As an old school PC gamer it has always been hard for to both play and accept the first person shooter genre on consoles, playing with a pad rather than a mouse and keyboard just seems like using a fork to eat a yoghurt.

The odd game comes along though that shows that the consoles can pull it off, rarely but when they do it makes for a great game.  The Halo series was the first for me, Bungie had all the elements in place for a great series but sadly it does seem to have lost its way as my Halo ODST musings showed.

I haven’t had my PS3 long so I am slowly working through the few exclusive games I have missed over the years, Killzone 2 has been the current game and it took me by surprise.

After the usual learning curve with getting used to the pad controls I got down to the matter of killing the Helghast. The first thing that struck me in Killzone 2 was how good the game looked, at last I have found a PS3 game that actually shows what the console can achieve. This game is stunning in places, the only problem is the action rarely lets up for you to admire it!  I am not sure it quite tops Gears of War 2′s graphics for me but it is very close.  This game is all about the action though, its pretty non stop which is good as it keeps things flowing and is mixed up with the odd vehicle or turret section to slow it down a little.

There is nothing ground breaking about Killzone 2, it just has a lot of polish and does what a FPS should do, and does it very well. This is a game that also frustrated, the 1 on 1 fight with the flying HK like thing on the roof top was a nightmare for me! The last level of the game is also very well done with a long intense series of fights leading to a bit of an annoying boss in the form of Radec who can cloak and re-appear where he likes.  Radec was a pain in the arse until I grabbed a flame thrower and set him on fire so I could always see where he was :)

Couple of things that let the game down though, loading times are really long and sometimes the game just freezes where its loading the next part of the level (I thought it had hung my PS3 the first time it did this). It is also too short, I think my play through said just under 6 hours which is pretty short considering the end shows what’s going to happen next… I wanted to carry on the fight right then!  Small complaints though for a very well made game.

Next game on the list is Uncharted 2, looking forward to playing this.