of the game, everything’s dirty and bombed out, it’s kind of like the Terminator video game we never got.
It’s also why I am weirded out by the design of Shadow Fall, it doesn’t gel with the rest of the series and looks more akin to a Mirrors Edge Catalyst more than anything.
Playing through the teracite ruins on shadow fall gave me the same exact feeling, actually enhanced the experience quite a bit, which before that had been a bit of a forced stealth slog, but with that thought in mind I actually had a shitload of fun sneaking through the ruins avoiding the combat drones and other robots
In a documentary over Horizon: Zero Dawn, a member of Guerilla Games states that the story was never written in-house. They outsourced that to a separate team of writers every time, and I think it really shows. If it’s true that they’re working on another Killzone, I hope it’s a reboot w/a dedicated writing team like HZD.
Shadowfall: "So, the ISA took in all the refuges from the planet they destroyed when they won the war." Me: "Sure, makes sense." Shadowfall: "Including their soldiers." Me: "Yeah, sure. I mean, when they have surrendered..." Shadowfall: "And they get half the planet." Me: "Hm... ok. Seems a bit excessive, but the ISA took their entire planet, I guess." Shadowfall: "And the forced resetteling of the humans living on Helghast side won't be completted before the planet gets split up." Me: "Ahm... really?" Shadowfall: "And the Helghast get to rule over their side autonomously." Me: "Hang on!" Shadowfall: "And they get to keep all their military equipment and technology." Me: "STOP!"
The only thing I can think of is the lack of desire of the Vectan government to put at any real effort or resources to integrate the two. If the Helghast can keep their military forces and form their government and stay on their side, then less problems for the Vektans. With the outcomes of both the first and second extrasolar wars, they must have given up trying to make true peace with the Helghast.
^this. In most games weather effects are just an overlay on screen instead of effecting the environment! Killzone 3 has some of the best snow I've ever seen in games
Ehhhh nah he skipped over that vekta was originally the helghast homeworld and the ISA invaded and kicked them to helghan. Killzone 1 is literally the helghast trying to take back their planet.
@@derkurier2710 Nope. Vekta was founded along side helgan. Vekta was named after the CEO of the Helgan company. Philip Vekta. The first people to move to that planet were of the Helgan mining company who eventually became the helgan empire. Prior to anyone colonizing the planet the Helgan company won the bid for both planets and therefore owned them.
“The Helgast (Kaiserreich) lost the First Helgan War (World War I) and have since been living rough on their terrible living conditions (Treaty Of Versailles) Scholar Visari (Politician Hitler) unifies the downtrodden Helgast (German) people into the Helgan Empire (3rd Reich) an authoritarian totalitarian supremacist regime that now plans on invading Vector (Poland)”
So far you talked about Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Killzone, DmC, and Revengeance. Don't stop until you made videos on every franchise featured in Playstation All-Stars. *I await your Fat Princess retrospective, Charlie.*
I'll tell you as someone who played Killzone when it first came out. The facial models especially during the character select screen were the most realistic graphics I had seen at that time.
RIP Killzone. The website died recently and it looks like we will never get another game. I really wanted a killzone game where we could play as a Helgahst soldier to see the other side of the conflict
I love the fact that Helgahast are justified in there hate for the other side but they let that hate consume them so totally they... go over the top shale we say
It also had some of the most intelligent AI in any game at that time. Like, it's scary how dirty and cleverly the AI will play sometimes just to try and kill you.
It's nice seeing some actual attention being given to Killzone 2. It's a game I've played many times before but I've never seen it talked about. I always came back to it for its brutal and gritty aesthetic and it's definitely something it nailed where other shooters that tried failed. One thing it did I find interesting is design the game to be played without a HUD. There's an option to turn it off and I've played it many times that way and got way more immersed in it. Health is determined by color of the screen (something that wasn't as common back then) and the guns make a different sound when firing them on low ammo, so you are aware when you're about to run dry. Just a neat little thing I don't recall being done in other shooters
Another game that I love without hud are the first two metro games. So fun and the game has a lot of physical stuff to keep track of things instead of hud
Killzone 2 was some of my favorite Multiplayer at the time as well. Really loved how much the classes impacted gameplay while having a "realistic" and gritty feel to it.
Warhammer 40k Space marine does a similar thing with the guns. The game is very hectic and switches between melee and ranged at the drop of a hat. So guns sound different when almost empty so you don't have to look down at your ammo bar.
I remember buying into all the “Halo killer” hype when this was first coming out. And while it definitely didnt outclass halo, i f-ing loved this game and REALLY appreciated the entire set up. Now that ive been fully reminded of everything i loved about this game i now would like to request a remaster or remake.
Just remember: Calling a game a [blank] killer is a dumb phrase that gaming news outlets game up with. No developer would ever label their game a “[blank]” killer
I wish my generation had that luxury, I still remember reading about the left 4 dead cast in the manual and thinking it was cool leaning about the characters
I always loved reading the manuals on the way home from the game store. Sometimes I would take one out with me for reading material and would actually learn a thing or two about the game, like what certain UI icons meant that aren't explained in-game. Good times.
Halo weapon specs were my favorite. Reading about vehicles and stuff and looking at the pictures was like nibbling down the cherry after a super satisfying desert after an even more satisfying 3 course meal. Now u just download a game it on steam and wiki the info you need or youtube a tutorial. Im absolutely bappy about how convenient it is because i remember when things were so limited. But sad knowing im the last generation of gamer to appreciate those things. But we move on.
Jotaro97 I haven’t watched it but the vibe I got was that “sometimes one-man dictatorship/absolute monarchy is more effective that flawed democracy in war”
@@themagalanium9491 Good "Grey Conflicts" that aren't trying to be grey for edginesses sake, as mentioned above, usually aren't as concerned with making a statement on who's right or wrong (which kind of defeats the purpose in my eyes) as much as they are exploring the how and why of people choosing to believe what they believe in relation to a larger world.
I've always really liked Radec, nice to see someone giving him due praise. His characterization in his cutscenes from Playstation All Stars is excellent too.
Speaking of PlayStation AllStars, I always found it a bit funny how Radec, who's supposed to be super devoted to Helghan, just sort of dips in the middle of a full-scale invasion to go fight Sir Daniel and shit. Soldier: Colonel Radec! The enemy is at our gates! What shall we do, sir?! *realizes he's not there.* "Sir?" He soon finds a note, which reads... "Yo, there's this giant purple head somewhere that might or might not be a threat to us. I'm gonna go check it out. BRB."
Sean Pertwee is a fantastic actor and really brought the character to life. I have no idea why he isn't being cast in more stuff. Dude's like a walking Oscar performance and yet he keeps getting stuck in awful straight-to-DVD flicks. While I'm happy to see he got some exposure in Gotham as Alfred Pennyworth, the guy really deserves much better. Why he isn't in Marvel movies or something of a Star Wars-level caliber I have no idea.
Indeed. I wish they made remastered version and for pc as well. In fact put all Killzone games to PC like they are doing it now with Halo. That might restart the interest for the franchise.
@@CliffuckingBooth They brought horizon to pc. I think Killzone would be a good choice for the pc as well. If they do it I hope they include the multiplayer .
@@0uttaS1TE as much as I loved the good ending in InFamous 2, I would of loved to see Cole again. And see how SuckerPunch would write him as the main bad guy.
@@0uttaS1TE Dunno man,InFanmous 2 showed that their writing staff REALLY couldnt handle even the comparatively small differences between the two endings of 1,cant even imagine how they would have fucked up a third entry(that isnt just a tech-demo with a completely half assed and negligible story...oh hey thar Second Son).
@@0uttaS1TE There was a pretty big difference in the form of how the narrative handled Cole´s relationship with Zeke which the second game then just handwaves away DESPITE being such a comparetatively small part. I absolutely cant see them handle the vastly different endings of 2 if they couldnt even be arsed to handle that detail.
Thx for mentioning Killzone Mercenary! I’ve had a vita for a while, but barely used it until now. I’ve never played any other Killzone, but I’ve been hooked to this game and think it’s really underrated.
It still looks like you are playing a cutscene, I remember the first time I seen gameplay of it, it was at a videogame store called Play N Trade and they were playing it on a flat screen I could not believe how the graphic looked.
Killzone sections without allies made me feel isolated and fearful really, the sensation that healghast were at every room/corner used to trick me a Lot, playing Halo made me feel more like a supersoldier
I mean, in Killzone you are just a soldier. In Halo Master Chief is the best of the genetically modified super soldiers so it makes sense that you feel that way.
Just read that in its lore, apparently the ISA enacted an incredibly unfair trade deal that basically screwed over the Helghast into a great depression, then Scolar Visari had them rise up to basically fight back against this... then we play as the ISA... who push the "bad guys" back in the ground. I remember loving Killzone 2 back in the day, but now I feel like the ISA were the bad guys all along. Am I wrong?
@@quatreraberbawinner2628he’s not wrong but he’s not right the ISA did fuck up the Helghast and sent them off of their home-world to a cancer planet but the Helghast also did some fucked up shit after that,the Killzone lore is literally both sides are evil in their own right,The Helghast fight because they were sent off to die by plague and famine and the Isa fight because all they know is that the Helghast are going to murder everyone on your home-world and they do not care for civilians both are evil and unless you read into it you automatically believe the Isa like a Isa grunt but if you read the lore you will see that both are not good
your correct in the sense that the isa is an extension of the earth and its goverment/military influence and thus its the earth thats been fucking over both helghast and vecta. not even strictly out of malicious intent even, just a kinda indifferent desire to maintain the status quo of earths hegemony over human interstellar civilizations. it was the earth for instance that coordinated the isolation of helghan which led to its economic depression and made it ripe and ready for a populist vesari coup. and it was also the earth that forced vecta to take on helghan refugees. thats kinda the thing really. vecta and helghan have such a narrative prominence but when you actually get into the background thats being written for these games, this isn't really a conflict of the heroic rebel alliance fighting the evil galactic empire. this is more like the korean war in space in terms of scale.
yup, still the best handheld shooter i played, and honestly one of the better shooters ever released. the amount of replayability of each mission due to vanguards and weapons was crazy. also the multiplayer was legitimately good and they even released bots through the botzome dlc later, so you could always go back to play it
@@MostlyPennyCat Halo not as good as it used to be though, 343 kinda dragged it through the mud, 4 was okay if you liked call of duty, 5 followed EAs mentality that nobody liked solo player anymore and produced a shit campaign and I got no expectations for infinite because with how 343 just remastered reach to have the new stupid ass system that forces players to play multiplayer to level up that shows that they aren't doing the series justice
I replayed 4 recently. 4 should have been an X1 launch title. It's problem was the 360 was too much a limiting factor. I genuinely like the campaign, minus the boring AI, but that's a hardware limit. Yes there was a style change, I didn't love it, didn't hate it. I love Halo Wars 1 & 2. Spartan Ops was a _fantastic_ idea badly implemented (boring levels) 5. 5 was just, ugh, yuck, no. Nonono. Infinite should have targeted the next generation. But infinite looks _gorgeous_ Original halo art style with a pbr engine and hub and spoke level design. Yes please, yes please very much. And halo wars 3. And some other spin offs, like bungie did with odst. I just don't understand why they stopped doing stuff in this way. Side projects, movies, books, RTS games. Offload all that stuff, separate MP from SP into MCC, have 343 focus on engine design and main story campaign. _how is this so difficult to figure out???_ I think it's far from killed. But there opportunity is still there. They need to change the focus. Individual components do not need to be profitable and million copy sellers. Like Netflix and HBO, get some good products, take risks to find them, get people subscribed to game pass. This is the business model now. It _could, should_ be glorious.
@@erikgardner4777 I like both call of duty and halo, halo first, neither of them felt anything like cod, I feel like using that Insult is just lazy and bandwagoning because it isn't a pure halo experience from the originals
You never defeat Radec. He denies you victory by taking matters into his own hands. ;) (that even assumes it's the REAL Radec, as there's support in the narrative that it may be an imposter, though KZ3 and SF threw much of the story out the window to do their own thing so they never followed up on this)
@@amiiru2251 I believe it. I know people who spent weeks not being able to pass the rocket launcher corridor section on the hard difficulty, or the ATAC fight without using the rocket launcher cheese on the hardest difficulty.
@@davekaye5483 dude killzone 2 is the best and most graphically realistic and enjoyable game. I got it with my ps3 slim when I was six, I didn't have that much fun before (I am an introvert). Me and my dad used to take turns, it was a blast. Now he passed away, and I got my hands on killzone 3, I'd always imagine me and him taking turns.. I am really happy that this game has a big community that's still going.
If anyone is still confused by the franchise's story and premise. It's basically one huge dick-tugging competition of genocide and war crimes with a very anti-war rhetoric to it. Nobody is the good guy in Killzone. The ISA are just a bunch of missfit mercenaries who act as pawns for Earth and the New Vektan government with the sole purpose of keeping the Helghast in check, even if it means resorting to genocide to do so(of which they do in Killzone 3 and Shadowfall). The Helghast, while ultimately the victims in the grand scheme of things, opted to becoming a harsh, violent fascist super power with the sole intention of taking back Vekta from their enemies. None of them sound good by any means.
The evilness of the hellghast always seemed so forced to me Like "they look like nazis so they must be evil" them you read the lore and see how they were exploited workers that suffered under Vekta's laws and decided to rise up So to compensate the fact that the hellgan are the one in the "good side" they make them do saturday morning cartoon vilanous acts
Killzone 2 LOOKS BETTER than that fake video for sure, it's honestly one of the best lookers on the PS3, I'm sad it lost itself honestly, it was such a unique game.
Dude i would love to play this shit outta it again too I wish emulation would come along to pick up the third console generation already! They still haven't gotten good Xbox Original emulation either though
Ok, so one cool idea for KZ 3 and Shadowfall I came up with while watching this would have been if, in 3, it maintained its gritty and grounded tone, with the nuking of Helghan being actually an accident, with the characters not knowing/caring for the superweapon, just them actually trying to leave and maybe they shoot down a fighter which crashes into the superweapon or some other cheesy stuff, nuking Helghan. After that, Vekta actually takes in the Helghast refugees, and tries to integrate them into Vektan society (so no goofy partition), except both in the government and general populace there is a lot of mistrust and discrimination against the Helghast, who would still probably live in tangibly worse conditions on average compared to most Vektans. There could be a lot of urban guerrilla warfare between the two sides, the Helghast, angered by the nuking of their homeworld and discrimination they face on Vekta, radicalised by their miserable conditions, and the Vektans being exceptionally distrustful of the Helghast, with anti-Helghast militias being more or less covertly supported by the Vektan government. This would add some grey to it, with the Helghast adopting some sort of Post-Helghast-ism, or either way a reformed ideology that cherished the virtues and rights of Visari’s regime, while diminishing or condemning its crimes, be it out of genuine desire to change, or as a way to mask a will to return to that ultranationalist, revanchist totalitarianism. Furthermore, taking place decades into the future compared to 3, it would -as you said- justify the more bright and overtly sci-fi elements. And it would have fairly modest objectives, for example the player could be a soldier/policeman in the ISA (maybe in a squad with some Helghast or Mixed-heritage people thrown in as well) who has the fairly simple and modest objective of keeping the peace, by countering guerrilla activity, nominally by both Helghast and Vektan extremists, though the orders you get would certainly have a bias against the Helghast, with you maybe taking part in some “questionable” actions.
there's actual good conversation between these ideologies, which modern games lack. this creates purpose(maybe I created it myself through these discussin ingame), i dont feel similar purpose in many more modern games.
@Cody Sonnet Germany was attacked? Are you referencing when Germany killed a bunch of convicts, and then dressed them in Polish uniforms as a false flag attack to try justifying the invasion of Poland? Because that's what it was, Nazi propaganda.
I think shadowfall could've maybe worked if they made it about a civil war trying to topple the Helghast regime, and the ISA was STILL trying to commit Helghast genocide. That way you can still shoot some Helghast and have the morally grey theme be less stupid. And then if the regime is toppled, the ISA can be the big bad in later games, since they've kinda always been dicks, and now you dont have to worry about looking like you support totalitarianism. I don't know how well that would work, but it's just an idea
I feel like you're downplaying why there was such a backlash against military shooters in the early 2000's. The colour was a factor but there was more to it than that. We went from fighting a variety of things like demons and aliens and soldiers to nothing but soldiers. We went from using weapons that varied from standard to alien, to nothing but the standard pistol/shotgun/assault rifle combo. We went from varied subgenres within fps games (sci-f, military and even fantasy) to nothing but straight military. The characters went from some degree of variety in characters (space marines, scientists, soldiers, warriors) to nothing but soldiers. And then it was simply the fact that the market became saturated in these same style of games.
@@MILDMONSTER1234 lol exactly, I'd take shooting and flanking soldiers all the time using responsive and realistic guns over some another bunnyhopping, keycard hunting quake/doom clone. Yeah, I like console shooters, fuck games where you need to jump around one, extremely stupid, bullet spongy demon that requires entire ammo reserve from 8 guns to kill it. Soldiers in "le terrible military shooters" at least have reasonable ammount of health, are way smarter and require tactics other than spamming rocket launcher and strafing left or right around arena full of glowing items and keycards.
I always liked the Doom formula better overall. But the thing is even if military shooters got a raise in popularity in the 2000´s much like how Doom clones did. By that point the genre had evolved so much that there were still alternatives to military shooters back then and even more so now. Halo. Time Splitters. FEAR FarCry Half Life 2. Metroid Prime. Killzone Meda of Honor. All of them tematically and mechanically different ...In some ways more than others.
Honestly I feel like the biggest obstacle that impeded the first Killzone's potential being fully realized was, other than the technical limitations of the console it was designed for, it was pushed into this role of being "the Halo killer." When game journalists invented the concept of "the game that would arrive and dethrone Halo as the king of the FPS genre" they did a great disservice to writers, artists, and developers because they had now artificially altered how the public would react to these games. There was so much hype and expectation to be a Halo killer that it prevented some of these games from just being what they were intended to.
Every time someone mentions Dead Space 3, I think fondly of the atmospheric space part that lets you fly from ship to ship, or the ice cold plains reminiscent of The Thing. I think to myself that I could give it a second chance. Then I remember the first 30 minutes where Isaac kills 50 drivers to cross the road in between cover-shooting cultist commandos and think "nah, I'm good".
I feel a big "issue" with Killzone was how niche it was too... At the time it didn't appeal to Halo fans because it was seen as the competitor on Playstation (which at the time of KZ2 and 3, the PS3 was already less popular than the 360). It didn't appeal to modern military fans of games like CoD or Medal of Honor because it was too sci-fi. And it didn't appeal to boomer shooter/arena shooter fans of games like DOOM, who might have appreciated the sci-fi aesthetic, because it was too slow, and modern. I can see all of that contributing to Guerrilla attempting to redefine and differentiate the game in an attempt to appeal to any of these fanbases too... Definitely an odd game for it's time, even comparing it to its fellow PS3 shooter Resistance. Though I loved and played both Killzone and Resistance a lot back in high school.
Another point against Killzone post release is that it's not like the PS2 was starved for great shooters. Timesplitters, Project Snowblind, and Black all did the shooty bang bang action better. Controls, gameplay, graphics, frame rate, Killzone just couldn't hold up in comparison. It was just exclusive to the PS2, so it allowed for there to be some console war battles to be fought as to whether Sony would have a "Halo Killer". It's also interesting that for all the focus of a FPS being a halo killer back in those mid 2000s that it was COD4, a game that didn't even try to, that ended up surpassing the sci-fi shooter. By the end of 2007, more people were playing COD4 on the 360 than Halo 3, despite the latter being released in 2 months earlier in September and exclusive just to that console (so there was no other way of playing, whereas COD4 was also on PS3 and PC).
I don't at all, I dislike(and disliked) that look just fine without any pretentions towards enlightenment as brit mentions in the video , lol. But I completely agree with the moral. A trailer for a wacky colorful shooter now is just as annoying to me as the trailer for a new brown mid-2000s cover shooter was back then, even though I prefer something lighter in that style. You can't exactly dictate marketplace variety, but it would be nice if the pendulum didn't swing the same way for so many studios at once.
I much prefer the current trend of retro boomer shooters (Dusk, AmidEvil, Ion Maiden, etc) to the mid-2000s shooters, simply because they’re less restrictive and more kinetic in terms of their gameplay mechanics.
I would love a Killzone Trilogy Remaster for PS5. I would love it even more if they did a remake of Killzone 1 with the intense grit of Killzone 2. to come along with it.
Man, Killzone 2 was the game of my childhood. Even when I replayed it, I still enjoyed it so much. Just seeing the familiar sights of Corynthe River, the living blocks, and those sweet-sweet guns (Sta-52 is still the best) brings so many memories of playing it with my dad. Great game.
as someone who's a big killzone fan, this vid was fantastic and I think is one of your best easily. Killzone 1 for me is a decent shooter but is rather rough and doesn't reach it's full potential. Liberation for me is actually the 2nd best in the series and is just really solid overall. Killzone 2 is easily the best of the series and one of the best FPS games ever. Everything about it is just extremely well polished and fine tuned that results in a fantastic campaign that always has you on the edge. I'm kinda surprised you didn't mention the music for Killzone or the fact they got actors like Brian Cox, Sean pertwee, and Malcolm mcdowell for the series, as I think they give killzone a lot of character. Plus the Helghast march is awesome. Your theory on Killzone switching it's art style to be more bright and sci fi like to appease people who don't like brown and grey shooters is something I never really thought of but I can 100% agree with that. I personally like the way Killzone 3 looks, even though it's really jarring given it takes place right after 2 but it still remotely resembles killzone albeit more advanced. Shadowfall is where the series I think really started to blend in with the crowd, which was not for the better. Killzone if it kept more in line with the earlier games would've stood out from other shooters now than when it did back then, since as you said Gritty shooters aren't terribly common as they use to be
I hated how Killzone 3 did away with the dark, copper-y colour palette. Took away the gritty atmosphere and made it look like a generic futuristic shooter to me
@@Walamonga1313 yeah. I played the series again through the campaign earlier this year, and it was really weird how there's all of a sudden giant death robots and all that stuff at the start of 3.
36:30 almost the entire military machine of the helghast was left intact after the destruction of their planet, the Vektan had to either accepted the deal of giving half their shit or face a superior invasion force with nothing to lose and a vengeance to settle.
I miss game manuals. In the early 2000s they kinda died out due to digital alternative. Metal Gear Solids PS manual was the most interesting book I saw from a game. It had hidden things and even a codec number tou needed for later in the game. So if you dodnt read it or look at the case at all you will miss out on story and gameplay. It was brilliant.
True but the Colonol did have our backs if we were too stupid for that lol. That was about the only time Campbell didn't do us dirty. Although, I don't remember her codec being in the manual. I remember it on the back of the CD case.
I remember when i got killzone 2 "new" at gamestop back in 2009. The game wasn't even sealed like wtf, how did they sell me the game $60 new if it's open. They just put the disc inside the box and sold it to me like that for $60. I was young so tbh I didn't really care. F gamestop tho.
Have to step in here to address some things you missed about Killzone 2: 1) The dynamic between the four-man squad is important because of Rico - stereotypical supercilious badass action character - fucking up constantly in his attempts to be macho badass action guy. In this regard, Killzone 2 is directly criticizing the stereotypical COD player, in a game that is far more punishing on its easiest difficulty than any COD game is on its most difficult one. Using Rico as a narrative foil during that era of gaming was a stroke of genius, and Killzone 3's backpedaling on that to turn him into an action hero was not received well because it utterly missed the point of why "Goddamn it, Rico" was such a powerful thing, and felt superficial to try and compete with COD's superhuman action hero narrative instead of earned through legitimate character development. Similarly, we see how Natko develops over the course of the story, starting when the friend of his he was just joking around with gets blown to smithereens shortly thereafter, to him having to become the voice of reason between Sev and Rico after the latter's continued fuck-ups gets Garza (Sev's best friend) killed and sparks tension between the two characters. Rico as a foil continues to be important as he doesn't learn or grow over the course of the story, which directly impacts those around him. As a result, it's his impulsiveness which switches the victory of taking Visari's palace into the shitstorm that leads into the beginning of Killzone 3. It is not a game with a victorious, happy ending in which the bad guy is defeated, but is a story about consequences. Rico's final fuck-up of the game is the worst of all. 2) Radec is not exactly the Helghast's ideals incarnate. If you pay closer attention, he HAD to act the way he did out of necessity. You forgot to mention this about Liberation, but the entire plot recontextualized the plot of Killzone 1 because it's learned the Helghast's reasons for invading Vecta was that they learned of a nuclear superweapon developed that was intended to be used against them, so they struck pre-emptively. While Armin Metrak died in the end, he succeeded in stealing the weapon before it could be used against them, hence why Visari mentions this in the opening cinematic and why Radec is hell-bent on getting the nuclear codes. Radec - who ran the military academy - literally had no time, because he knew that it would only take two years for the ISA to arrive on Helghan after the events of Liberation, so he was put in a position where he had no choice but to remove the weakest links via execution to motivate the defense force to work harder. We learn Radec was responsible for the evacuation of the women and children to safety, and forcibly drafting the able-bodied men into the military. The beginning of Killzone 2 presents Radec as being this ruthless authoritarian figure because the game would later ease the player into the idea that the Helghast are more than meets the eye. We learn the Helghast were victims of oppression who fought for their independence, and that most of what we believe about them is the result of the UCN's propaganda. In other words, the ISA - the UCN's attack dogs - are actually the bad guys, but our character doesn't know that. This is one of the reasons why the Killzone 1 manual is so poignant in hindsight, as it doesn't merely just cover the backstory of the game, but does so in the form of slanted, one-sided wartime propaganda which doesn't show the whole truth. This is one of the areas in which the story flips the script on conventional stereotypes, and the more the player learns about the lore while on the Helghan homeworld, the more they realize how shitty the ISA/UCN is, and how the Helghast were forced into action out of survival. 3) Radec is well-loved by Killzone fans not just because of his in-story presentation and voice (or even his status in-narrative as a hero, which you also don't mention). He is well-loved because of how he is presented as the multiplayer announcer for the Helghast faction. Killzone 2's multiplayer is unique in how positively encouraging both of the multiplayer announcers are, but Radec's lines specifically are incredibly motivating. When you win, he says, "You fought like heroes this day! Helghan is proud of you", and when you lose, he encourages you to try again, assuring you that while you have lost this battle, next time you'll be victorious. That kind of positive affirmation is incredibly rare in games with multiplayer announcers. For comparison, those in Destiny, Crisis 2, and the Transformers games by High Moon practically berate you for falling behind. Killzone 3 had the same lines, but the actors behind them lacked an ounce of the charisma Radec and Narville had. Narville's change in voice actor and overall personality from the Gunnery Sergeant Hartman archetype to just generic Whitey McWhitebread not-Chris Redfield guy was also not well received. The voice actor for the Helghast announcer felt like his lungs were failing him while he delivered his lines. Comparatively, Radec was an inspirational and motivational figure, and why so many wanted to play as Helghast in Killzone 2's multiplayer. It felt like an honor to fight and die for the guy. Similarly, you don't appreciate how much of a badass Radec is until you unlock the hardest difficulty setting and fight him there. He EARNS his "final boss" status. I remember running out of ammo on my first attempt on that difficulty, having a sliver of health left, and having to spend FOUR AND A HALF hours at the edge of my seat trying to kill him with nothing but the combat knife, knowing that the next shot would kill me no matter what and having the fear that he could teleport to where I was at any given point in time. It felt like Ripley going up against the Alien Queen bare-handed and without the Power Loader. It's BRUTAL. That's the sort of victory worthy of a war story you tell to your grand-children. 4) Unrelated to any specific point, but as a KZ2 veteran, I just can't get over how you were playing the game. I was practically screaming at you to stop running in melee range to shoot stuff. This isn't COD, "spray and pray" doesn't work. If you try and unload your entire magazine running around like that with an LMG, you're not going to hit anything. You're supposed to crouch to reduce the targeting reticle size for more accurate shots, then aim down the sights and manually burst fire so the reticle doesn't get too large and you lose accuracy. It's a game that rewards you in being patient in lining up your shots. This is why players who come from Halo and try bunny-hopping and strafing to avoid fire in the name of taking "evasive action" will get destroyed by those who just stand still and fire their weapon with intent. You do not need to be 2 feet away from the enemy for your gun to work (this is like in the latest Predators movie where people with guns waltz up to the monster before firing their weapons, which is kind of embarrassing to see players do). You have a projectile weapon, you can keep your distance. If you're going to get that close, switch to the combat knife by pressing down on the D-Pad and hack away. 5) On a similar note, you neglected to mention one of the genius design decisions of Killzone 2, which is how Six-axis controls were implemented. For sniper rifles, this gave more of an intentionality to fine aim with your weapon. 6) There is no mention of how, compared to its successor, Killzone 2 removed triple-digit scoring and assist points so that every kill and each victory felt earned, which was massively motivating to the player. There are no "feel good" mechanics, and it is the most brutally honest FPS ever made regarding player performance. You either get the kill, or you don't, no ifs, ands or buts about it. There was no padding to make casual players feel better about themselves. 7) There is no mention of objective-based gameplay in the multiplayer, which diminished the importance of KDR in favor of whatever it took to win. This meant that acts of self-sacrifice to take out a room filled with enemy players and/or enemy turrets, or to be a meat shield for your teammates if it would assist in victory in holding an objective, led to a very, VERY different player mindset than what you'd see in COD and Halo. This is absolutely critical to what makes Killzone 2 stand out over other games in the FPS genre and should not have gone unstated.
I just disagree on one point, not having points for assistance. Assistance points serves for not discouraging team work, unless you are playing with friends, you are playing against everyone even on teams, by having assistance points you don't feel like not killing near your teammates because one them hit the last bullet.
@@ricardomiles2957 Assist points never serve as an encouragement for teamwork, they're only a consolation prize for not being good enough to earn the kill yourself, or skilled enough to go for headshots. Killzone 2 is a game where it's either kill or be killed, and one bullet can make all the difference. Teamwork is encouraged through the objective-based gameplay, and what's important is doing whatever is necessary to win. KDRs and the amount of players you actually kill are less important than winning the best of seven rounds of objective-based matches, which is why being a meat shield or suicide bombing to hold the objective is often more respectable than scoring lots of kills. This is why you see even in matches with randoms, players using the Medic class will throw down healing packs near a Capture & Hold point, because what's important is that everyone does their part to win the match, not try to be Rambo. You help your team by being willing to take one for the team. Anyone with that attitude of wanting to have a consolation prize for not being able to earn their own kills under the excuse of being recognized for helping their team is psychologically unfit for Killzone 2's multiplayer. You earn your kills or you don't. You help your team by doing your part to hold objectives. You earn recognition for helping your team when you win, and get praised by Radec. The scoring is brutally honest, and there are no hand-holding or "feel-good" mechanics for players who aren't good enough to hold their own. That's how it was, and that's how it should be. The reasoning you gave for assist points doesn't align with the reality of how Killzone 2's multiplayer works, and is asking for recognition for subpar gameplay using a poor excuse which ultimately misses the point of the Killzone 2 experience.
This is one of the most detailed analysis, honest and already took the words from my mouth and laid it. I have to agree with the spray and pray thing. I literally cringed and was like bro you wasting ammo. I loved killzone 3 despite it being so and so with everything probably because back then I didn't care about story and as such was just wowed by the graphics and weapons (didn't even have the game manual so no story for me) going back now as a much more mature individual and knowledge gained player.... I can see some of the discrepancies No wonder why I absolutely despised shadowfall, I literally said to myself they literally ruined the name and feel of killzone as an adult.
I miss edgy plots and characters in games. Now its like if you are not "self aware" or "light hearted" you are just a joke. I miss late 90s and mid 2000s edge.
@BlindBison I seriously doubt it has anything to do with Twitter criticism and more to do with media becoming increasingly dictated by market research (and/or algorithmically generated) resulting in milquetoast products made for mass public appeal. Profit margins don't care about American political partisanry as much as you might suspect. Indie devs tend to produce more risky/edgy games these days anyway - their creativity is not beholden to a giant corporate bottom line.
@@mothsforeyes I watched yesterday video about how Indian background people have risen in culture and how it is more and more calculated,deliberate for reasons you described. Nazi era was height of white masculine youth audience, so it is perfect villain. It doesnt make any sense for eg. mexican people(at least I cant think why it would resonate). I doubt it was as calculated in 90s, early 2000s, but now it is as more money is at play.
@@nicklewry3854 it is especially hard in sequels, franchises, which shows up in many series of games. First one being edgy, thus enjoyable, sequels more and more lukewarm, yet riding on that first edginess... eventually disappointing players.
37:00 to be fair I kinda interpreted that has more of a punishment against Vekta than a win for the Helghans. The start of Killzone Two shows that the central government on Earth forbade Vekta and the ISA from invading Helghan, insisting on a blockade instead. But ISA went YOLO, which ended up in what was basically a mass murder of a billion Helghans, mainly civilians. So I think Earth's government was like "ok, you fucked up. Now you must be punished" and that's why half the planet was given to the Helghan. But refugees also went to other planets, as it is shown in the in game lore about another colony's political situation
@Trini Gamer as many ppl play it, the better. I don't want it to be exclusive. I just said that Killzone 2 is not a game with great chances of getting a PC port. They ignored it even on ps4. Just that.
Honestly, Shadow Fall is one of my favorite games, but mostly because it's what officially got me into shooters when I was finally allowed to play M-rated titles. I'd played COD and Halo when I was younger and snuck gameplay with friends who had it, but i didn't play much of them. Nowadays, it's Battlefield 4, Star Wars: Battlefront 2, and Halo Infinite for me. Some COD here and there, but started getting tired of it from playing since 2016
There's a difference between gray and dark and realism tho. Many of the of the games in late 2000 looked unrealistically brown and dark. COD WW2 is a good example of it done right as it shows a game that is gritty and realistic without an ugly color pallette
@@DerNomade1871 i was speaking in general about both world wars, as after ww2 germany recieved aid from the us and the treaty of versailles wars more or less scrapped.
@akamaro20 look up the locarno treaties, the dawes plan and the young plan. The treaty of versailles was significantly softened and actions were made to make it significantly less severe.
Look at Killzone 2 and tell me it doesn't still look amazing 15 years later in 2024. Killzone 2 is what you get when you have hard working, passionate, and talented people at the top of their field working to make a fun video game.
I don't think retconning Shadowfall entirely is really necessary. If anything it deserves a complete do-over from scratch. Shadowfall still has a lot of cool and interesting lore ideas. It just needs a better director and writer in order to fully realize it's potential is all.
I think the retcon should really start from 3. Like instead of having visari die as it appears in KZ2 at the start of KZ3.....making a body double or visari gets medical attention and is held captive by the isa. Where the Helghast go ballistic trying to get visari back. A new Radec protege arises to lead the Helghast assault who is very cunning and dangerous as Conel Radec in his own right.
Killzone 1 was incredible to me as a younger guy. The Helghast did so much to capture this vague "cool villain" tone, and invited me into a type of shooter I never saw. Between my own ignorance of older games or consoles, and its odd little perks of design choices, it quickly became one of my favorite shooters on the PS2. First game I saw to use sprint, a dynamic and functional health system without removing the packs, had a sense of better atmosphere with the first time I saw pre-set dead bodies to tell you this was a genuine war, and just a cool universe full of levels I loved. Biggest of all was the bot multiplayer mode, because back then such a thing didn't seem to exist to me, so it was the first FPS I could play beyond a campaign. I sunk hours and hours and hours into this for its time. In retrospect its clunky, but as you said, the ideas were there and its still something of meaning to me. Killzone 2 is still a masterpiece IMO. Not at its truest sense where its all actually perfect, the weapon limit is basically one gun and a revolver, which is just annoying... but everything in the tone and pacing was so incredibly fine tuned that you could forgive it. Cover system, engine, physics, gunplay, shockingly impressive and dynamic AI with a stupid amount of battle chatter dialogue I was still discovering on late returns, and you could return and replay levels by the piece meaning you could always jump right back into your favorite parts. It also retained a few "old school" elements I loved that other games were forgetting in the transition to copying COD, like grenades you had to actually watch for rather than a HUD excuse, and the aim mapping default to R3 because... why would you aim with something that isn't literally the aim button? (I still don't get that "evolution" for consoles, but alright) It was crammed with so many little positives, on top of a game already paced to perfection, that I view it immensely well without even needing to bring up the multiplayer - which was also awesome, and like the campaign, held to better old identity with things like a public server browser with custom fan community rules and events going on. Killzone 3 was basically Killzone made for everybody that bitched about Killzone. It was supposed to be that explosive, blockbuster, set-piece scripted distraction show, with a new hired writer, give it color and another mech part, special cut-scenes to force everyone saying "the writing is weak" to think this was a fix, a token female who was infinitely forgettable, and flashy show pieces to make you want to buy motion controls and 3D television. Oh, and multiplayer did everything to "look" like more of the COD norm between flashy points, bigger progression systems, quicker time-to-kill, and the removal of server browsers which the head of the company admitted to doing out of the fear that people were either too stupid or lazy to use them (paraphrasing of a real explanation). Now that's not to say it was all bad, and I'm just as much a defender of 3 as I will be its attacker. They stepped it up on weapon liberties, did pick some cool places to go to diversify the environments, and some of those new focus on cut-scenes were honestly pretty interesting; the big thing that held stuff like that back was the fact it was all self-contained and lost from the fact that games like Killzone 1 & 2 didn't want to tell you too much about pages of lore they had ready... so now this civil war and council stuff had to be dumped on you quick and still resolve. Stuff like the flawed revival thing, came from a place of genuine attempt to make the squad feel more useful, because in the past they felt like they were mostly there just to make noise and look busy, with 2 even making you rescue them. So they thought they were returning the favor, but.... yeah, it could also make the balance feel wonky. Oh, and the MP was still fun at its base core, it just so happens that a large step back and dumbed down form from KZ2 is still an awesome game. Mercenary is awesome. I can't add anything else that you might have, but it was great and a shame they won't try a PS4 port the same way a few other Vita games got. But ShadowFall got... weird. You dissected the story and its fault more than enough. It was fun enough to experience in the moment, but has so many flaws. Meanwhile, the gameplay end that wasn't as covered, is.... uh... well, uh... interesting. Somebody best said it when they believed it was trying hard to imitate an old PC shooter in terms of pace (not mechanically), not too hard to believe from some staff that originated in the old Unreal era stuff. There were so many layers of odd things going on, and a marginally longer length. You had more flexibility of stuff like the AI drone, but not enough to escape the corridor shooter segments. You had one real boss battle, but only one like a quick experiment. You had some silly flashes of physic and level gimmicks show up, more than a COD distraction, but not more to really mean anything for the total game experience. You had elements of grounded sci-fi ideals that were tighter than KZ3, but not as tight or gripping as something out of KZ2. I feel like that's where it lies as well as far as fun goes. I think it had more integrity and genuine thought than Killzone 3 did, but it still wanted to be experimental and try something new to appease the haters, and.... some of it worked, while some of it was funky or clunky. As weird as this sounds, I can even bring it back to server browsers as an analogy, as they used "custom playlists" as a selling factor for its reveal, but what this really did was create a "style" that could be picked and create a lobbey system for players, in a really odd way that was emulating both matchmaking and Browsers in such a convoluted way that it was like somebody was hired just to engineer a pointlessly alien system of selecting your game. I think my absurd post length speaks for my general thoughts of the series. Even at its worst, or mediocre points, I always found something special in it somewhere, and its a big series even in cases where I know it means next to nothing to others. People tend to greatly downplay its perks a lot, and boil it down into "THE brown grey gritty game", but its something that I'll keep waiting for. I hope the series will continue, and I hope one day that next entry has the same passion that drove them to make it at its peak of Killzone 2.
I never really got into the FPS genre, but I loved Killzone 2, especially the multiplayer. I loved the deliberate nature of the combat. Taking your time and thinking actually paid off. That's the same reason I loved the multiplayer in The Last of Us.
To be honest, I think you missed something about the story of KZ2. In line with what Dave Kaye said below, KZ2's plot has another interesting aspect to it. The narrative about Radec that Dave has extracted from the game is also somewhat applicable to Visari himself. Like Kurtz in Heart of Darkness (or derivatively Col. Kurtz from Apocalypse Now), Visari's last words "The madness... The madness begins!" ("The horror! The horror!" in HoD/ApoNow) seem to suggest that he also went through a lot to bring Helghast society to where it was then, and how much he had to exert control in order to stop infighting (hence "The madness begins!", which we see happening in KZ3, albeit portrayed poorly there). Moreover, the general narrative structure of the story is a bit similar to the boatman's journey or Willard's journey, where the closer they get to the target of their destination (the man who turned savage - Kurtz/Visari), the more insanity/savagery they encounter themselves (Visari nuking his own city, Helghast holding out until the last man, Radec committing suicide, squadmates dying, etc.). I don't know why THAT similarity flew over everyone's head. Does anybody know if GG said aything about being inspired by HoD or ApoNow for the story of KZ2?
I always felt that Killzone 2 felt like the peak. I’m glad I’m not alone with this. The change in gameplay felt really jarring to me between 2 and 3. There was a feeling that the devs tried to make the third game more in line with other shooters at the time, particularly for the multiplayer aspect.
In kz2 i remember clearly in one mission before you storm visari and radec. Three helgast soldiers, three normal dudes gave me the hardest fight in the entire game. One chucked grenades, the other two shot in intervals. When one reloads the other shoots. Unlike other opponents where id humiliate their corpses, these 3 guys fought so well they had my utter respect, i did not humiliate them, i sat there after killing them, giving them a moment of respectful silence. I wish i couldve gave them a propper burial
yeah they could have delved into why he hates the helghst so much in the game it just feels like he's pissed off at them for the sake of being the enemy but I'm sure there's a reason they never really touched on
@@that-guy213 wasnt his only reason he is pised at Hellgast cuz they killed his budies in platoon? Other than that most of time he is racist psychopath with wich Vecta has a lot.
@@matheusmelo6022 black was actually really well made and optimized for ps2 very good not a lot first person shooters on ps2 actually run good and have good frame rate black has good frame rate
@@st4ne4rmthevill63 I remember playing Black when I was like 10 yo and failing at the 2nd level, the forest, when I grew up and replayed the game it was like a ritual moment finishing the Game. Man, I still remember the bridge level.
I appreciated your discussion of the backlash against Brown Shooters. I definitely was part of that backlash too... But even as I said I was tired of them, I knew I liked them! I suspect that was the case for a lot of people But even more than some of the "in crowd" dynamics, I think it reflects AAA gaming's tendency to overcorrect. We went from ALL brown shooters after Gears was popular then there was a backlash, so we went to ALL fluorescent purple shooters. Maybe now we're finally reaching more of an equilibrium where we can have both?
I think the bigger issue with some older brown shooters was the blatant desaturation that went on with some games, like the Medal of Honor reboot was so bland looking with it's assets that the enemies would blend into the background and be difficult to find/shoot.
@@beachbum111111 I mean it IS set in Afghanistan. The design of the enemies were intentional, that'd way they'd camouflage into the background. No, I'm not a fan of the 2010 MoH game.
@@NihilisticIdealist I was a huge fan, played that game when I was 9 and I had a blast! but I do agree the game was bland, but tbh that is what made it look realistic. (and the gameplay was exceptionally realistic (if i remember correctly))
Well done, man! Excellent work, and some original observations. I think we were lucky to grow up through the evolution of gaming during the 2000s, even if the decade otherwise was rubbish.
I made a separate post about KZ2, but this one's about 3, Mercenary and SF: 1) Mercenary WAS made by the studio that did most of the heavy lifting on Killzone 2. SCE Cambridge helped with Killzone 2's development, it was not solely Guerrilla Games. It's not surprising at all that it's your second-favorite Killzone game, because it's literally the second-best Killzone game by every Killzone player's standards. It runs parallel to 2, and was worked on by the same people. It's only hamstrung by the fact that it wasn't a full console game and was a handheld title, but unlike 3 and Shadowfall, it respects the lore. Also, Kratek dresses differently because he's technically more "scientist" than "soldier," but otherwise, characters like Boris come from the Radec school of Helghan pride, and a warrior's code of honor regarding what it meant to be a soldier. This is why Radec offs himself at the end of 2, to deny you victory, though many Killzone veterans point out that Radec's behavior at the end of 2 is inconsistent with what we know of the character (he's supposed to be a warrior who prefers to lead from the front lines, instead of hanging back, which he only did earlier at Visari's explicit request on that one occasion), leading many to speculate that we fight an imposter at the end of 2. Had it not been for 3's dramatic shift in direction, and SCE Cambridge's lack of involvement, we may have had a return of the character. 2) Killzone 3's sensitivity was - I shit you not - the result of some kid on the official forums whining incessantly that the gameplay felt too weighty for him, and while the rest of us told him to up the sensitivity in the options menu, he demanded that the developers change the game for him instead. Unfortunately, since Sony was looking to get that COD money, Guerrilla chose to entertain this kid's request instead of honoring the logic and reason of EVERYONE ELSE explaining why that was a bad idea that would break the game. To make matters worse, and in addition to the fucking camper class that was Marksman (showcasing how god-awful the game balance was compared to Killzone 2's master class of a multiplayer), they added bullet magnetism so you no longer had to aim properly, because they wanted to cater to casual players, what with the triple-digit scoring and other stuff that wouldn't have gone over very well with Killzone 2's more hardcore player base. This is because the casual whiners decided that things like the prevalence of Radec Academy in multiplayer mode "split the community," in a game where server lobbies were customizable and players could choose to exclude the map from rotation if they really wanted to. However, these are gamers we're talking about, and as we all know, they're not the kind to accept logic, reason or personal accountability for their own choices. Instead, we got righteous indignation and demands that the game be changed for them. The developers bent over backward to please these people, which is why Killzone 3 and Shadow Fall ended up the way that they did. 3) Shadowfall's bioweapon plot is quite literally a copy of Mercenary's, but instead of having plausible characters involved, you have goofy psychopaths on the VSA side. Echo being a hooded half-breed was also copied from Mercenary. It worked in Mercenary because the kid's mixed genes was an important plot point with regard to how the virus worked, and how it could be reworked to target either the Vectans or the Helghast regardless of who had control of the kid. The child was the MacGuffin everyone was trying to get a hold of, and the key to controlling the bioweapon and its target. Echo, by comparison, is a shittier and more one-dimensional Hakha. Shadowfall also makes no sense from its opening cinematic because of three other reasons: a) Mercenary showed that the UCN wanted to wipe out the Helghast race, period. After nuking the planet, there was no incentive for the ISA to welcome them to Vekta as refugees. b) Nuking the planet with irradiated petrusite shouldn't have made a difference, because the Helghast adapted to have immunity to radioactive conditions. The writers forgot this, until late in Shadowfall where we learned that Helghan is just fine, and they rebuilt stronger than ever, with structures built into the now more vertical landscape like you'd see built into adobe, and now with even more powerful tech like force fields to boot. There was no point to them even leaving their own planet. c) In KZ1, it only took two warships filled with a small army of troops led by Armin Metrak to invade and take hold of Vecta's entire southern continent, since the Helghast are practically all super soldiers who are bigger and stronger than the Vectan humans. They're mutants. In Shadowfall's opening, we see an entire fleet of soldiers with exoskeletal powered armor that frankly beats the piss out of anything they even had in Killzone 3 in terms of technological advancement (where the fuck were any of these suits? They come out of nowhere and then don't change or advance for another 30 years!), and all they do is go sit in a corner and whine about how unfair their situation is. With tech and numbers like that, they could have conquered the goddamn planet, but no... 4) There's no mention of how compared to Killzone 2, where you're thrown into action at the very beginning, Shadowfall gives you your first kill via an auto-instakill with the knife, before you've every picked up a gun, a whopping 34 minutes into the game. At the same time stamp in Killzone 2, you've long since stormed the beaches and are now in the tank segment blowing up troops and other tanks while it rains bullets and explosives. Finally... 4) No, your theory about why the series became "more colorful" is incorrect. Killzone 2 also had very colorful segments, and it goes to show that for a game largely criticized for being all gunmetal grey and dogshit brown, visibility was actually a lot better for the players compared to when it went all neon. It's a pain in the ass to see anything and make out the enemies in the games after Mercenary. The REAL reason is that Killzone 2 was deemed too difficult for people, as like I said in my Killzone 2-related post, KZ2 on its easiest difficulty is substantially harder than COD on its hardest difficulty setting. There was concern that there wasn't a place for more ultra-hardcore shooters like KZ2, that they were too niche, and they wanted to get the more casual players who wanted to have these action-hero stories. That's why 3 was what it was, and as a consequence, it wound up selling fewer units than Killzone 2 in a time when there were more PS3s in households. There was also the added insult to injury with how 3's development had less time with a new engine, and was largely used as a marketing gimmick for Sony's 3DTVs, hampering the game's development even further but used to BS the marketing by claiming that the game was so big, it required the full space available on the Blu-Ray disc. In reality, the game's data had to be copied twice for the parallax to work. When Mercenary was well-received, and the studio was under pressure to make another Killzone game, they basically tried to copy Mercenary but as a sequel to Killzone 3, which is how Shadowfall came to happen. Unlike KZ2, which had four years of development, 3 and Shadowfall had half that time to cook, so they made slap-dash decisions that weren't as well thought out. That's why in SF you fight enemies in annoying waves of five, instead of following the golden rule of doing things in threes. It was a rushed product, and it tried to copy elements from previous KZ games as a way around not actually having the time to develop a competent story. However, they were concerned that by returning to the series' more hardcore roots, they would alienate a market that had started to embrace more casual gaming and would be scared off by more hardcore expectations, so they didn't really learn their lesson, and made the same mistakes, this time in spades.
@@FootsureWig If I had to guess, I'd say that it was rushed AND planned. By that I mean, they didn't have a villain compelling enough to justify a final boss fight, and by extension, they also didn't have the time to develop one (hence all the on-rails stuff), but were confident that the game would sell well enough to the casual market in a time when there were more PS3s in households compared to its predecessor that they would be able to continue the story. So, I'd say they most likely assumed that it'd make its money and get a sequel follow-up and chose to end it the way they did, within the time and budget constraints that they had. But, since again, there were time and budget constraints which led to a development time half of that of what Killzone 2 had, it was still rushed by comparison, they just had to plan within that and resource constraints. They were also using a newer game engine at the time, so there was that on top of everything else. That's just my theory, anyway. We know about the time, budget and technical constraints so it's an educated guess, even though it's still a guess. It's not just assumption. However, whether a final boss fight was actually planned or not, or if the decision to push circle to win was a last-minute decision or not, we don't know for certain. What we do know is that it not only sold fewer units than Killzone 2, but did so in a time where there were even more PS3s in households, meaning that the loss is proportionately even bigger than if Killzone 2 had released with the same sales figures. That means it was an even bigger disappointment. Factor that in with how KZ3 was also meant to be a commercial for Sony's 3DTV technology - which ended up going nowhere - and the push to get Shadowfall into a somewhat playable state so it could be a launch title for the PS4 instead of letting it cook in the oven until it was ready, and the fact that both were incredibly rushed is absolutely undeniable.
@@davekaye5483 yeah you're right man, and don't forget Sony forced guerrilla to shoehorn in the PSmove controls. It's just a shame killzone 3 ended the way it did, imagine rico was arrested and court martialed at the beginning of the game. Cause even though I didn't like him at the 2, I hated him even more at 3. Them doing a 180 in how he was written, changing his entire character in such a short time. Still, thanks for the insight man.
@@FootsureWig I totally forgot about the PSmove controls! Thanks for reminding me, I now remember that pre-release marketing stuff showing how to use the move controls to throw a grenade. Yeah, that was all super unnecessary. As for Rico, in my previous post about Killzone 2 (somewhere else in this comments section) I wrote how writing him that way was important for two. Let me copy-paste that here: "The dynamic between the four-man squad is important because of Rico - stereotypical supercilious badass action character - fucking up constantly in his attempts to be macho badass action guy. In this regard, Killzone 2 is directly criticizing the stereotypical COD player, in a game that is far more punishing on its easiest difficulty than any COD game is on its most difficult one. Using Rico as a narrative foil during that era of gaming was a stroke of genius, and Killzone 3's backpedaling on that to turn him into an action hero was not received well because it utterly missed the point of why "Goddamn it, Rico" was such a powerful thing, and felt superficial to try and compete with COD's superhuman action hero narrative instead of earned through legitimate character development. Similarly, we see how Natko develops over the course of the story, starting when the friend of his he was just joking around with gets blown to smithereens shortly thereafter, to him having to become the voice of reason between Sev and Rico after the latter's continued fuck-ups gets Garza (Sev's best friend) killed and sparks tension between the two characters. Rico as a foil continues to be important as he doesn't learn or grow over the course of the story, which directly impacts those around him. As a result, it's his impulsiveness which switches the victory of taking Visari's palace into the shitstorm that leads into the beginning of Killzone 3. It is not a game with a victorious, happy ending in which the bad guy is defeated, but is a story about consequences. Rico's final fuck-up of the game is the worst of all."
Honestly dude you should be making a video about this yourself. It sounds like you have a lot more knowledge about the series and will probably have better gameplay to show too lol
36:58 With regards to the plot of _Shadow Fall,_ I think that scenario makes sense if you stop looking at it in relation to WWII and see it more as the situation with Israel and Palestine. _"What bargaining power do the Helghast have left over Vekta?"_ *Well, what bargaining power does Palestine have left over Israel? Put simply: **_guilt._* Guilt, and the political pressure from disapproving allied states. I mean, isn't the ISA basically no different from our world's NATO? That would make Vekta just a single member of an organization consisting of other interstellar states. *Maybe on top of feeling guilty for committing planetary genocide, Vekta is being pressured by its allies within the ISA into cohabiting with the Helghast---again, just like Israel with Palestine.*
If I recall correctly the "pressuring by allies" was exactly true; the UCN of Earth basically stepped in with a gigantic "What the Fuck??" at the ending of Killzone 3 and straight up told Vekta that they would house any survivors of the destruction of Helghan. As with most aspects of Killzone lore, unfortunately, this was never stated in the games but as I recall was on the Killzone website when the game was coming out.
Except the morals of the game would be a lot easier to see if it was like that conflict.. considering they got the land as a gesture of good will, then immediately started doing to the natives, what the Nazis to them.
Always saw Killzone as a series of glorified tech demos. Guerrilla proved they were capable of more when they dropped Horizon onto the market. They never managed to make a "halo killer though Ironically, the true "Halo killer" ended up being Halo itself.
I hate that I have to be that guy but I'd rather have more Killzone than Horizon. It just felt like a generic retread of games like the witcher and assassins creed to me and I could never get through it. Thematically and conceptually its dope as hell but playing it was a drag for me.
I remember seeing the opening cutscene of killzone, and thinking one day games will be able to look like this . We have surpassed the graphics so quickly! Incredible!
Weird to think that Killzone 2 might've been seen as "another brown and gray shooter" when, while it does have plenty of grit, from the footage shown in this video it also seems to have some very strong use of color. It's never just brown or gray; there's always a decent infusion of some other color to emphasize the mood the particular environment is going for. (That point about how the last level being all red is a way of demonstrating how you're at the heart of the empire being a standout.)
That Two Guy people that hate on killzone are an anomaly to me Halo is my absolute favorite game of all time but when I played kz2 and 3 I fell in love with those games on every level and in no way is it trying be a halo or cod but it felt like it’s own game and was unique so the comparisons to halo are idiotic
I recall some of the levels closer to the sea had a few more tinges of green in there And there were some that had bright orange sand to contrast with the dark steel look of machinery It was definitely eye-candy But it didn't need to have the same colors as typical eye-candy to still be eye-candy
@@gabenewell3955 At first i always thought it was kinda generic looking But now that i've actually seen stuff like COD (Halo was the only other shooter i really played aside from KZ2) It most certainly is unique, and now i'm wishing i could see more of the world in KZ2's graphics and visual style
I'm in the minority, I really love the Killzone series, as flawed as it is. The atmosphere and aesthetics were top-notch. The music was always FANTASTIC. The storyline was (usually) interesting, and the combat in the sequels felt really satisfying. Funny enough, Killzone Mercenary was actually my introduction to the franchise, and it's still one of my favorites.
I started on Killzone 3 and I too absolutely love the franchise. Mostly for its story and aesthetics. Mercenary has to be one of the best mobile/portable shooters ever.
I remember being obsessed with the trilogy, even beating Killzone 2 on Elite with that god awful sensitivity. I'm happy with where Guerrilla's at. But to be honest, SIE's 'knack' for open world games leaves me a little tired and bored now. It would be nice to have a shooter like Killzone back in the market.
Great video, I really liked your take on the series. I've always felt that Killzone was an underrated franchise, but seeing how they seem to have lost direction it makes sense that they never really attracted any major attention.
I think only Gears 2 and Killzone 2 were basically the only real tough and gritty multiplayer games I played at the time where simple wrong moves were unforgiving. So much fun though.
![PASULOL รามเกียรติ์ ตอนที่ 4 นนทกพบรัก [Ramakien Ep.4: Nonthok in love]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tMUQgmZzf_A/mqdefault.jpg)
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
Killzone has the most interesting lore that is never used in the Killzone games.
The fact they veiled you was playing the bad guys the whole time in the first 4 games since the psp ver. is between 1 and 2.
@@ExeErdna It was so crazy reading up on the lore and going "wait what? The Vectans did _what_ to the Helghast??? We are the baddies!?" And the games did _nothing_ with it. So damned disappointing. Call of Duty has had more nuanced plots. Guerilla was sitting on a storytelling goldmine the whole time.
@Dam Sen Can't be a plot twist when it's not in the plot. Read up on the lore and see how much of that can be found in the actual games.
I guess the problem is that these games always had as a priority the gameplay. That is, the "just shoot the guys with masks". And it first it worked, but then they got ambitious with the story without having the commitment with the games themselves... and now Killzone is a moral mess
The folks at Guerilla never cared about the story. They always outsourced the writing.
Killzone, to me, has always felt like an artist came up with really cool concept art that the writers didn't know what to do with.
I can probably write something better than this superficial lore and stories.
@@hamza-trabelsi then do it. we are waiting. take your time
@@hamza-trabelsi it had an incredible premise up until 3, then it kinda just uh became space cod
@@perseastheodoropoulos7367 the game is already done what's the point of writing a story for it ?
@@hamza-trabelsi said no fanfic writer ever
"Even a monkey will write Shakespeare given enough time"
"What the fuck is a Shakespeare" That made me laugh
Rico in 1 had a certain charm
@@J.Wolf90 Are you serious
@@mothhh2114 Cancel culture will eventually throw even you under the bus if you don't draw the line.
Thats because Sev doesnt read book, he preaches being up close and finette for kills. So wtf is ... a shakespear but a shake spear ... Lofl ionno bra killzone was good times huh.
@@MrTredBear wtf is cancel culture
The AI in killzone 2 was insane. I remember i got my ass beat by a helghast that got OUT of his scripted role to come to the cargo elevator i was descending on at ISA hq, he fucking jumped down 3 meters from the fence as i was trying to shoot him to stop him, made a tactical roll landing and ended up on my face to instantly knock me out with his rifle stock on my face.
Then he proceeded to humiliate me on my dying screen...
I never shot at his raid squad during that part ever again.
The AI was so good in that game. They'd also be more aggressive if you backed off, provide cover fire for advancing allies, and throw grenades if you were camping.
@@GangsterFrankensteinComputer let's get that AI level as a standard. Get the children to harden the fuck up and start thinking in strategy. Planning.
Yeah
I always prefered 2 over 3
BRUH YES
On my gameplay yesterday, I was in a room, and there was an open door, leading to the open, and there in the open was one of those faster helghasts. So I changed to my revolver since I was out of ammo, and I shot like 3 or 4 times at close range, but the fucker just kinda tricked me dodging left to right and shooting my ass, not only that but when I retreated to take cover and reload HE JUST FUCKING FOLLOWED ME BERSERK MODE AND MELEED THE SHIT OUT OF ME taking advantage of my low health. Never got my ass so beat by a fucking bot like that b4 lol
Wow, seeing how good Killzone 2 still looks is astonishing. Even after the massive “downgrades” they still produced something that rivals games made even 5 years later.
There were never any "downgrades", because the original trailer literally wasn't actually footage of the game. It was a cinematic made to LOOK like gameplay, but in actuality is was basically just a glorified cutscene meant to trick people.
I think it looks brown and poorly looking
@@Dev-nr4dw man you're all drunk, Killzone 3 looks way better than 2 and they've always been generic looking shooters. Killzone 2 looking good??? On PS4 with the HD remaster it might look decent enough, on the PS3 its terrible.
Evidence First · 12 Years Ago it wasn’t made to trick people. They sent it to Sony before a lot of development to show what they hoped the game would look like. Sony then released it as a “gameplay trailer.”
@@HOTD108_ Yeah, that's why i put "downgrades" in quotation marks. Even despite the pre-rendered bullshot the game looks positively amazing, and in many ways better than that original trailer.
The Enemy design was the cool thing in these games. The Helghast even had Mechas. They easily could have continued the Series by making you play as a Helghast Revolutionary.
I also love the space Nazi anehestics too
@@deathtrooper199 Why do the bad guys get cool looking uniforms/outfits and designs? Lol
Being a Helghan Revolutionary planting bombs and causing terror among the ISA would be dope.
@@rejectedkermit1220 Well, the Helgast are technically the good guys in this universe
@@stardude289 I know, but from the game's perspective the Helghast are the "bad guys"
Killzone was the last first person shooter that me and my dad played together so it will forever have a very special place in my heart. The co-op campaign was incredible and the super badass multiplayer with bots that we could fight, it was perfect game at the time to play together. Miss that guy a lot. Cancer sucks
I'm sorry for your loss, but happy you have that memory of him to look back on.
@@1pikman thank you man! I had buddies who unfortunately never had and or lost theirs very early, so it helped me with a perspective to be thankful of what I had.
❤❤❤❤❤
Cancer does very much suck, but you know what doesn't tho? Being able to look back on your memories with him with fondness and gratitude. Sounds like you had a great relationship with him and that'll never change no matter what. Happy for you my man, may good fortune continue to come to you and your loved ones 🤟
My dad passed away very recently and I came to this video just to replay memories of playing this game with him:/
If you look into the lore of Killzone they do have a reason for the Helghast suddenly getting those crazy weapons. The Stahl Arms corporation had been holding its best equipment back because Jorhan Stahl wanted more political power and Visari wasn’t giving it to him, but with Visari dead he began dealing out his weapons to the generals in the war council in hopes of getting the power he wanted and sure enough he got it. he was the complete opposite of Reddac, disloyal, ambitious, and absolutely drunk on his own power
Thank you for mentioning this, thats all i could think of everytime he complained about it being too sci-fi
I get it, its not for everyone.
But the games straight up gives you this knowledge.
Glad I wasn't the only one paying attention.
Though in hindsight, he may have avoided this part to avoid giving out too many spoilers for those who haven't played it.
@@flandyc4513 maybe but the games have been out for quite some time, those who were going to play them have likely played them already
@@djphat94 Yeah I also thought it was a little strange.
I have seen one commenter further down saying they picked up KZ2 specifically cause of this video but, it's highly probable that's a niche.
Unless they remaster them at some point, which doesn't seem to be a thing anytime soon, if at all.
@@flandyc4513 god I wish they would tho!
Despite being the epitome of the mid-2000’s gray washed out trend I do still appreciate some of the heavy grunge and industrial aesthetics of the game, everything’s dirty and bombed out, it’s kind of like the Terminator video game we never got.
It’s also why I am weirded out by the design of Shadow Fall, it doesn’t gel with the rest of the series and looks more akin to a Mirrors Edge Catalyst more than anything.
Terminator Resistance is genuinely the closest I think we'll ever get. Decent game tbf.
The new terminator game does have that look
Playing through the teracite ruins on shadow fall gave me the same exact feeling, actually enhanced the experience quite a bit, which before that had been a bit of a forced stealth slog, but with that thought in mind I actually had a shitload of fun sneaking through the ruins avoiding the combat drones and other robots
If you like that style and into older games, I suggest you try C-12 : Final Resistance on PS1.
“Helghast” might be the most evil name for a civilization i’ve ever heard
Yeah I loved the space-nazi concept, I remember playing Killzone 3 beta for hours a day as a little kid. It was amazing
we have one already, u.s.a
@@ciphergamingsouthafrica8502 Not anymore, Russia just flew back up too space as well as China
I mean, they live on Helghan...wouldn't they be called Helghani's?
@@ciphergamingsouthafrica8502 This
In a documentary over Horizon: Zero Dawn, a member of Guerilla Games states that the story was never written in-house. They outsourced that to a separate team of writers every time, and I think it really shows.
If it’s true that they’re working on another Killzone, I hope it’s a reboot w/a dedicated writing team like HZD.
Main writer of Horizon was former Fallout New Vegas writer, i believe
Isn't the twist at the end of Horizon
That a bunch of literal dude bro scientist caused the end of the world?
MrZurata no, 1 dude bro scientist started the apocalypse and then later he betrayed all the good scientists to cover it up.
DacAttack2142 I would say Ted Faro is more of an evil, impatient Elon Musk while the guy that wrote HADES was definitely a dude-bro.
@@DraphEnjoyer Yeah the story of HZD was pretty shitty tbh.
First putting the world and after that writing a half-assed story isnt qorking so often .
Shadowfall: "So, the ISA took in all the refuges from the planet they destroyed when they won the war."
Me: "Sure, makes sense."
Shadowfall: "Including their soldiers."
Me: "Yeah, sure. I mean, when they have surrendered..."
Shadowfall: "And they get half the planet."
Me: "Hm... ok. Seems a bit excessive, but the ISA took their entire planet, I guess."
Shadowfall: "And the forced resetteling of the humans living on Helghast side won't be completted before the planet gets split up."
Me: "Ahm... really?"
Shadowfall: "And the Helghast get to rule over their side autonomously."
Me: "Hang on!"
Shadowfall: "And they get to keep all their military equipment and technology."
Me: "STOP!"
Going so far as to make their planet uninhabitable the only sane option is to go all out until there's no one left to get revenge
Yeah the whole set up to me kinda implies the helghast had a super weapon pointed at the isa head during the negotiations
The only thing I can think of is the lack of desire of the Vectan government to put at any real effort or resources to integrate the two. If the Helghast can keep their military forces and form their government and stay on their side, then less problems for the Vektans. With the outcomes of both the first and second extrasolar wars, they must have given up trying to make true peace with the Helghast.
I mean the Isa planet was originaly the helghasts planet before they stole it from them lore wise the Isa are the bad guys
STAPH !!
The snow in Killzone 3, I love how they made the snow affecting your vision so much, being everywhere and strong, not just like a skin for a map.
^this. In most games weather effects are just an overlay on screen instead of effecting the environment! Killzone 3 has some of the best snow I've ever seen in games
@@leonc9760 MGS4
@@leonc9760 I wish I could have experienced it in that 3d effect the game was pushed along side the sony 3d gaming tv
@@suri_exe imma about to give a negative feedback, but realized that mgs4 is still a playstation exclusive, so I let you go
@@imnotaracistokay I was mostly talking about the snow, not the game in general. If you wanna shit on the game go for it lol
"This is like if Britian blew up Germany and gave Scotland to the Nazis"
Love it
More like australia
Ehhhh nah he skipped over that vekta was originally the helghast homeworld and the ISA invaded and kicked them to helghan. Killzone 1 is literally the helghast trying to take back their planet.
@@SSpider41 half true they used to live on Vekta with the Vakten(?).
@@derkurier2710 Nope. Vekta was founded along side helgan. Vekta was named after the CEO of the Helgan company. Philip Vekta. The first people to move to that planet were of the Helgan mining company who eventually became the helgan empire. Prior to anyone colonizing the planet the Helgan company won the bid for both planets and therefore owned them.
“The Helgast (Kaiserreich) lost the First Helgan War (World War I) and have since been living rough on their terrible living conditions (Treaty Of Versailles) Scholar Visari (Politician Hitler) unifies the downtrodden Helgast (German) people into the Helgan Empire (3rd Reich) an authoritarian totalitarian supremacist regime that now plans on invading Vector (Poland)”
So far you talked about Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Killzone, DmC, and Revengeance. Don't stop until you made videos on every franchise featured in Playstation All-Stars.
*I await your Fat Princess retrospective, Charlie.*
2021 Sly Cooper retrospective or I eat my hat
Make Fat Princess to TGB as Sly Cooper is to B-mask
Fat Princess was one of the funnest multiplayer games I’ve played honestly, they need to make a true sequel
@@Kriss_ch. His other half already made a Sly Cooper retrospective. His name is B-Mask.
I kinda want Infamous tbh.
I'll tell you as someone who played Killzone when it first came out. The facial models especially during the character select screen were the most realistic graphics I had seen at that time.
It was very impressive , happy to have my copy still working.
"Helgan belongs to the Helghast."
I wonder if he actually thought the ISA wanted to take over Helgan seeing as how they already had the grand prize Vekta
Skyrim belongs to the nords
Halo belongs to Bungie
Scholar Visari is smiling at me Vektan, can you say the same?
You belong in a museum
Killzone always looked like those fake games people play in movies
It still does
Never thought of that before but that's so accurate
It SOUNDS like that too. Didn't they mention a fictional Killzone game in Die Hard 4 or something?
"Dude are you playing Murder Destroy Warfare right now!? We have our SATs tomorrow!"
It actually was the game played in movies at a few points. In House of Cards Kevin Spacey plays Killzone 3 in an early episode.
RIP Killzone. The website died recently and it looks like we will never get another game.
I really wanted a killzone game where we could play as a Helgahst soldier to see the other side of the conflict
Same ;_;
Said every single Killzone player ever.
@@RonJeremy514 Indeed.
I love the fact that Helgahast are justified in there hate for the other side but they let that hate consume them so totally they... go over the top shale we say
That'd be hard to do, because of the heavy Nazi themes. Being able to play as futuristic Nazi's then go kill people doesn't look good.
Killzone 2 was one of the best-looking games I'd ever seen up to that point, and all these years later it's still pretty impressive.
I remember waiting for killzone 2 to be launched here. And then realized. "Wait, i don't have a PS3" and never were able to play killzone 2...
It also had some of the most intelligent AI in any game at that time. Like, it's scary how dirty and cleverly the AI will play sometimes just to try and kill you.
@@the_furry_inside_your_walls639 Hell, I remember some bullshit flanking maneuvers that surprised me in the first game even.
I'm surprised that Vita game looks as good as does too
It's nice seeing some actual attention being given to Killzone 2. It's a game I've played many times before but I've never seen it talked about. I always came back to it for its brutal and gritty aesthetic and it's definitely something it nailed where other shooters that tried failed.
One thing it did I find interesting is design the game to be played without a HUD. There's an option to turn it off and I've played it many times that way and got way more immersed in it. Health is determined by color of the screen (something that wasn't as common back then) and the guns make a different sound when firing them on low ammo, so you are aware when you're about to run dry. Just a neat little thing I don't recall being done in other shooters
Another game that I love without hud are the first two metro games. So fun and the game has a lot of physical stuff to keep track of things instead of hud
Killzone 2 was some of my favorite Multiplayer at the time as well. Really loved how much the classes impacted gameplay while having a "realistic" and gritty feel to it.
2° best multiplayer I ever played in the PS3
Warhammer 40k Space marine does a similar thing with the guns. The game is very hectic and switches between melee and ranged at the drop of a hat. So guns sound different when almost empty so you don't have to look down at your ammo bar.
TH-cam’s getting real comfortable with these double ads 👀
Raid Shadow Legends Raid Shadow Legends Raid Shadow Legends Raid Shadow Legends
@@giehlemanns yet I still have not played it
I hate it.
I’m so fucking fed up with it.
Too comfortable....
Hopefully we'll get a video about the Resistance games.
Brit made a video on 3 which he liked but he doesn't like the first 2.
@@Gus1494 Cool. I'll check that out.
I wanna see him do a video On the dark souls games
I couldn't play those. the fov gave me headaches and nausea. a shame because i hear insomniac did a good job with those games.
Loved the entire series despite each game being very different from one another.
2's my favorite despite 3 having the best mechanics.
I remember buying into all the “Halo killer” hype when this was first coming out. And while it definitely didnt outclass halo, i f-ing loved this game and REALLY appreciated the entire set up.
Now that ive been fully reminded of everything i loved about this game i now would like to request a remaster or remake.
Just remember: Calling a game a [blank] killer is a dumb phrase that gaming news outlets game up with.
No developer would ever label their game a “[blank]” killer
Tribes 2 anyone
I would like something like that too, I got invested in the franchise too late so I want a second chance we it.
@@BrandonHilikus haloe killer？
I much prefer KZ to Halo
They release a new KZ I’ll buy a PS5
Kids nowadays will never know the joy that could come from a game manual
I wish my generation had that luxury, I still remember reading about the left 4 dead cast in the manual and thinking it was cool leaning about the characters
I want stuff like that now
I always loved reading the manuals on the way home from the game store. Sometimes I would take one out with me for reading material and would actually learn a thing or two about the game, like what certain UI icons meant that aren't explained in-game. Good times.
Halo weapon specs were my favorite. Reading about vehicles and stuff and looking at the pictures was like nibbling down the cherry after a super satisfying desert after an even more satisfying 3 course meal.
Now u just download a game it on steam and wiki the info you need or youtube a tutorial. Im absolutely bappy about how convenient it is because i remember when things were so limited. But sad knowing im the last generation of gamer to appreciate those things.
But we move on.
@@ssc4649 Old Blizzard games manuals where basically mini novels that got you in the the games world.
"Grey conflicts" in pop media boil down to two things.
1. The bad guys are actually good
2. BOTH SIDES
Well yeah...how else would you depict a grey conflict?
Jotaro97 I haven’t watched it but the vibe I got was that “sometimes one-man dictatorship/absolute monarchy is more effective that flawed democracy in war”
@@efrenyalung1348 thats pretty close
When I said both sides I meant both sides being bad.
@@themagalanium9491
Good "Grey Conflicts" that aren't trying to be grey for edginesses sake, as mentioned above, usually aren't as concerned with making a statement on who's right or wrong (which kind of defeats the purpose in my eyes) as much as they are exploring the how and why of people choosing to believe what they believe in relation to a larger world.
I've always really liked Radec, nice to see someone giving him due praise.
His characterization in his cutscenes from Playstation All Stars is excellent too.
Speaking of PlayStation AllStars, I always found it a bit funny how Radec, who's supposed to be super devoted to Helghan, just sort of dips in the middle of a full-scale invasion to go fight Sir Daniel and shit.
Soldier: Colonel Radec! The enemy is at our gates! What shall we do, sir?!
*realizes he's not there.*
"Sir?"
He soon finds a note, which reads...
"Yo, there's this giant purple head somewhere that might or might not be a threat to us. I'm gonna go check it out. BRB."
Sony were is PlayStation All-Stars 2,its 2020.
@@vash_the_stampede6570 0:34 What is that from?
Sean Pertwee is a fantastic actor and really brought the character to life. I have no idea why he isn't being cast in more stuff. Dude's like a walking Oscar performance and yet he keeps getting stuck in awful straight-to-DVD flicks. While I'm happy to see he got some exposure in Gotham as Alfred Pennyworth, the guy really deserves much better. Why he isn't in Marvel movies or something of a Star Wars-level caliber I have no idea.
@@thevideogamehunger0134 sly Cooper
Every shots and firefights in Kill zone 2 feels like a damn cutscenes where you can control it freely
I’m glad someone out here appreciates big man Boris for the legendary lad he is.
Indeed. It sparks much joy.
Indeed. I wish they made remastered version and for pc as well. In fact put all Killzone games to PC like they are doing it now with Halo. That might restart the interest for the franchise.
Man i wish i played that game, Boris sounds like my favorite kind of character
@@CliffuckingBooth They brought horizon to pc. I think Killzone would be a good choice for the pc as well. If they do it I hope they include the multiplayer .
Yellow as piss
I feel like the only reason ShadowFall and Second Son exist was that Sony needed strong first party launches to showcase the power of the PS4.
This guy gets it.
Yeah. I was really dissapointed with Second Son, being a fan of the franchise...
@@0uttaS1TE as much as I loved the good ending in InFamous 2, I would of loved to see Cole again. And see how SuckerPunch would write him as the main bad guy.
@@0uttaS1TE Dunno man,InFanmous 2 showed that their writing staff REALLY couldnt handle even the comparatively small differences between the two endings of 1,cant even imagine how they would have fucked up a third entry(that isnt just a tech-demo with a completely half assed and negligible story...oh hey thar Second Son).
@@0uttaS1TE There was a pretty big difference in the form of how the narrative handled Cole´s relationship with Zeke which the second game then just handwaves away DESPITE being such a comparetatively small part.
I absolutely cant see them handle the vastly different endings of 2 if they couldnt even be arsed to handle that detail.
Amazing how Shadow Fall's way to make your character want to put an end to Helghan genocide was to *make him simp for a Helghan girl*
They had a real chance to show how much the lines were blurred between the helghast and the vsa, but no.
But we have to appreciate, she was t h i c c.
Blaukraut ohne Knödel she looked p skinny bro ngl
@@Etzelsschizo What was the character's name? I can't remember her
@@ironduke5058 Maya Visari
Thx for mentioning Killzone Mercenary! I’ve had a vita for a while, but barely used it until now. I’ve never played any other Killzone, but I’ve been hooked to this game and think it’s really underrated.
I bought another vita since I lost mine years ago and still enjoy playing kill one mercenary. I think there’s still multiplayer servers active
KZ mercenary was so my jam. Love the online play and the campaign.
"I'm buying a Wii u to escape brown and grey shooters"
Is now my new favourite phrase
I actually did that at the time. Had to get back to Nintendo after getting bored of the call of duty and GTA clones.
As a POC i can't believe he would say something like that
@@Maestro-gh2ei As a gray person, I'm offended.
@@Maestro-gh2ei why? Are you saying that people of color don't like color?
@@jamainegardner4193 was a joke
Killzone 2 is a grand experience that still holds up today. Technical masterpiece.
It still looks like you are playing a cutscene, I remember the first time I seen gameplay of it, it was at a videogame store called Play N Trade and they were playing it on a flat screen I could not believe how the graphic looked.
agree
Technically it's a good game. Creatively it's about as unique as a match-3 game lol.
(IN 3D)
Loved the multiplayer. Can't remember a single thing about the campaign though
Killzone sections without allies made me feel isolated and fearful really, the sensation that healghast were at every room/corner used to trick me a Lot, playing Halo made me feel more like a supersoldier
I mean, in Killzone you are just a soldier. In Halo Master Chief is the best of the genetically modified super soldiers so it makes sense that you feel that way.
Just read that in its lore, apparently the ISA enacted an incredibly unfair trade deal that basically screwed over the Helghast into a great depression, then Scolar Visari had them rise up to basically fight back against this... then we play as the ISA... who push the "bad guys" back in the ground. I remember loving Killzone 2 back in the day, but now I feel like the ISA were the bad guys all along. Am I wrong?
Yes your wrong
@@quatreraberbawinner2628he’s not wrong but he’s not right the ISA did fuck up the Helghast and sent them off of their home-world to a cancer planet but the Helghast also did some fucked up shit after that,the Killzone lore is literally both sides are evil in their own right,The Helghast fight because they were sent off to die by plague and famine and the Isa fight because all they know is that the Helghast are going to murder everyone on your home-world and they do not care for civilians both are evil and unless you read into it you automatically believe the Isa like a Isa grunt but if you read the lore you will see that both are not good
Not even a little. Hail Visari!
your correct in the sense that the isa is an extension of the earth and its goverment/military influence and thus its the earth thats been fucking over both helghast and vecta. not even strictly out of malicious intent even, just a kinda indifferent desire to maintain the status quo of earths hegemony over human interstellar civilizations. it was the earth for instance that coordinated the isolation of helghan which led to its economic depression and made it ripe and ready for a populist vesari coup. and it was also the earth that forced vecta to take on helghan refugees.
thats kinda the thing really. vecta and helghan have such a narrative prominence but when you actually get into the background thats being written for these games, this isn't really a conflict of the heroic rebel alliance fighting the evil galactic empire. this is more like the korean war in space in terms of scale.
Sounds familiar. I think there was something to do with a guy with a weird mustache and swastika
Killzone Mercenary is a legitimately fantastic handheld shooter. So underrated
yup, still the best handheld shooter i played, and honestly one of the better shooters ever released. the amount of replayability of each mission due to vanguards and weapons was crazy. also the multiplayer was legitimately good and they even released bots through the botzome dlc later, so you could always go back to play it
I don't think it's underrated at all. It's only serious problem was the unpopular platform.
Funny how in the end, all the "Halo Killers" had to do, was wait for Halo to kill itself.
I dunno if you can quite describe it as killed.
20 years, 9 games and only one had a legitimately poor campaign.
James Neave while thats true, its reputation has gone down significantly since about 2013 or whenever 343 took over
@@MostlyPennyCat Halo not as good as it used to be though, 343 kinda dragged it through the mud, 4 was okay if you liked call of duty, 5 followed EAs mentality that nobody liked solo player anymore and produced a shit campaign and I got no expectations for infinite because with how 343 just remastered reach to have the new stupid ass system that forces players to play multiplayer to level up that shows that they aren't doing the series justice
I replayed 4 recently.
4 should have been an X1 launch title.
It's problem was the 360 was too much a limiting factor.
I genuinely like the campaign, minus the boring AI, but that's a hardware limit.
Yes there was a style change, I didn't love it, didn't hate it.
I love Halo Wars 1 & 2.
Spartan Ops was a _fantastic_ idea badly implemented (boring levels)
5. 5 was just, ugh, yuck, no.
Nonono.
Infinite should have targeted the next generation.
But infinite looks _gorgeous_
Original halo art style with a pbr engine and hub and spoke level design.
Yes please, yes please very much.
And halo wars 3.
And some other spin offs, like bungie did with odst.
I just don't understand why they stopped doing stuff in this way. Side projects, movies, books, RTS games.
Offload all that stuff, separate MP from SP into MCC, have 343 focus on engine design and main story campaign.
_how is this so difficult to figure out???_
I think it's far from killed.
But there opportunity is still there.
They need to change the focus.
Individual components do not need to be profitable and million copy sellers.
Like Netflix and HBO, get some good products, take risks to find them, get people subscribed to game pass.
This is the business model now.
It _could, should_ be glorious.
@@erikgardner4777 I like both call of duty and halo, halo first, neither of them felt anything like cod, I feel like using that Insult is just lazy and bandwagoning because it isn't a pure halo experience from the originals
"When you defeat Radec..." You mean "IF you defeat Radec"
"You seem to want this to be personal. It will be my pleasure."
You never defeat Radec. He denies you victory by taking matters into his own hands. ;)
(that even assumes it's the REAL Radec, as there's support in the narrative that it may be an imposter, though KZ3 and SF threw much of the story out the window to do their own thing so they never followed up on this)
I spent two weeks with my dad defeating the final boss on medium difficulty
@@amiiru2251 I believe it. I know people who spent weeks not being able to pass the rocket launcher corridor section on the hard difficulty, or the ATAC fight without using the rocket launcher cheese on the hardest difficulty.
@@davekaye5483 dude killzone 2 is the best and most graphically realistic and enjoyable game. I got it with my ps3 slim when I was six, I didn't have that much fun before (I am an introvert). Me and my dad used to take turns, it was a blast. Now he passed away, and I got my hands on killzone 3, I'd always imagine me and him taking turns.. I am really happy that this game has a big community that's still going.
If anyone is still confused by the franchise's story and premise. It's basically one huge dick-tugging competition of genocide and war crimes with a very anti-war rhetoric to it. Nobody is the good guy in Killzone. The ISA are just a bunch of missfit mercenaries who act as pawns for Earth and the New Vektan government with the sole purpose of keeping the Helghast in check, even if it means resorting to genocide to do so(of which they do in Killzone 3 and Shadowfall). The Helghast, while ultimately the victims in the grand scheme of things, opted to becoming a harsh, violent fascist super power with the sole intention of taking back Vekta from their enemies. None of them sound good by any means.
The evilness of the hellghast always seemed so forced to me
Like "they look like nazis so they must be evil" them you read the lore and see how they were exploited workers that suffered under Vekta's laws and decided to rise up
So to compensate the fact that the hellgan are the one in the "good side" they make them do saturday morning cartoon vilanous acts
The isa are a fuck ton more evil than whatever the helgast are interpreted in this game. The hatred for the helgast is so unjustified
@STORM LORD "You cant put ethno nationalism in a game."
You know that the Wolfenstein remake games happened, right?
So it's basically Gundam
Plot twist, Rico of the ISA was the true villain of the Killzone Trilogy, especially in 2 and 3.
@@Gruntvc well he killed an entire planet so...
Killzone 2 LOOKS BETTER than that fake video for sure, it's honestly one of the best lookers on the PS3, I'm sad it lost itself honestly, it was such a unique game.
Man i've been desperate to play Killzone 2 again lately. This video hits deep
Dude i would love to play this shit outta it again too
I wish emulation would come along to pick up the third console generation already!
They still haven't gotten good Xbox Original emulation either though
Always enjoy your vids bro, hope things are going well.
Theyre all on playstation now if you get a subscription
Killzone 2 multiplayer was awesome. It needs a modern remaster. For PC lol
I wonder it can play lan on PS3...
Do like i did... I bought a used PS3 cheap and bought both killzones
Ok, so one cool idea for KZ 3 and Shadowfall I came up with while watching this would have been if, in 3, it maintained its gritty and grounded tone, with the nuking of Helghan being actually an accident, with the characters not knowing/caring for the superweapon, just them actually trying to leave and maybe they shoot down a fighter which crashes into the superweapon or some other cheesy stuff, nuking Helghan.
After that, Vekta actually takes in the Helghast refugees, and tries to integrate them into Vektan society (so no goofy partition), except both in the government and general populace there is a lot of mistrust and discrimination against the Helghast, who would still probably live in tangibly worse conditions on average compared to most Vektans. There could be a lot of urban guerrilla warfare between the two sides, the Helghast, angered by the nuking of their homeworld and discrimination they face on Vekta, radicalised by their miserable conditions, and the Vektans being exceptionally distrustful of the Helghast, with anti-Helghast militias being more or less covertly supported by the Vektan government. This would add some grey to it, with the Helghast adopting some sort of Post-Helghast-ism, or either way a reformed ideology that cherished the virtues and rights of Visari’s regime, while diminishing or condemning its crimes, be it out of genuine desire to change, or as a way to mask a will to return to that ultranationalist, revanchist totalitarianism. Furthermore, taking place decades into the future compared to 3, it would -as you said- justify the more bright and overtly sci-fi elements. And it would have fairly modest objectives, for example the player could be a soldier/policeman in the ISA (maybe in a squad with some Helghast or Mixed-heritage people thrown in as well) who has the fairly simple and modest objective of keeping the peace, by countering guerrilla activity, nominally by both Helghast and Vektan extremists, though the orders you get would certainly have a bias against the Helghast, with you maybe taking part in some “questionable” actions.
I has more fun reading this than playing shadowfall tbh lol
That would have been cool
i think it would be better to play as those guerrillas, the whole game could revolve around overthrowing the goverment cuba style.
I've been saying "Space Nazis" as a joke to describe the Helghan for years now.
But there's something magical about it being in writing.
there's actual good conversation between these ideologies, which modern games lack. this creates purpose(maybe I created it myself through these discussin ingame), i dont feel similar purpose in many more modern games.
@Cody Sonnet your name is cody dude spend some time off the Internet its rotting your 13 year old brain
@Cody Sonnet cringe
@Cody Sonnet A Nazi apologist and anti-mask advocate. LOL
@Cody Sonnet Germany was attacked? Are you referencing when Germany killed a bunch of convicts, and then dressed them in Polish uniforms as a false flag attack to try justifying the invasion of Poland? Because that's what it was, Nazi propaganda.
Killzone as a series is something that, as soon as it leaves my sight, I completely forget about it
Yea lol
Such a great way to put it. I loved playing them but I cannot remember the story for the life of me.
@@mikedrop4421 All I remember badass gasmask men and hating the ISA
Thank god for horizon though
you know it's funny scrolling down the comments....I can FEEL it slipping out of my mind.
Bruh I ain't watching a hour of killzone lore
edit: so I just watched an hour of killzone lore
So how did it go ?
3 years later how was it?
It's a shame there's no mention of how amazing Killzone 2's online multiplayer was.
KZ 2 MP was awesome
It was so great! I think about it occasionally
@@AC-hj9tv Ditto. I find myself getting way too excited and nostalgic describing it to people.
@@mazack00 really wish we could get it on pc
@@AC-hj9tv it wouldn't feel the same. Being forced to use controllers with the same sensitivity settings was a real balancer.
I think shadowfall could've maybe worked if they made it about a civil war trying to topple the Helghast regime, and the ISA was STILL trying to commit Helghast genocide. That way you can still shoot some Helghast and have the morally grey theme be less stupid. And then if the regime is toppled, the ISA can be the big bad in later games, since they've kinda always been dicks, and now you dont have to worry about looking like you support totalitarianism. I don't know how well that would work, but it's just an idea
I feel like you're downplaying why there was such a backlash against military shooters in the early 2000's. The colour was a factor but there was more to it than that.
We went from fighting a variety of things like demons and aliens and soldiers to nothing but soldiers.
We went from using weapons that varied from standard to alien, to nothing but the standard pistol/shotgun/assault rifle combo.
We went from varied subgenres within fps games (sci-f, military and even fantasy) to nothing but straight military.
The characters went from some degree of variety in characters (space marines, scientists, soldiers, warriors) to nothing but soldiers.
And then it was simply the fact that the market became saturated in these same style of games.
I agree, these sorts of games became so common that even FPS franchises that werent like this turned into it with their sequels.
I mean how is every fps being a keycard hunting doomclone in the 90s any different lol
@@MILDMONSTER1234 lol exactly, I'd take shooting and flanking soldiers all the time using responsive and realistic guns over some another bunnyhopping, keycard hunting quake/doom clone. Yeah, I like console shooters, fuck games where you need to jump around one, extremely stupid, bullet spongy demon that requires entire ammo reserve from 8 guns to kill it. Soldiers in "le terrible military shooters" at least have reasonable ammount of health, are way smarter and require tactics other than spamming rocket launcher and strafing left or right around arena full of glowing items and keycards.
I always liked the Doom formula better overall.
But the thing is even if military shooters got a raise in popularity in the 2000´s much like how Doom clones did.
By that point the genre had evolved so much that there were still alternatives to military shooters back then and even more so now.
Halo.
Time Splitters.
FEAR
FarCry
Half Life 2.
Metroid Prime.
Killzone
Meda of Honor.
All of them tematically and mechanically different ...In some ways more than others.
Sounds like the platformer genre
12:11 "In the words of pop culture´s most famous black gas mask wearing space totalitarian, `this is where the fun begins´ "
Nice touch.
Mauler never said that
@@raddarat8471 Ah, a fellow member of the Toxic Brood
Didn't understood the reference 😔
Sorry, I had EFAP on the brain.
They where referring to Darth Vader.
My bad.
@@scoutwaffle6125 Kid Anakin
Honestly I feel like the biggest obstacle that impeded the first Killzone's potential being fully realized was, other than the technical limitations of the console it was designed for, it was pushed into this role of being "the Halo killer." When game journalists invented the concept of "the game that would arrive and dethrone Halo as the king of the FPS genre" they did a great disservice to writers, artists, and developers because they had now artificially altered how the public would react to these games. There was so much hype and expectation to be a Halo killer that it prevented some of these games from just being what they were intended to.
The devs called their games this internally, too. CoD MW comes to mind.
Killzone. Another victim of the third game being in an ice world aka "Ice Guys Finish Last" approach
I don't think kz3 killed the series, I think shadow fall did. But if anything, I know your referring to dead space as well.
I tip my hat at that Dead Space 3 reference good sir
Every time someone mentions Dead Space 3, I think fondly of the atmospheric space part that lets you fly from ship to ship, or the ice cold plains reminiscent of The Thing. I think to myself that I could give it a second chance. Then I remember the first 30 minutes where Isaac kills 50 drivers to cross the road in between cover-shooting cultist commandos and think "nah, I'm good".
Lost Planet 3 and Dead Space 3 come to mind
Or post-apoc style aka Gears of war 3
I feel a big "issue" with Killzone was how niche it was too... At the time it didn't appeal to Halo fans because it was seen as the competitor on Playstation (which at the time of KZ2 and 3, the PS3 was already less popular than the 360). It didn't appeal to modern military fans of games like CoD or Medal of Honor because it was too sci-fi. And it didn't appeal to boomer shooter/arena shooter fans of games like DOOM, who might have appreciated the sci-fi aesthetic, because it was too slow, and modern. I can see all of that contributing to Guerrilla attempting to redefine and differentiate the game in an attempt to appeal to any of these fanbases too... Definitely an odd game for it's time, even comparing it to its fellow PS3 shooter Resistance. Though I loved and played both Killzone and Resistance a lot back in high school.
Another point against Killzone post release is that it's not like the PS2 was starved for great shooters. Timesplitters, Project Snowblind, and Black all did the shooty bang bang action better. Controls, gameplay, graphics, frame rate, Killzone just couldn't hold up in comparison. It was just exclusive to the PS2, so it allowed for there to be some console war battles to be fought as to whether Sony would have a "Halo Killer".
It's also interesting that for all the focus of a FPS being a halo killer back in those mid 2000s that it was COD4, a game that didn't even try to, that ended up surpassing the sci-fi shooter. By the end of 2007, more people were playing COD4 on the 360 than Halo 3, despite the latter being released in 2 months earlier in September and exclusive just to that console (so there was no other way of playing, whereas COD4 was also on PS3 and PC).
@@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan to us you are all boomers.
@@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan nah its cuz you are just as out of touch and delusional as the boomers bucko
@@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan and the Jordan Petersen reference flies right over your head, shut up boomer.
Moral of the story is" Don't follow a craze, be your thing"
And i too miss rough, grey look of the games from 2000-2010.
I don't at all, I dislike(and disliked) that look just fine without any pretentions towards enlightenment as brit mentions in the video , lol. But I completely agree with the moral. A trailer for a wacky colorful shooter now is just as annoying to me as the trailer for a new brown mid-2000s cover shooter was back then, even though I prefer something lighter in that style. You can't exactly dictate marketplace variety, but it would be nice if the pendulum didn't swing the same way for so many studios at once.
I much prefer the current trend of retro boomer shooters (Dusk, AmidEvil, Ion Maiden, etc) to the mid-2000s shooters, simply because they’re less restrictive and more kinetic in terms of their gameplay mechanics.
@@Kriss_ch. Saved me the trouble of typing out this comment myself. Thank you.
Killzone 2&3 multiplayer will always have a special place in my heart
It's an experience I'll likely never get again
Freaking Killzone 2 man. Needs a Remaster
The whole series
I would love a Killzone Trilogy Remaster for PS5.
I would love it even more if they did a remake of Killzone 1 with the intense grit of Killzone 2. to come along with it.
It needs a remake these games are shit.
would like it on PC since Kz2 had no aim assist anyways.
Man, Killzone 2 was the game of my childhood. Even when I replayed it, I still enjoyed it so much.
Just seeing the familiar sights of Corynthe River, the living blocks, and those sweet-sweet guns (Sta-52 is still the best) brings so many memories of playing it with my dad.
Great game.
as someone who's a big killzone fan, this vid was fantastic and I think is one of your best easily.
Killzone 1 for me is a decent shooter but is rather rough and doesn't reach it's full potential. Liberation for me is actually the 2nd best in the series and is just really solid overall. Killzone 2 is easily the best of the series and one of the best FPS games ever. Everything about it is just extremely well polished and fine tuned that results in a fantastic campaign that always has you on the edge. I'm kinda surprised you didn't mention the music for Killzone or the fact they got actors like Brian Cox, Sean pertwee, and Malcolm mcdowell for the series, as I think they give killzone a lot of character. Plus the Helghast march is awesome.
Your theory on Killzone switching it's art style to be more bright and sci fi like to appease people who don't like brown and grey shooters is something I never really thought of but I can 100% agree with that. I personally like the way Killzone 3 looks, even though it's really jarring given it takes place right after 2 but it still remotely resembles killzone albeit more advanced. Shadowfall is where the series I think really started to blend in with the crowd, which was not for the better. Killzone if it kept more in line with the earlier games would've stood out from other shooters now than when it did back then, since as you said Gritty shooters aren't terribly common as they use to be
I hated how Killzone 3 did away with the dark, copper-y colour palette. Took away the gritty atmosphere and made it look like a generic futuristic shooter to me
@@Walamonga1313 yeah. I played the series again through the campaign earlier this year, and it was really weird how there's all of a sudden giant death robots and all that stuff at the start of 3.
36:30 almost the entire military machine of the helghast was left intact after the destruction of their planet, the Vektan had to either accepted the deal of giving half their shit or face a superior invasion force with nothing to lose and a vengeance to settle.
I miss game manuals. In the early 2000s they kinda died out due to digital alternative.
Metal Gear Solids PS manual was the most interesting book I saw from a game. It had hidden things and even a codec number tou needed for later in the game. So if you dodnt read it or look at the case at all you will miss out on story and gameplay. It was brilliant.
True but the Colonol did have our backs if we were too stupid for that lol. That was about the only time Campbell didn't do us dirty.
Although, I don't remember her codec being in the manual. I remember it on the back of the CD case.
I really want a killzone 2 pc port now :(
halloooo
I guess use emulator
Yes please..
Guerrilla please
I remember when i got killzone 2 "new" at gamestop back in 2009. The game wasn't even sealed like wtf, how did they sell me the game $60 new if it's open. They just put the disc inside the box and sold it to me like that for $60. I was young so tbh I didn't really care. F gamestop tho.
Have to step in here to address some things you missed about Killzone 2:
1) The dynamic between the four-man squad is important because of Rico - stereotypical supercilious badass action character - fucking up constantly in his attempts to be macho badass action guy. In this regard, Killzone 2 is directly criticizing the stereotypical COD player, in a game that is far more punishing on its easiest difficulty than any COD game is on its most difficult one. Using Rico as a narrative foil during that era of gaming was a stroke of genius, and Killzone 3's backpedaling on that to turn him into an action hero was not received well because it utterly missed the point of why "Goddamn it, Rico" was such a powerful thing, and felt superficial to try and compete with COD's superhuman action hero narrative instead of earned through legitimate character development.
Similarly, we see how Natko develops over the course of the story, starting when the friend of his he was just joking around with gets blown to smithereens shortly thereafter, to him having to become the voice of reason between Sev and Rico after the latter's continued fuck-ups gets Garza (Sev's best friend) killed and sparks tension between the two characters.
Rico as a foil continues to be important as he doesn't learn or grow over the course of the story, which directly impacts those around him. As a result, it's his impulsiveness which switches the victory of taking Visari's palace into the shitstorm that leads into the beginning of Killzone 3. It is not a game with a victorious, happy ending in which the bad guy is defeated, but is a story about consequences. Rico's final fuck-up of the game is the worst of all.
2) Radec is not exactly the Helghast's ideals incarnate. If you pay closer attention, he HAD to act the way he did out of necessity. You forgot to mention this about Liberation, but the entire plot recontextualized the plot of Killzone 1 because it's learned the Helghast's reasons for invading Vecta was that they learned of a nuclear superweapon developed that was intended to be used against them, so they struck pre-emptively. While Armin Metrak died in the end, he succeeded in stealing the weapon before it could be used against them, hence why Visari mentions this in the opening cinematic and why Radec is hell-bent on getting the nuclear codes.
Radec - who ran the military academy - literally had no time, because he knew that it would only take two years for the ISA to arrive on Helghan after the events of Liberation, so he was put in a position where he had no choice but to remove the weakest links via execution to motivate the defense force to work harder. We learn Radec was responsible for the evacuation of the women and children to safety, and forcibly drafting the able-bodied men into the military.
The beginning of Killzone 2 presents Radec as being this ruthless authoritarian figure because the game would later ease the player into the idea that the Helghast are more than meets the eye. We learn the Helghast were victims of oppression who fought for their independence, and that most of what we believe about them is the result of the UCN's propaganda. In other words, the ISA - the UCN's attack dogs - are actually the bad guys, but our character doesn't know that. This is one of the reasons why the Killzone 1 manual is so poignant in hindsight, as it doesn't merely just cover the backstory of the game, but does so in the form of slanted, one-sided wartime propaganda which doesn't show the whole truth.
This is one of the areas in which the story flips the script on conventional stereotypes, and the more the player learns about the lore while on the Helghan homeworld, the more they realize how shitty the ISA/UCN is, and how the Helghast were forced into action out of survival.
3) Radec is well-loved by Killzone fans not just because of his in-story presentation and voice (or even his status in-narrative as a hero, which you also don't mention). He is well-loved because of how he is presented as the multiplayer announcer for the Helghast faction. Killzone 2's multiplayer is unique in how positively encouraging both of the multiplayer announcers are, but Radec's lines specifically are incredibly motivating. When you win, he says, "You fought like heroes this day! Helghan is proud of you", and when you lose, he encourages you to try again, assuring you that while you have lost this battle, next time you'll be victorious.
That kind of positive affirmation is incredibly rare in games with multiplayer announcers. For comparison, those in Destiny, Crisis 2, and the Transformers games by High Moon practically berate you for falling behind.
Killzone 3 had the same lines, but the actors behind them lacked an ounce of the charisma Radec and Narville had. Narville's change in voice actor and overall personality from the Gunnery Sergeant Hartman archetype to just generic Whitey McWhitebread not-Chris Redfield guy was also not well received. The voice actor for the Helghast announcer felt like his lungs were failing him while he delivered his lines. Comparatively, Radec was an inspirational and motivational figure, and why so many wanted to play as Helghast in Killzone 2's multiplayer. It felt like an honor to fight and die for the guy.
Similarly, you don't appreciate how much of a badass Radec is until you unlock the hardest difficulty setting and fight him there. He EARNS his "final boss" status. I remember running out of ammo on my first attempt on that difficulty, having a sliver of health left, and having to spend FOUR AND A HALF hours at the edge of my seat trying to kill him with nothing but the combat knife, knowing that the next shot would kill me no matter what and having the fear that he could teleport to where I was at any given point in time. It felt like Ripley going up against the Alien Queen bare-handed and without the Power Loader. It's BRUTAL. That's the sort of victory worthy of a war story you tell to your grand-children.
4) Unrelated to any specific point, but as a KZ2 veteran, I just can't get over how you were playing the game. I was practically screaming at you to stop running in melee range to shoot stuff. This isn't COD, "spray and pray" doesn't work. If you try and unload your entire magazine running around like that with an LMG, you're not going to hit anything. You're supposed to crouch to reduce the targeting reticle size for more accurate shots, then aim down the sights and manually burst fire so the reticle doesn't get too large and you lose accuracy. It's a game that rewards you in being patient in lining up your shots. This is why players who come from Halo and try bunny-hopping and strafing to avoid fire in the name of taking "evasive action" will get destroyed by those who just stand still and fire their weapon with intent.
You do not need to be 2 feet away from the enemy for your gun to work (this is like in the latest Predators movie where people with guns waltz up to the monster before firing their weapons, which is kind of embarrassing to see players do). You have a projectile weapon, you can keep your distance. If you're going to get that close, switch to the combat knife by pressing down on the D-Pad and hack away.
5) On a similar note, you neglected to mention one of the genius design decisions of Killzone 2, which is how Six-axis controls were implemented. For sniper rifles, this gave more of an intentionality to fine aim with your weapon.
6) There is no mention of how, compared to its successor, Killzone 2 removed triple-digit scoring and assist points so that every kill and each victory felt earned, which was massively motivating to the player. There are no "feel good" mechanics, and it is the most brutally honest FPS ever made regarding player performance. You either get the kill, or you don't, no ifs, ands or buts about it. There was no padding to make casual players feel better about themselves.
7) There is no mention of objective-based gameplay in the multiplayer, which diminished the importance of KDR in favor of whatever it took to win. This meant that acts of self-sacrifice to take out a room filled with enemy players and/or enemy turrets, or to be a meat shield for your teammates if it would assist in victory in holding an objective, led to a very, VERY different player mindset than what you'd see in COD and Halo. This is absolutely critical to what makes Killzone 2 stand out over other games in the FPS genre and should not have gone unstated.
I have a low attention span so I'm just gonna say I agree with whatever you wrote
Excellent analysis- completely agree. I really miss the good old days I would turn on my PS3 and play KZ2
I just disagree on one point, not having points for assistance. Assistance points serves for not discouraging team work, unless you are playing with friends, you are playing against everyone even on teams, by having assistance points you don't feel like not killing near your teammates because one them hit the last bullet.
@@ricardomiles2957 Assist points never serve as an encouragement for teamwork, they're only a consolation prize for not being good enough to earn the kill yourself, or skilled enough to go for headshots. Killzone 2 is a game where it's either kill or be killed, and one bullet can make all the difference. Teamwork is encouraged through the objective-based gameplay, and what's important is doing whatever is necessary to win. KDRs and the amount of players you actually kill are less important than winning the best of seven rounds of objective-based matches, which is why being a meat shield or suicide bombing to hold the objective is often more respectable than scoring lots of kills. This is why you see even in matches with randoms, players using the Medic class will throw down healing packs near a Capture & Hold point, because what's important is that everyone does their part to win the match, not try to be Rambo. You help your team by being willing to take one for the team.
Anyone with that attitude of wanting to have a consolation prize for not being able to earn their own kills under the excuse of being recognized for helping their team is psychologically unfit for Killzone 2's multiplayer. You earn your kills or you don't. You help your team by doing your part to hold objectives. You earn recognition for helping your team when you win, and get praised by Radec. The scoring is brutally honest, and there are no hand-holding or "feel-good" mechanics for players who aren't good enough to hold their own. That's how it was, and that's how it should be. The reasoning you gave for assist points doesn't align with the reality of how Killzone 2's multiplayer works, and is asking for recognition for subpar gameplay using a poor excuse which ultimately misses the point of the Killzone 2 experience.
This is one of the most detailed analysis, honest and already took the words from my mouth and laid it.
I have to agree with the spray and pray thing. I literally cringed and was like bro you wasting ammo.
I loved killzone 3 despite it being so and so with everything probably because back then I didn't care about story and as such was just wowed by the graphics and weapons (didn't even have the game manual so no story for me) going back now as a much more mature individual and knowledge gained player.... I can see some of the discrepancies
No wonder why I absolutely despised shadowfall, I literally said to myself they literally ruined the name and feel of killzone as an adult.
I miss edgy plots and characters in games. Now its like if you are not "self aware" or "light hearted" you are just a joke.
I miss late 90s and mid 2000s edge.
Proper edge is incredibly difficult to pull off and too many failed attempts have associated it too heavily with cringe
@BlindBison
I seriously doubt it has anything to do with Twitter criticism and more to do with media becoming increasingly dictated by market research (and/or algorithmically generated) resulting in milquetoast products made for mass public appeal. Profit margins don't care about American political partisanry as much as you might suspect.
Indie devs tend to produce more risky/edgy games these days anyway - their creativity is not beholden to a giant corporate bottom line.
@@mothsforeyes I watched yesterday video about how Indian background people have risen in culture and how it is more and more calculated,deliberate for reasons you described. Nazi era was height of white masculine youth audience, so it is perfect villain. It doesnt make any sense for eg. mexican people(at least I cant think why it would resonate). I doubt it was as calculated in 90s, early 2000s, but now it is as more money is at play.
@@nicklewry3854 it is especially hard in sequels, franchises, which shows up in many series of games. First one being edgy, thus enjoyable, sequels more and more lukewarm, yet riding on that first edginess... eventually disappointing players.
Stop playing Nintendo games.
37:00 to be fair I kinda interpreted that has more of a punishment against Vekta than a win for the Helghans. The start of Killzone Two shows that the central government on Earth forbade Vekta and the ISA from invading Helghan, insisting on a blockade instead. But ISA went YOLO, which ended up in what was basically a mass murder of a billion Helghans, mainly civilians. So I think Earth's government was like "ok, you fucked up. Now you must be punished" and that's why half the planet was given to the Helghan. But refugees also went to other planets, as it is shown in the in game lore about another colony's political situation
Sony really missed the oportunity to remaster Killzone 2 and 3 this generation.
I’m hoping for a pc port like Horizon. Unfortunate Horizon needed two more months of optimising. But that is cutting it close to the release of PS5
@@eliarevalo I don't believe in a PC port unless they remaster them for ps5 first.
@@Gr4yF0x when ur a fanboy who wants no one else to play with HIS toys
@@KaoticVibes wtf dude.
@Trini Gamer as many ppl play it, the better. I don't want it to be exclusive. I just said that Killzone 2 is not a game with great chances of getting a PC port. They ignored it even on ps4. Just that.
Killzone is a series that I still appreciate to this day. Especially Killzone 2. I love gaming but hate the gaming community.
Honestly, Shadow Fall is one of my favorite games, but mostly because it's what officially got me into shooters when I was finally allowed to play M-rated titles. I'd played COD and Halo when I was younger and snuck gameplay with friends who had it, but i didn't play much of them. Nowadays, it's Battlefield 4, Star Wars: Battlefront 2, and Halo Infinite for me. Some COD here and there, but started getting tired of it from playing since 2016
@@raptortamerdx5900 my first FPS game was Haze by Free Radical. It’s still a guilty pleasure for me.
There's a difference between gray and dark and realism tho.
Many of the of the games in late 2000 looked unrealistically brown and dark. COD WW2 is a good example of it done right as it shows a game that is gritty and realistic without an ugly color pallette
ugh COD WW2 is hideous, WAW, MW, MW2, and BO on the other hand all have gritty styles and beautiful colour palettes.
@@aceambling7685 WAW is still one of the best gritty WW2 games
@@user-go1sl6rd7u BIG fax
Gears of war series lol
Would love to go back in time and relive my Killzone 2 experience. Easily one of my favorite games I used to play.
"Space Nazis" is a suprisingly uncrowded niche considering Star Wars exists.
Star Wars is barely that
I don’t think it’s as overt as kill zone. Most of the time you’re not thinking that at all
2016's Call of Duty Infinite Warfare pretty much had the enemy faction, the SDF, be space Nazis. It was basically WW2 in space.
Star Wars doesn't have any NS imagery other than Darth Vader being inspired by Black Sun wizards.
If you want real Space Nazis watch the original Gundam 0079.
I loved running up to people and poking their eyes out in Killzone 3's multiplayer. KZ3 was loads of fun for me
KZ3 multiplayer was so much fun
Fucking love KZ3
yea i didnt understand the story or anything, just pure fun gameplay.
( Boops you in the eye *H A R D* )
The whole time I played this series I always asked myself “am I the bad guy?”
@@TPizzle96
At least germany and austria got help, was slowly rebuilding and wasnt literally doomed on a planet made out of plague.
@@boarfaceswinejaw4516 "got help" hah is that what they call it now a days?
@@DerNomade1871
i was speaking in general about both world wars, as after ww2 germany recieved aid from the us and the treaty of versailles wars more or less scrapped.
@@DerNomade1871 They got a raw deal; but they also did alot of help...and then the Great Depression happened and there was no help to give.
@akamaro20
look up the locarno treaties, the dawes plan and the young plan.
The treaty of versailles was significantly softened and actions were made to make it significantly less severe.
Look at Killzone 2 and tell me it doesn't still look amazing 15 years later in 2024.
Killzone 2 is what you get when you have hard working, passionate, and talented people at the top of their field working to make a fun video game.
I feel like Shadowfall should be ret-conned entirely. the series has interesting lore overall.
I admittingly like the Cold War part of the lore.
Thw whole series should be retconned.
I don't think retconning Shadowfall entirely is really necessary. If anything it deserves a complete do-over from scratch. Shadowfall still has a lot of cool and interesting lore ideas. It just needs a better director and writer in order to fully realize it's potential is all.
I think the retcon should really start from 3. Like instead of having visari die as it appears in KZ2 at the start of KZ3.....making a body double or visari gets medical attention and is held captive by the isa. Where the Helghast go ballistic trying to get visari back. A new Radec protege arises to lead the Helghast assault who is very cunning and dangerous as Conel Radec in his own right.
Retcon it at 3 and keep it semi realistic like 2
Killzone 1 was incredible to me as a younger guy. The Helghast did so much to capture this vague "cool villain" tone, and invited me into a type of shooter I never saw. Between my own ignorance of older games or consoles, and its odd little perks of design choices, it quickly became one of my favorite shooters on the PS2. First game I saw to use sprint, a dynamic and functional health system without removing the packs, had a sense of better atmosphere with the first time I saw pre-set dead bodies to tell you this was a genuine war, and just a cool universe full of levels I loved. Biggest of all was the bot multiplayer mode, because back then such a thing didn't seem to exist to me, so it was the first FPS I could play beyond a campaign. I sunk hours and hours and hours into this for its time. In retrospect its clunky, but as you said, the ideas were there and its still something of meaning to me.
Killzone 2 is still a masterpiece IMO. Not at its truest sense where its all actually perfect, the weapon limit is basically one gun and a revolver, which is just annoying... but everything in the tone and pacing was so incredibly fine tuned that you could forgive it. Cover system, engine, physics, gunplay, shockingly impressive and dynamic AI with a stupid amount of battle chatter dialogue I was still discovering on late returns, and you could return and replay levels by the piece meaning you could always jump right back into your favorite parts. It also retained a few "old school" elements I loved that other games were forgetting in the transition to copying COD, like grenades you had to actually watch for rather than a HUD excuse, and the aim mapping default to R3 because... why would you aim with something that isn't literally the aim button? (I still don't get that "evolution" for consoles, but alright) It was crammed with so many little positives, on top of a game already paced to perfection, that I view it immensely well without even needing to bring up the multiplayer - which was also awesome, and like the campaign, held to better old identity with things like a public server browser with custom fan community rules and events going on.
Killzone 3 was basically Killzone made for everybody that bitched about Killzone. It was supposed to be that explosive, blockbuster, set-piece scripted distraction show, with a new hired writer, give it color and another mech part, special cut-scenes to force everyone saying "the writing is weak" to think this was a fix, a token female who was infinitely forgettable, and flashy show pieces to make you want to buy motion controls and 3D television. Oh, and multiplayer did everything to "look" like more of the COD norm between flashy points, bigger progression systems, quicker time-to-kill, and the removal of server browsers which the head of the company admitted to doing out of the fear that people were either too stupid or lazy to use them (paraphrasing of a real explanation). Now that's not to say it was all bad, and I'm just as much a defender of 3 as I will be its attacker. They stepped it up on weapon liberties, did pick some cool places to go to diversify the environments, and some of those new focus on cut-scenes were honestly pretty interesting; the big thing that held stuff like that back was the fact it was all self-contained and lost from the fact that games like Killzone 1 & 2 didn't want to tell you too much about pages of lore they had ready... so now this civil war and council stuff had to be dumped on you quick and still resolve. Stuff like the flawed revival thing, came from a place of genuine attempt to make the squad feel more useful, because in the past they felt like they were mostly there just to make noise and look busy, with 2 even making you rescue them. So they thought they were returning the favor, but.... yeah, it could also make the balance feel wonky. Oh, and the MP was still fun at its base core, it just so happens that a large step back and dumbed down form from KZ2 is still an awesome game.
Mercenary is awesome. I can't add anything else that you might have, but it was great and a shame they won't try a PS4 port the same way a few other Vita games got. But ShadowFall got... weird. You dissected the story and its fault more than enough. It was fun enough to experience in the moment, but has so many flaws. Meanwhile, the gameplay end that wasn't as covered, is.... uh... well, uh... interesting. Somebody best said it when they believed it was trying hard to imitate an old PC shooter in terms of pace (not mechanically), not too hard to believe from some staff that originated in the old Unreal era stuff. There were so many layers of odd things going on, and a marginally longer length. You had more flexibility of stuff like the AI drone, but not enough to escape the corridor shooter segments. You had one real boss battle, but only one like a quick experiment. You had some silly flashes of physic and level gimmicks show up, more than a COD distraction, but not more to really mean anything for the total game experience. You had elements of grounded sci-fi ideals that were tighter than KZ3, but not as tight or gripping as something out of KZ2. I feel like that's where it lies as well as far as fun goes. I think it had more integrity and genuine thought than Killzone 3 did, but it still wanted to be experimental and try something new to appease the haters, and.... some of it worked, while some of it was funky or clunky. As weird as this sounds, I can even bring it back to server browsers as an analogy, as they used "custom playlists" as a selling factor for its reveal, but what this really did was create a "style" that could be picked and create a lobbey system for players, in a really odd way that was emulating both matchmaking and Browsers in such a convoluted way that it was like somebody was hired just to engineer a pointlessly alien system of selecting your game.
I think my absurd post length speaks for my general thoughts of the series. Even at its worst, or mediocre points, I always found something special in it somewhere, and its a big series even in cases where I know it means next to nothing to others. People tend to greatly downplay its perks a lot, and boil it down into "THE brown grey gritty game", but its something that I'll keep waiting for. I hope the series will continue, and I hope one day that next entry has the same passion that drove them to make it at its peak of Killzone 2.
Cheers to that guy who bought WiiU because shooters looked too gray.
Pretty much why I bought a wii
I bought mine for bayo 2 and BOTW, imagine my shock when both got ported to switch
atleast i can play gamecube games
I did this
I bought Dreamcast for that reason but haven't really played it.
I mean I can't say I regret it lmao
Xenoblade Chronicles X more than makes up for things
I never really got into the FPS genre, but I loved Killzone 2, especially the multiplayer. I loved the deliberate nature of the combat. Taking your time and thinking actually paid off. That's the same reason I loved the multiplayer in The Last of Us.
To be honest, I think you missed something about the story of KZ2. In line with what Dave Kaye said below, KZ2's plot has another interesting aspect to it. The narrative about Radec that Dave has extracted from the game is also somewhat applicable to Visari himself. Like Kurtz in Heart of Darkness (or derivatively Col. Kurtz from Apocalypse Now), Visari's last words "The madness... The madness begins!" ("The horror! The horror!" in HoD/ApoNow) seem to suggest that he also went through a lot to bring Helghast society to where it was then, and how much he had to exert control in order to stop infighting (hence "The madness begins!", which we see happening in KZ3, albeit portrayed poorly there). Moreover, the general narrative structure of the story is a bit similar to the boatman's journey or Willard's journey, where the closer they get to the target of their destination (the man who turned savage - Kurtz/Visari), the more insanity/savagery they encounter themselves (Visari nuking his own city, Helghast holding out until the last man, Radec committing suicide, squadmates dying, etc.).
I don't know why THAT similarity flew over everyone's head. Does anybody know if GG said aything about being inspired by HoD or ApoNow for the story of KZ2?
huh, interesting, never thought about the similarities between Heart of Darkness and Killzone 2..
Visari even resembles Marlon Brando as Kurtz….so Killzone might’ve been trying to do Spec Ops before Spec Ops?
who the hell is dave
“This is like Britain blew up Germany and gave Scotland to the nazis” 😂😂😂 dude quality content
I always felt that Killzone 2 felt like the peak. I’m glad I’m not alone with this. The change in gameplay felt really jarring to me between 2 and 3. There was a feeling that the devs tried to make the third game more in line with other shooters at the time, particularly for the multiplayer aspect.
3 looks like they went hard in competing with Halo.
Yup! KZ2 is the pinnacle of the series for sure. KZ3 was great and it looks awesome but I prefer 2 by a mile.
1 year late reply but same with resistance 3 and both came out the same year. Trying to focus more on multiplayer.
In kz2 i remember clearly in one mission before you storm visari and radec. Three helgast soldiers, three normal dudes gave me the hardest fight in the entire game. One chucked grenades, the other two shot in intervals. When one reloads the other shoots. Unlike other opponents where id humiliate their corpses, these 3 guys fought so well they had my utter respect, i did not humiliate them, i sat there after killing them, giving them a moment of respectful silence. I wish i couldve gave them a propper burial
"more of a focus should have been put on Rico"
Said no one else ever
Rico is the key to all of this.
Rico was cool in 1 because Haha was there
yeah they could have delved into why he hates the helghst so much in the game it just feels like he's pissed off at them for the sake of being the enemy but I'm sure there's a reason they never really touched on
@@that-guy213 lol there's no reason, it's just bad writing
@@that-guy213 wasnt his only reason he is pised at Hellgast cuz they killed his budies in platoon?
Other than that most of time he is racist psychopath with wich Vecta has a lot.
Killzone and BLACK - one of the most memorable games on PS2 for me.
Black was way better than Killzone. The latter was kinda boring and bland.
@@matheusmelo6022 black was actually really well made and optimized for ps2 very good not a lot first person shooters on ps2 actually run good and have good frame rate black has good frame rate
@@matheusmelo6022 killzone was way better than black imo it had better gameplay a cool multiplayer
To this day I never beat the final battle in BLACK. Shit was crazy difficult to me.
@@st4ne4rmthevill63 I remember playing Black when I was like 10 yo and failing at the 2nd level, the forest, when I grew up and replayed the game it was like a ritual moment finishing the Game. Man, I still remember the bridge level.
I appreciated your discussion of the backlash against Brown Shooters. I definitely was part of that backlash too... But even as I said I was tired of them, I knew I liked them! I suspect that was the case for a lot of people
But even more than some of the "in crowd" dynamics, I think it reflects AAA gaming's tendency to overcorrect. We went from ALL brown shooters after Gears was popular then there was a backlash, so we went to ALL fluorescent purple shooters. Maybe now we're finally reaching more of an equilibrium where we can have both?
I think the bigger issue with some older brown shooters was the blatant desaturation that went on with some games, like the Medal of Honor reboot was so bland looking with it's assets that the enemies would blend into the background and be difficult to find/shoot.
@@beachbum111111 I mean it IS set in Afghanistan. The design of the enemies were intentional, that'd way they'd camouflage into the background. No, I'm not a fan of the 2010 MoH game.
@@NihilisticIdealist I was a huge fan, played that game when I was 9 and I had a blast! but I do agree the game was bland, but tbh that is what made it look realistic. (and the gameplay was exceptionally realistic (if i remember correctly))
No wonder people complained. Seemingly every shooter became the same.
Well done, man! Excellent work, and some original observations. I think we were lucky to grow up through the evolution of gaming during the 2000s, even if the decade otherwise was rubbish.
It took me the better part of a minute to realize that the Killzone 2 footage wasn’t just fake gameplay from some E3 “demonstration.” Incredible
'I should do something constructive' *Goes to youtube to start up some background music* *sees 1 hour upload from TGBS*
'Welp, shit.'
First time?
@@Darek_B52 Nah its more along the lines of 'here we go again' shit. Y'know?
I feel like they should’ve kept Radec around longer
Killzone 2 is still one of my favourite FPS games of all time. It was like playing a cinematic it looked so good.
I made a separate post about KZ2, but this one's about 3, Mercenary and SF:
1) Mercenary WAS made by the studio that did most of the heavy lifting on Killzone 2. SCE Cambridge helped with Killzone 2's development, it was not solely Guerrilla Games. It's not surprising at all that it's your second-favorite Killzone game, because it's literally the second-best Killzone game by every Killzone player's standards. It runs parallel to 2, and was worked on by the same people. It's only hamstrung by the fact that it wasn't a full console game and was a handheld title, but unlike 3 and Shadowfall, it respects the lore.
Also, Kratek dresses differently because he's technically more "scientist" than "soldier," but otherwise, characters like Boris come from the Radec school of Helghan pride, and a warrior's code of honor regarding what it meant to be a soldier. This is why Radec offs himself at the end of 2, to deny you victory, though many Killzone veterans point out that Radec's behavior at the end of 2 is inconsistent with what we know of the character (he's supposed to be a warrior who prefers to lead from the front lines, instead of hanging back, which he only did earlier at Visari's explicit request on that one occasion), leading many to speculate that we fight an imposter at the end of 2. Had it not been for 3's dramatic shift in direction, and SCE Cambridge's lack of involvement, we may have had a return of the character.
2) Killzone 3's sensitivity was - I shit you not - the result of some kid on the official forums whining incessantly that the gameplay felt too weighty for him, and while the rest of us told him to up the sensitivity in the options menu, he demanded that the developers change the game for him instead. Unfortunately, since Sony was looking to get that COD money, Guerrilla chose to entertain this kid's request instead of honoring the logic and reason of EVERYONE ELSE explaining why that was a bad idea that would break the game.
To make matters worse, and in addition to the fucking camper class that was Marksman (showcasing how god-awful the game balance was compared to Killzone 2's master class of a multiplayer), they added bullet magnetism so you no longer had to aim properly, because they wanted to cater to casual players, what with the triple-digit scoring and other stuff that wouldn't have gone over very well with Killzone 2's more hardcore player base.
This is because the casual whiners decided that things like the prevalence of Radec Academy in multiplayer mode "split the community," in a game where server lobbies were customizable and players could choose to exclude the map from rotation if they really wanted to. However, these are gamers we're talking about, and as we all know, they're not the kind to accept logic, reason or personal accountability for their own choices. Instead, we got righteous indignation and demands that the game be changed for them. The developers bent over backward to please these people, which is why Killzone 3 and Shadow Fall ended up the way that they did.
3) Shadowfall's bioweapon plot is quite literally a copy of Mercenary's, but instead of having plausible characters involved, you have goofy psychopaths on the VSA side. Echo being a hooded half-breed was also copied from Mercenary. It worked in Mercenary because the kid's mixed genes was an important plot point with regard to how the virus worked, and how it could be reworked to target either the Vectans or the Helghast regardless of who had control of the kid. The child was the MacGuffin everyone was trying to get a hold of, and the key to controlling the bioweapon and its target. Echo, by comparison, is a shittier and more one-dimensional Hakha.
Shadowfall also makes no sense from its opening cinematic because of three other reasons:
a) Mercenary showed that the UCN wanted to wipe out the Helghast race, period. After nuking the planet, there was no incentive for the ISA to welcome them to Vekta as refugees.
b) Nuking the planet with irradiated petrusite shouldn't have made a difference, because the Helghast adapted to have immunity to radioactive conditions. The writers forgot this, until late in Shadowfall where we learned that Helghan is just fine, and they rebuilt stronger than ever, with structures built into the now more vertical landscape like you'd see built into adobe, and now with even more powerful tech like force fields to boot. There was no point to them even leaving their own planet.
c) In KZ1, it only took two warships filled with a small army of troops led by Armin Metrak to invade and take hold of Vecta's entire southern continent, since the Helghast are practically all super soldiers who are bigger and stronger than the Vectan humans. They're mutants. In Shadowfall's opening, we see an entire fleet of soldiers with exoskeletal powered armor that frankly beats the piss out of anything they even had in Killzone 3 in terms of technological advancement (where the fuck were any of these suits? They come out of nowhere and then don't change or advance for another 30 years!), and all they do is go sit in a corner and whine about how unfair their situation is. With tech and numbers like that, they could have conquered the goddamn planet, but no...
4) There's no mention of how compared to Killzone 2, where you're thrown into action at the very beginning, Shadowfall gives you your first kill via an auto-instakill with the knife, before you've every picked up a gun, a whopping 34 minutes into the game. At the same time stamp in Killzone 2, you've long since stormed the beaches and are now in the tank segment blowing up troops and other tanks while it rains bullets and explosives.
Finally...
4) No, your theory about why the series became "more colorful" is incorrect. Killzone 2 also had very colorful segments, and it goes to show that for a game largely criticized for being all gunmetal grey and dogshit brown, visibility was actually a lot better for the players compared to when it went all neon. It's a pain in the ass to see anything and make out the enemies in the games after Mercenary.
The REAL reason is that Killzone 2 was deemed too difficult for people, as like I said in my Killzone 2-related post, KZ2 on its easiest difficulty is substantially harder than COD on its hardest difficulty setting. There was concern that there wasn't a place for more ultra-hardcore shooters like KZ2, that they were too niche, and they wanted to get the more casual players who wanted to have these action-hero stories. That's why 3 was what it was, and as a consequence, it wound up selling fewer units than Killzone 2 in a time when there were more PS3s in households. There was also the added insult to injury with how 3's development had less time with a new engine, and was largely used as a marketing gimmick for Sony's 3DTVs, hampering the game's development even further but used to BS the marketing by claiming that the game was so big, it required the full space available on the Blu-Ray disc. In reality, the game's data had to be copied twice for the parallax to work.
When Mercenary was well-received, and the studio was under pressure to make another Killzone game, they basically tried to copy Mercenary but as a sequel to Killzone 3, which is how Shadowfall came to happen. Unlike KZ2, which had four years of development, 3 and Shadowfall had half that time to cook, so they made slap-dash decisions that weren't as well thought out. That's why in SF you fight enemies in annoying waves of five, instead of following the golden rule of doing things in threes. It was a rushed product, and it tried to copy elements from previous KZ games as a way around not actually having the time to develop a competent story.
However, they were concerned that by returning to the series' more hardcore roots, they would alienate a market that had started to embrace more casual gaming and would be scared off by more hardcore expectations, so they didn't really learn their lesson, and made the same mistakes, this time in spades.
What about KZ3s godawful ending, was that rushed or planed ?
@@FootsureWig If I had to guess, I'd say that it was rushed AND planned. By that I mean, they didn't have a villain compelling enough to justify a final boss fight, and by extension, they also didn't have the time to develop one (hence all the on-rails stuff), but were confident that the game would sell well enough to the casual market in a time when there were more PS3s in households compared to its predecessor that they would be able to continue the story. So, I'd say they most likely assumed that it'd make its money and get a sequel follow-up and chose to end it the way they did, within the time and budget constraints that they had. But, since again, there were time and budget constraints which led to a development time half of that of what Killzone 2 had, it was still rushed by comparison, they just had to plan within that and resource constraints. They were also using a newer game engine at the time, so there was that on top of everything else.
That's just my theory, anyway. We know about the time, budget and technical constraints so it's an educated guess, even though it's still a guess. It's not just assumption. However, whether a final boss fight was actually planned or not, or if the decision to push circle to win was a last-minute decision or not, we don't know for certain.
What we do know is that it not only sold fewer units than Killzone 2, but did so in a time where there were even more PS3s in households, meaning that the loss is proportionately even bigger than if Killzone 2 had released with the same sales figures. That means it was an even bigger disappointment.
Factor that in with how KZ3 was also meant to be a commercial for Sony's 3DTV technology - which ended up going nowhere - and the push to get Shadowfall into a somewhat playable state so it could be a launch title for the PS4 instead of letting it cook in the oven until it was ready, and the fact that both were incredibly rushed is absolutely undeniable.
@@davekaye5483 yeah you're right man, and don't forget Sony forced guerrilla to shoehorn in the PSmove controls.
It's just a shame killzone 3 ended the way it did, imagine rico was arrested and court martialed at the beginning of the game. Cause even though I didn't like him at the 2, I hated him even more at 3.
Them doing a 180 in how he was written, changing his entire character in such a short time.
Still, thanks for the insight man.
@@FootsureWig I totally forgot about the PSmove controls! Thanks for reminding me, I now remember that pre-release marketing stuff showing how to use the move controls to throw a grenade. Yeah, that was all super unnecessary. As for Rico, in my previous post about Killzone 2 (somewhere else in this comments section) I wrote how writing him that way was important for two. Let me copy-paste that here:
"The dynamic between the four-man squad is important because of Rico - stereotypical supercilious badass action character - fucking up constantly in his attempts to be macho badass action guy. In this regard, Killzone 2 is directly criticizing the stereotypical COD player, in a game that is far more punishing on its easiest difficulty than any COD game is on its most difficult one. Using Rico as a narrative foil during that era of gaming was a stroke of genius, and Killzone 3's backpedaling on that to turn him into an action hero was not received well because it utterly missed the point of why "Goddamn it, Rico" was such a powerful thing, and felt superficial to try and compete with COD's superhuman action hero narrative instead of earned through legitimate character development.
Similarly, we see how Natko develops over the course of the story, starting when the friend of his he was just joking around with gets blown to smithereens shortly thereafter, to him having to become the voice of reason between Sev and Rico after the latter's continued fuck-ups gets Garza (Sev's best friend) killed and sparks tension between the two characters.
Rico as a foil continues to be important as he doesn't learn or grow over the course of the story, which directly impacts those around him. As a result, it's his impulsiveness which switches the victory of taking Visari's palace into the shitstorm that leads into the beginning of Killzone 3. It is not a game with a victorious, happy ending in which the bad guy is defeated, but is a story about consequences. Rico's final fuck-up of the game is the worst of all."
Honestly dude you should be making a video about this yourself. It sounds like you have a lot more knowledge about the series and will probably have better gameplay to show too lol
36:58
With regards to the plot of _Shadow Fall,_ I think that scenario makes sense if you stop looking at it in relation to WWII and see it more as the situation with Israel and Palestine.
_"What bargaining power do the Helghast have left over Vekta?"_
*Well, what bargaining power does Palestine have left over Israel? Put simply: **_guilt._*
Guilt, and the political pressure from disapproving allied states. I mean, isn't the ISA basically no different from our world's NATO? That would make Vekta just a single member of an organization consisting of other interstellar states.
*Maybe on top of feeling guilty for committing planetary genocide, Vekta is being pressured by its allies within the ISA into cohabiting with the Helghast---again, just like Israel with Palestine.*
If I recall correctly the "pressuring by allies" was exactly true; the UCN of Earth basically stepped in with a gigantic "What the Fuck??" at the ending of Killzone 3 and straight up told Vekta that they would house any survivors of the destruction of Helghan. As with most aspects of Killzone lore, unfortunately, this was never stated in the games but as I recall was on the Killzone website when the game was coming out.
Except the morals of the game would be a lot easier to see if it was like that conflict.. considering they got the land as a gesture of good will, then immediately started doing to the natives, what the Nazis to them.
Excellent points, and apt comparison to Israel. I was muttering "because of guilt" to my screen for a solid two minutes. X)
@@legionnaire5966 thanks. Politics aren't my speciality but I try
@@Darkest_matter They weren't replying to u lmao. They were praising the OP's points.
Always saw Killzone as a series of glorified tech demos. Guerrilla proved they were capable of more when they dropped Horizon onto the market.
They never managed to make a "halo killer though
Ironically, the true "Halo killer" ended up being Halo itself.
I hate that I have to be that guy but I'd rather have more Killzone than Horizon. It just felt like a generic retread of games like the witcher and assassins creed to me and I could never get through it. Thematically and conceptually its dope as hell but playing it was a drag for me.
Cyberleaf halo is still alive the MCC has gotten a hell of a lot better after launch and is still getting updates.
Oof.
Halo ended with Halo Reach. Halo 4, 5, and Craigfinite are bad fanfiction.
@snake7753 only memorable thing about Killzone, really, is how pretty it looked on PS3.
I remember seeing the opening cutscene of killzone, and thinking one day games will be able to look like this . We have surpassed the graphics so quickly! Incredible!
I never met or seen anyone who also held K2 in such great regards. watching this felt very cathartic. thanks for that, cheers
"Where's he going? Is he off to tell the devs about what just happened?"
I actually laughed out loud.
Weird to think that Killzone 2 might've been seen as "another brown and gray shooter" when, while it does have plenty of grit, from the footage shown in this video it also seems to have some very strong use of color. It's never just brown or gray; there's always a decent infusion of some other color to emphasize the mood the particular environment is going for. (That point about how the last level being all red is a way of demonstrating how you're at the heart of the empire being a standout.)
That Two Guy people that hate on killzone are an anomaly to me Halo is my absolute favorite game of all time but when I played kz2 and 3 I fell in love with those games on every level and in no way is it trying be a halo or cod but it felt like it’s own game and was unique so the comparisons to halo are idiotic
I recall some of the levels closer to the sea had a few more tinges of green in there
And there were some that had bright orange sand to contrast with the dark steel look of machinery
It was definitely eye-candy
But it didn't need to have the same colors as typical eye-candy to still be eye-candy
@@gabenewell3955 At first i always thought it was kinda generic looking
But now that i've actually seen stuff like COD (Halo was the only other shooter i really played aside from KZ2)
It most certainly is unique, and now i'm wishing i could see more of the world in KZ2's graphics and visual style
This is hands down one of the best written gaming essay videos I have ever seen on TH-cam. Well done!
I'm in the minority, I really love the Killzone series, as flawed as it is. The atmosphere and aesthetics were top-notch. The music was always FANTASTIC. The storyline was (usually) interesting, and the combat in the sequels felt really satisfying.
Funny enough, Killzone Mercenary was actually my introduction to the franchise, and it's still one of my favorites.
I started on Killzone 3 and I too absolutely love the franchise. Mostly for its story and aesthetics. Mercenary has to be one of the best mobile/portable shooters ever.
@@matro2 Completely agree
I remember being obsessed with the trilogy, even beating Killzone 2 on Elite with that god awful sensitivity. I'm happy with where Guerrilla's at. But to be honest, SIE's 'knack' for open world games leaves me a little tired and bored now. It would be nice to have a shooter like Killzone back in the market.
Snake?
SourTortuga same I’d love a new killzone or a game like it
Great video, I really liked your take on the series. I've always felt that Killzone was an underrated franchise, but seeing how they seem to have lost direction it makes sense that they never really attracted any major attention.
I think only Gears 2 and Killzone 2 were basically the only real tough and gritty multiplayer games I played at the time where simple wrong moves were unforgiving. So much fun though.