With all the excitement surrounding Shadowfall and its incredible visuals, many players are no doubt interested in exploring the Killzone series' roots to gain a deeper understanding of the lore and gameplay. I am one such gamer, and I am here to tell you that as I despite setting out to revisit the Killzone franchise with playful excitement, I found Killzone HD extremely hard to recommend to anybody regardless of their affinity for the other games in the series. Sony has been remaking their classic games for the past few years to the pleasure of critics and collector's alike, but unlike Metal Gear, Ico and God of War, Killzone HD poses the question: What if somebody decided to remake a really bad game in HD?
When Killzone originally released on the Playstation 2 it was mired with technical glitches, questionable pacing, uninspired shooting mechanics and lackluster storytelling. While Killzone HD improves the sharpness of the experience and amends many of the graphical issues (e.g. textures taking 10+ seconds to load, often resulting in hearing NPC dialogue from cold, faceless automatons) it doesn't eliminate visual anomalies all together, (player character death animations are still comically bad). Nor does Killzone HD improve upon the flawed core gameplay and story of the original. The cut-scenes are unfocused both visually and from a narrative perspective and the sound design is repetitive and lacks any sense of presence. Players spoiled on the technical achievements of Killzone 2 and 3 are in for a rough ride. It's not a broken game, but playing Killzone HD definitely makes the case that not every game should be revisited.
The story is an uninteresting mishmash of World War 2 and science fiction, with the pale, bald Helghast filling the role of the Axis, and the European looking Vektans standing in for the Allies. While this thematic juxtaposition is a novel idea conceptually, the game doesn't do anything exciting with the theme beyond making enemy uniforms and weaponry having a distinctive Wehrmacht vibe. There is a bald Hitler stand-in named Vasari (voiced by acclaimed actor Brian Cox) who is responsible for game's one narrative triumph - the opening cut-scene. This two minute segment impresses, and gives players the briefest glimmer of hope that the game may provide some form of entertainment down the road, but at game's end I found myself more emotionally invested in the lives of characters in insurance commercials than in the plight of Killzone HDs wooden characters. Even people looking for little snippets of lore to enhance their understanding of the universe as a whole will find little to appreciate here aside from the presence of a handful of characters who re-appear in subsequent outings
The level design is drab without exception. Whether indoors our out, you can expect everything to be brown and gray. The characters are also brown and gray, and this can make locating them in the environment problematic on occasion. The gameplay suffers from an unfortunate mandatory reload animation every time you switch to a weapon - even one that is already full of ammo, making even the basic act of managing your arsenal in the midst of combat frustrating. Combine this with the fact that this reload animation is purely cosmetic and doesn't actually reload any depleted weapons at all, its inclusion is a real head-scratcher. Making matters worse, there is so much kickback from firing automatic weapons it makes prolonged precision fire a hot mess. Even if you do score a headshot, there's no discernible animation providing player feedback. All in all shooting feels poorly executed, and that's bad news for any game where shooting is all you are expected to do. The lack of any musical score or soundtrack during gameplay further amplifies the emptiness this game exudes throughout. I honestly can't think of another FPS without in-game music, and the omission really stands out in Killzone HD.
To be fair, Killzone HD is not entirely without merits in terms of gameplay. Most of the guns you carry have alternate fire modes, which adds some novelty to the otherwise stale in game action. The main Helghast assault rifle, for instance, has a secondary shotgun blast which can be useful in putting down an enemy that gets a little too up close and personal. Also entertaining is the ability to play through levels as 4 slightly different characters offering players a choice of a balanced, stealthy, espionage or brute force approach to a given level. However, since you don't have any idea what the upcoming level will offer in terms of challenges, it is difficult to capitalize on this feature without prior knowledge of the game. It's a shame there are no in-game recommendations when given the opportunity to choose.
While the protagonists are varied, the enemies are not. There are a handful of sections where you use mounted machine guns to take down a vehicle or two, but the vast majority of your time with the game will be spent shooting the same 2 space-Nazis repeatedly. Since the primary differentiator between these two enemies is that they have different hats, and the fact that they all have the same voice actor repeating the same 5 phrases, it essentially feels like shooting clones of the same, bald, crimson-eyed chap ad nauseam for roughly 8-10 hours. There is rare third class called 'Elites' who have heavy machine guns (but no hats!) that pop up here and there, but their presence does little to provide any gameplay diversity aside from the fact that they take a few more shots to go down and drop heavy weapons for your player to snag.
Even if you do manage to gleam some enjoyment from the gunplay, there are several parts of the game where it can be unclear what to do next. There is no nav-point system showing where objectives are, and I got stuck for about 30 minutes trying to find the extremely hard to spot rope the stealthy character Luger was supposed to climb while sneaking into a swamp base in the Misty Waters stage. On another level called Escape, I was supposed to press a button to open a gate in order to let my friends into the fortification, but it was located on the main route I bypassed in my efforts to sneak around the side of the level in accordance with my character's stated role. When a game gives you the freedom to try alternate paths based on your character's abilities but places critical objectives on only one of those paths, it makes an already frustrating game downright infuriating.
They completely removed the online aspect of the forgettable multiplayer component from the original release, instead offering offline single player bot matches in its place. Aside from the ability to play as Helgast forces and the incentive to complete a some pretty unremarkable challenges, there is nothing noteworthy to these proceedings, making this aspect of Killzone HD somehow come across as even more vacuous than the campaign proper. And if being limited to playing with bots didn't sound dull enough, there is also a curious inclusion called 'War Footage' buried in the menus that lets you spectate simulated bot battles, which as you might suspect is about as exciting as watching C-Span.
So if you, like me, are thinking of playing the entire series from start to finish, please consider starting with Killzone 2 and bypassing this game completely. Everything I enjoy about other games in the series - the graphics, the art and sound design, the class-based multiplayer and the tight shooting controls - are totally lacking here, including even the most basic nuggets of lore. It is ugly, plays poorly, and is frankly only useful for people who want to study just how much the series has improved over the years. Time can be a harsh mistress, and Killzone HD is one game that PlayStation fans would be wise to forget entirely. Playing it won't ruin your fondness for the series, but it will rob you of several hours of your life that would be better spent on practically any other shooter you can think of.
If you are interested in learning more about the Killzone series backstory, check out this Youtube video, which does a great job of encapsulating the plot of the first three games into a thorough half hour synopsis.