Killzone 2 is, to borrow from 4chan, serious business. It is intensely depressing, going out of its way to highlight the chaos and horror of a future war fought with oddly contemporary weapons. The good guys are always outnumbered, always on the brink of failure, and full enough of all the stereotypical big man flaws to make any 80’s action flick jealous. The bad guys are one goose step short of setting up concentration camps, basing their entire culture on what little of Orwell they remember from middle school mixed up with an alternate ending to World War II. Killzone 2 manages, through all its preaching and bombast, to have the exact opposite problem with its story that most other action games do. In almost every other first person shooter I have played the story takes a back seat to the violence; even if the actual plot is terrible it is forgettable enough to enjoy the point of the game: shooting things. Killzone 2 manages to be so depressing that the action, which is quite good when divorced from the accompanying sci-fi morality play, feels pointless.

All of the visual and mechanical requirements of a good shooter are here. Killzone 2 survived the bull-shot fiasco of its initial unveiling very well. It may not be the best looking shooter I have ever seen, but it does a lot of things at once without ever slowing down. The war torn cities look good, the interior spaceship levels are suitably Halo like, nothing is visually offensive, but nothing really wowed me either. As something that is supposed to showcase what the PS3 can do that the 360 cannot, it misses the mark, falling visually short of Gears of War 2 in most ways. Again, this is not to say that it is ugly, just that if there is a standard bearer for PS3 graphical intensity, it is still Uncharted, and it will be until another developer figures out how to use colors besides grey and brown in a shooter.

When the game isn’t being relentlessly depressing, the fire fights in Killzone 2 can actually be very exciting. The Helghast all take more damage to kill than seems reasonable, forcing headshots to be the norm instead of happening occasionally by luck. Weapons that actually make this easy are few and far between; both the Helghast and the ISA are partial to fully automatic weapons that will throw out bullets by the gross, just not anywhere close to where you want them to go. This spray and pray factor forces engagements in much closer quarters than feels comfortable. The Helghast are intimidating; imagine facing down dozens of fascist Darth Vaders at a time, whose home world you just invaded and whose leader has no problem killing them just to get to you in the process. They have good aim, will tell you what there are going to do to your corpse, and then actually make good on the threats by overpowering your mutant healing abilities with a barrage of RPG fire. In any game that didn’t take itself so seriously they would be a blast to kill; instead it feels like you are just staving off the inevitable. One way or another, you are going to lose.

Multiplayer is aimed at the same ‘I hate MMO’s but will grind for hours in a shooter to get a better gun or class’ crowd, which is to say everyone who is already playing Call of Duty 4 or World at War or Resistance 2. Unfortunately there really isn’t a compelling reason to choose Killzone 2 over one of the other, more established shooters. Everything works the same way: newcomers are abused by game mechanics that reward time spent playing over actual skill. Maps are huge but with a smaller player limit than Resistance 2, can sometimes feel empty with all the action condensed into a few choke points.

All serviceable, but nothing new. Killzone 2 is never bad; the single player is polished in both look and feel, but overshadowed by a plot that takes itself far too seriously for its own good. There is a lesson here for all shooters: it is okay for a game to just be fun. After game upon game of grit and realism and nihilism and washed out colors and world ending catastrophes, something a little lighter may be in order. Killzone 2 is anything but that; it is a massive steak of average quality served right after a dozen other massive, so-so steaks. All I want is a mint and a good time.