ShareThisBy BRIAN D. CRECENTE
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
"Killzone: Liberation"
Grade: B-
Rating: Teen
Platform: PSP
What we liked: Well-balanced action with a nice variety of weapons and level design.
What we didn't like: Seemed a bit short; aiming can be troublesome at times; the online multiplayer has yet to be released.)
When the PlayStation Portable reached the market last March the handheld's games seemed to come in two flavors: casual pick-up-and-play titles and miniaturized versions of PlayStation 2 games.
Only recently has the PSP started getting more original and creative content like "Daxter," "LocoRoco" and, now, "Killzone: Liberation."
With "Liberation," developer Guerilla decided to build the game from the ground up instead of trying to recreate the PlayStation 2 sci-fi first-person shooter "Killzone" for the portable.
You play the game floating above the action at an angle that lets you get a full view of the diminutive heroic lead, Templar, as he fights his way through legions of jack-booted Helghast.
The third-person vantage, controlled dynamically throughout the game, helps you play strategically, relying on finesse rather than brute force to make your way through the game's 16 tricky levels.
The games controls are fairly intuitive, letting you move around, crouch, do a diving roll, interact with objects, reload, throw grenades and fire your weapon.
The aiming system creates an interesting balance between allowing you to auto-lock on a target and making you aim manually. Essentially, once you point in the right direction you'll usually hit your target if you or they aren't moving.
One serious detriment to the game: they didn't change the aiming system for specialized weapons like the sniper rifle or rocket launcher, rendering both ineffective at times.
The game also has a system in place that allows you to lock onto objects, such as barrels of gasoline, so you can blow them up. The collateral damage that can be inflicted with explosives and certain weapons is impressive.
While the shooting system for Liberation takes a little getting used to, the rest of the game is fairly solid.
The 16 levels, broken down into four chapters with four missions each, offer up enough variety and challenge to keep things interesting but never frustrating.
The levels let you drive vehicles, sneak through areas, defuse booby traps and set C4 explosives.
Although I was able to churn through the levels pretty quickly, if you don't find the right approach for each one, force or finesse, you'll find yourself starting over frequently.
The enemy artificial intelligence does an especially good job of keeping you on your toes by finding cover, using grenades effectively and working well together to pin you down and take you out.
While "Killzone: Liberation" ships with the local form of multiplay (which requires multiple PSPs under one roof), it doesn't come with online multiplayer.
Sony promises that online gameplay will be available after the game's launch as a free download and will come with two new maps.
"Liberation" is the sort of bite-sized action game that's perfect for the PlayStation Portable. It's easy to pick up and put down. You can get through a mission, or at least to the next checkpoint, in a reasonable amount of time. And the game makes full use of the PSP's processing and graphics power.
