Introduction
The old monarch, Thread Killzone the First was curséd. Let us purge it from our minds and embrace the Anarchy. So begineth Killzone the Interregnum! Sit back in yonder chairs, grab some mutton and sack, and please, enjoy yourselves whilst Blind Sally and myself needlessly complicate a sci-fi military shooter game.
Our goal is to play through the original quadrilogy, which includes Killzone, Killzone: Liberation, Killzone 2, and Killzone 3. For the main games, we are using the Killzone Trilogy released on the PS3 which includes the HD remaster of Killzone 1. We will be playing through each game's singleplayer campaign and showing off a bit of multiplayer when we can. For this, the PSP game, we will also go through the free (and plot-crucial) Act 5 DLC as well as the standard campaign.
Killzone 1is finished and is interred here for public viewing. With regards to the later games in the series, Killzone: Mercenary and Killzone: Shadow Fall, there are currently no plans to do them and we will be making no promises to change that.
: : S P O I L E R · P O L I C Y : : : There isn't one! Or more specifically, don't dump the entire plot for the series, because that's just rude, but it's not a big deal to talk about stuff that hasn't happened yet. We are trying to treat the series like Shakespeare, and like Shakespeare, the plot story itself isn't quite as important as the performance--a mantra that fits this series well.
The style for this LP was influenced by a couple of really enjoyable threads in Cinema Discusso that utilized a running commentary style of reviewing--specifically, Kyle Hyde's American Psycho thread and Terry van Feleday's Transformers threads. In the spirit of those threads, I want to give a similar treatment to the Killzone franchise.
Let's Continue To Needlessly Complicate The Killzone Quadrilogy
At first glance, the Killzone games are nothing more than pretty, shallow sci-fi FPSes meant to act as glorified tech demos. While that's not entirely false, there's a bit more to the games than just that. Much like Spec Ops: The Line, the Killzone games have a deeper, more challenging, story to tell. Although while Spec Ops is akin to someone shouting in your face with a megaphone, Killzone is often more like someone whispering to you while you sleep--with earplugs. The ideas are subtle, but they're there, and while they're often drowned out by the in-your-face allusions to WW2 and facism, there's plenty of fun stuff to pick out between the lines, including:
- criticism of war fiction in general
- criticism of testosterone-laden machismo
- recurring themes regarding the entropy of war and fears of homogeneity
- deconstruction of modern and traditional action hero tropes
- colour-theory
- notions of good and evil
That list isn't exhaustive, but it's what I'll be focussing on. Please, feel free to add more to the conversation as it comes up.
Ah, good question. These games are, perhaps surprisingly, downright Shakespearean in places. That said, I will not be transcribing the game's script into Ye Olde Shakespearean dialogue, like Blind Sally did with the first game. What started out as a fun exercise, quickly became un-fun and self-destructive. In fact, all joking aside, Killzone: Liberation (and Killzone 2, which ran concurrent to our LP of Liberation) is a legit Good Game.
All that aside, let us thus commence with our second entry in the Killzone Saga, Killzone: Liberation or The Merry
