PS3

Mostly, this was just as excellent last night as it had been previously.

However, I found one short bit that raised an eyebrow. You sit in a mounted gun emplacement firing at enemies. Which is all fine and fun. However, I kept dying without warning. I’d be firing and killing the guys, then I’d be dead. I still have no idea what was really going on. I suppose I wasn’t killing enough of the enemies, but there was no feedback. Eventually the sequence ended in success after I used up all my ammo. I’m wondering if maybe there’s an invisible timer on the section which kills you if you don’t use all your rockets in time, or something. That sounds ludicrous, but I’ve really no idea what was going on.

Odd little bit of weirdness in the game. But it only held me up for ten minutes or so, then everything was back to normal. Several astounding fire fights last night, again. I think I’m at the end of the game now, near enough, but didn’t have quite enough time to finish it off.

Traded in some old games on Friday and picked up Killzone 2 and Halo Wars. Halo Wars hasn’t got a look in yet, because I’ve been enjoying Killzone 2 way too much. It’s my kind of shooter, a game where the actual shooting is the core of the experience. There’s not much of a story or anything else, it’s all about you and the enemy. The AI is good, the maps and weapons allow for different tactics, engagements never play out in quite the same way twice. It reminds me a lot of Halo in that respect. Also, in the six or seven hours I’ve played, the difficulty level has been absolutely spot on. A few sticking points, but nothing that’s held me up for too long. Just hard enough to make me think a bit, but not tricky enough to be annoying.

I’m enjoying it enormously. The speech is a bit rubbish and the graphics are very muted, colour-wise, but that ends up helping the game, because it makes it a lot easier to spot the glowing eyes of your enemies. No, really. In a shanty town or a desert village you need everything to be grey and brown so you can see where to shoot. And the controls, which I hated when I first played the demo, aren’t an issue any more. After playing the demo so many times, I came into the game comfortable with the controls and have only thought about them when I’ve realised I’m not thinking about them, if you see what I mean. (Oh, apart from the tacked-on bits that use the motion centre for turning wheels and setting bombs, which are rubbish, but which don’t get in the way.)

The demo didn’t lie to me – the full game is incredibly good fun. I couldn’t recommend it to everyone, because I know some people need more than shooting, probably would’t be able to get used to the controls and wouldn’t be able to stand the macho, sweary space marines, but it fits me like a custom-made glove.