Part 17: Chapter 5, Stage 2

• Chapter 5, Stage 2 with Blind Sally, nine-gear crow, and Gildiss
  

Okay, here's where the parallels to the Normandy landings really start to come together. But as the Helghast fight their way up the beach with tanks and artillery, notice where our defences are framed:



The ISA forces are sheltering in the bombed out ruins of some wealthy Vektan's summer home. Rich folk, I'll never understand them. They have an outdoor pool only a few yards away from the ocean. I hope it's at least some sort of hot tub. We'll never know. Anyways, despite their best efforts, the Helghast are repulsed. The ISA mercilessly and relentlessly rain bullets and bombs down upon them.



I've captured a couple of screens here, because it really does remind one of the Normany invasion. I mean, look at that beach.



That all aside, I really do have to question the effectiveness of Helghast boats here on Vekta. I mean, it's not like the Helghast had a manufacturing port set up across the bay. No, these would have had to been brought off-planet from Helghan and unloaded into Vekta's oceans before they could be used against the ISA. It seems like a lot of extra work for not much pay off. The jetboats we'll be seeing next level (oops, spoiler alert) are flimsy little things, that fall apart even faster than the jetbikes--and they lack the mobility of their airborne brethren as well! Oh, and don't get me started on the effectiveness of the Helghast landing craft:



What a joke. So what's the point, then? When you have interstellar spaceships and armoured hovercrafts, wouldn't they be more effective? The Overlord Dropship has already been shown to be incredibly effective. It's basically a flying armoured tank, and it can drop a bunch of troops off relatively quickly thanks to the rapelling lines. Why not fly a bunch of those into critical locations around ports and take them that way instead? Or better yet, if you don't mind a bit of collateral damage, bring some of the Helghast Cruisers into the atmosphere and bombard the ISA strongholds. The SD Platforms are down, they're not gonna be able to do anything. And the Helghast Cruisers are more than capable of doing such a thing--it happens near constantly in Killzone 2 and 3.

So what is it, then? Poor planning on Guerrilla's part? I'm actually willing to give them a pass and say this is sheer hubris and pig-headedness on the behalf of the Helghast. Honestly. It won't be until Killzone 3 that we get a look at the inner workings of Helghast politics, but their government (perhaps unsurprisingly) is a corrupt, inefficient, and bloated bureaucracy. My best guess for their decision to field a bunch of outdated and ineffective tech is because "that's just the way it's always been done". So of course the Helghast bring ships: they need to invade Vekta by land, air, and sea. So what if they have fucking space ships? It wouldn't be a proper invasion force without a couple of boats. Look at human history, for gosh sake: if you want to invade a Normandy-esque beach, you use boats! Lots of boats!

Lucky for the ISA. If the Helghast had decided to send Overlord Dropships from all sides and bombard their location from orbit with their Cruisers, the game would have probably ended right here.



Now that we have all four characters and their gameplay information has been posted, I'd like to take a moment and compare them side-by-side just to demonstrate why Hakha truly is the superior player character. For the sake of simplicity and quick comparison, I've removed specifics about "extra abilities" like Night Vision and removed their weapons listing. Also, their ability to move around the level maps has been simplified into a "MOBILITY" category.

Templar
HEALTH REGEN - Average
STAMINA REGEN - Average
DEFENSE - Average
MOBILITY - Standard

Luger
HEALTH REGEN - Fast
STAMINA REGEN - Fast
DEFENSE - Low
MOBILITY - High

Rico
HEALTH REGEN - Slow
STAMINA REGEN - Slow
DEFENSE - High
MOBILITY - Low

Hakha
HEALTH REGEN - Average
STAMINA REGEN - Average
DEFENSE - Average
MOBILITY - High

Looking at these stats, Rico's problems become apparent. Without his gun he'd be utterly dull to play as. Luger might seem the obvious best character to use, but again, the biggest problem is that she's a stealth character in a game where stealth isn't really an option. There are simply too many straight up firefights, or "killzones" if you will, where you need the extra armour to tank some hits. Between Jan and Hakha, Hakha has more access to the battlefield, but is also extremely competent with the most common weapon in the game. It bears repeating: Hakha is the best character to play as on any difficulty, though especially on Hard if you're crazy and are trying to get the PS3 remake's trophy.

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Ghost Jets/Ghost Artillery

Where did these explosions come from? Helghast artillery? But from where? Battleships out in the ocean? Why do we never see them? Is it the Turok-esque fog-of-war? Maybe they are from jet? But whose jets? ISA? Helghast? Why do we also never see them? Again, the fog-of-war?

I suppose we'll never know. Instead, we'll just be grateful that they conveniently destroyed the one bit of debris that was conveniently blocking our progress.