Killzone Liberation
PSP
SonyBMG


'Killzone' on the Playstation 2 was hyped up to be SonyBMG's answer to 'Halo', but it fell quite short of expectations and ended up being no more than a pea-shooter to 'Halo''s 'Bazooka' in terms of being 'a killer'. Expecting a straight port to PSP, I was rather surprised to find that 'Liberation' is built fresh for the PSP. However, I found myself bored with it after three levels and, if I didn't have to review it, I'd have quit right there and then.

'Killzone Liberation' follows the story of the original protagonist and is set slightly after the original game's story. It feels like a pretty predictable sci-fi story, although I do like the gas-masked Helgast as an enemy, but then again, I did watch Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' on acid a lot when I was younger and these remind me very much of that.

The camera system presents a top-down isometric view of the world and at first the game-play reminded me of the old-school Smash TV or Contra. Whilst the shift to a top-down perspective is welcome - I generally find shooters to be incredibly poor on the PSP as they lack the second analog stick for total control - the game is just so boring and repetitive that I simply lost interest.

The enemy AI is reasonably hard and shows some limited tactics, but what I found most frustrating was the amount of backtracking coupled with bad controls. I just couldn't seem to get the controls right; aiming seemed too lose, locking never worked too well and ducking never seemed to work well enough and, as a result, kept dying. I also kept getting lost and would fall off ledges and have to backtrack. The team AI, on the other hand, is terrible and even in the best games with the best AI and best level design, escort missions suck major arse and should never be a major part of any game. Unfortunately they take up too much time here and create a frustrating experience.

The developers obviously put a lot of thought into making it work on a portable device, though, and the game should be commended for offering something a little different on the PSP for once. It looks great too, pushing the PSP to its limits with nice looking, if somewhat repetitive and drab, locations but with great special effects and soundtrack, which does count for a fair bit in this day and age. However, they could have worked on the gameplay a bit more, offering more variants to the missions and goals of each level.

Julian Cram