This review contains spoilers
I don't really know how to start this off really, but I guess if I were to start it off I would do it by just being matter of fact. I disliked this game very much, I wanted to like it a lot but it ended up disappointing me.
Killzone: Liberation is a sequel of sorts to the story of the original Killzone on the Playstation Portable. You play as Jan Templar two months after the events of the first game, and as far as I'm aware the plot has to do with Jan trying to rescue hostages from Helghast general Metrac (and his right hand man Cobar) while also trying to figure out who the traitor is within ISA ranks (again) who is helping out the Helghast with their invasion on Vekta. Rico and Luger from the original Killzone return to help out, but other than that I don't remember too much because one, the game was only released with 4/5ths of the plot.
That's right, only four fifths of the game is available to the normal user, because the final chapter was released as free DLC on the game's website which you could download on your PSP. I'm unsure what happened with that but I believe it's lost now? Regardless, even though it's a shame that it's lost, as I wish most if not all lost media (game and otherwise) should be found; the game's gameplay to me was frustrating enough to where when I did the fourth chapter where I killed General Metrac I just said thank fuck and turned off the game.
See the gameplay is a top down game (which is ok) shooter, which even though it controls kind of funky at first you do get used to it and the combat feels ok...at least for the first chapter or so. My frustrations begin at the beginning of Chapter 2.
Chapter 2 from what I remember they start deploying these little asshole spider bomb things that crawl at you and WILL instantly kill you unless you shoot at them from a distance and kill them as soon as possible, or you get lucky and they blow and you roll away last minute. I think one of my main issues with this is that in game, you don't get too much ammo depending on your weapon and your auto aim can go all over the place (especially aiming grenades holy shit). There's been more than a couple times where I wanted to slam my head on my desk because of deaths where I didn't even feel like I did anything wrong. And the further you go along game wise the more spongey the enemies get; most enemies if not all will take an entire magazine or perhaps even two to get the job done. You also get pretty much one gun and you have to balance between the several different grenades (mostly smoke and regular grenades, most of the others didn't really do much in terms of usefulness and I only used C4 for specific objectives).
Now of course, there are upgrades to carry more grenades and specialty items, problem is in order to do this you need to do the challenge levels apparently outside of the main game, and I'm gonna be honest with you this is fine but most of them are the same repetitive missions and maybe I'm just an awful piece of shit gamer but I'd rather get shot then continue to play more of this game's challenges just to level up, so I brute forced it through the game and of course suffered through it.
I think for me the most egregious part of the game was one of the bosses, Cobar's tank. See you're put into an enclosed area with a giant spider tank shooting missiles everywhere, of which you have limited missile launcher ammo to not only destroy the missile launchers on the tank, but the turret as well (which is fine, it pissed me off but whatever). When it gets to the spider bombs however? Suck my dick, my balls, the sweat underneath my balls, eat my shit, go fuck yourself. That's when my patience really started to wear thin, not only because the absurd difficulty spike, but wrestling with the controls and the auto aim sometimes makes it to where you don't even hit the fuckin target, you move like one inch to the left by accident and you miss it entirely with the top down controls. I probably sound like a whiny bitch who sucks at games and maybe I should just be better. Maybe you'd be right, but truth is the gameplay killed all enjoyment of it and by the fourth chapter the only thing I thought was "I just want to beat this game so I can get to the final boss" which I was basically screaming when I died repeatedly at the final boss and had to repeat it again and again from the very beginning. Another thing to segway into are that the checkpoints can be atrocious and there are times where you can lose lots of time and progress (sometimes 10-20 minutes personally figuring in the sponge combat).
I guess wrapping this up before I think of any more details, I really wanted to like this game. A top down Killzone game sounds like it would be great if done well, but of course Guerilla's track record before Killzone 2 was honestly a bit spotty and I believe that this was the ultimate lead up to this spottiness. Of course the environments look great, the voice actors are back, you can tell that this is a continuation of Killzone 1 with lots of similar locations (like the dreaded swamps), music, etc.
Another positive thing is that the opening cutscene looks fucking great, and even though I dislike this game I hope one day Sony decides to remaster this game, add the 5th chapter and along with the rest of the Killzone games put it on PC or bring it to the newer generations even if it's for free underneath that PS Plus stuff if they're afraid they won't cover the costs of a remaster. I'll say this, I bought this game and transferred it to my PS Vita when the whole "Shutting down the Playstation 3 Store" thing was going on, so it looked REALLY good on my handheld console. I'm not sure how it would look on emulator, and it looks like ass watching it on youtube but it looks good overall. That being said, I dislike this game and I don't really wish to ever play it again and that's a shame.
EDIT: To those who like this game, there's a PS4/5 digital re-release now
https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP9000-CUSA37874_00-UCUS986460000000
So you could grab it and download if you really want. I don't think it comes with the DLC, and maybe one day I'll give it a try again (against better judgement) just for the platinum lol.
Killzone: Liberation is a sequel of sorts to the story of the original Killzone on the Playstation Portable. You play as Jan Templar two months after the events of the first game, and as far as I'm aware the plot has to do with Jan trying to rescue hostages from Helghast general Metrac (and his right hand man Cobar) while also trying to figure out who the traitor is within ISA ranks (again) who is helping out the Helghast with their invasion on Vekta. Rico and Luger from the original Killzone return to help out, but other than that I don't remember too much because one, the game was only released with 4/5ths of the plot.
That's right, only four fifths of the game is available to the normal user, because the final chapter was released as free DLC on the game's website which you could download on your PSP. I'm unsure what happened with that but I believe it's lost now? Regardless, even though it's a shame that it's lost, as I wish most if not all lost media (game and otherwise) should be found; the game's gameplay to me was frustrating enough to where when I did the fourth chapter where I killed General Metrac I just said thank fuck and turned off the game.
See the gameplay is a top down game (which is ok) shooter, which even though it controls kind of funky at first you do get used to it and the combat feels ok...at least for the first chapter or so. My frustrations begin at the beginning of Chapter 2.
Chapter 2 from what I remember they start deploying these little asshole spider bomb things that crawl at you and WILL instantly kill you unless you shoot at them from a distance and kill them as soon as possible, or you get lucky and they blow and you roll away last minute. I think one of my main issues with this is that in game, you don't get too much ammo depending on your weapon and your auto aim can go all over the place (especially aiming grenades holy shit). There's been more than a couple times where I wanted to slam my head on my desk because of deaths where I didn't even feel like I did anything wrong. And the further you go along game wise the more spongey the enemies get; most enemies if not all will take an entire magazine or perhaps even two to get the job done. You also get pretty much one gun and you have to balance between the several different grenades (mostly smoke and regular grenades, most of the others didn't really do much in terms of usefulness and I only used C4 for specific objectives).
Now of course, there are upgrades to carry more grenades and specialty items, problem is in order to do this you need to do the challenge levels apparently outside of the main game, and I'm gonna be honest with you this is fine but most of them are the same repetitive missions and maybe I'm just an awful piece of shit gamer but I'd rather get shot then continue to play more of this game's challenges just to level up, so I brute forced it through the game and of course suffered through it.
I think for me the most egregious part of the game was one of the bosses, Cobar's tank. See you're put into an enclosed area with a giant spider tank shooting missiles everywhere, of which you have limited missile launcher ammo to not only destroy the missile launchers on the tank, but the turret as well (which is fine, it pissed me off but whatever). When it gets to the spider bombs however? Suck my dick, my balls, the sweat underneath my balls, eat my shit, go fuck yourself. That's when my patience really started to wear thin, not only because the absurd difficulty spike, but wrestling with the controls and the auto aim sometimes makes it to where you don't even hit the fuckin target, you move like one inch to the left by accident and you miss it entirely with the top down controls. I probably sound like a whiny bitch who sucks at games and maybe I should just be better. Maybe you'd be right, but truth is the gameplay killed all enjoyment of it and by the fourth chapter the only thing I thought was "I just want to beat this game so I can get to the final boss" which I was basically screaming when I died repeatedly at the final boss and had to repeat it again and again from the very beginning. Another thing to segway into are that the checkpoints can be atrocious and there are times where you can lose lots of time and progress (sometimes 10-20 minutes personally figuring in the sponge combat).
I guess wrapping this up before I think of any more details, I really wanted to like this game. A top down Killzone game sounds like it would be great if done well, but of course Guerilla's track record before Killzone 2 was honestly a bit spotty and I believe that this was the ultimate lead up to this spottiness. Of course the environments look great, the voice actors are back, you can tell that this is a continuation of Killzone 1 with lots of similar locations (like the dreaded swamps), music, etc.
Another positive thing is that the opening cutscene looks fucking great, and even though I dislike this game I hope one day Sony decides to remaster this game, add the 5th chapter and along with the rest of the Killzone games put it on PC or bring it to the newer generations even if it's for free underneath that PS Plus stuff if they're afraid they won't cover the costs of a remaster. I'll say this, I bought this game and transferred it to my PS Vita when the whole "Shutting down the Playstation 3 Store" thing was going on, so it looked REALLY good on my handheld console. I'm not sure how it would look on emulator, and it looks like ass watching it on youtube but it looks good overall. That being said, I dislike this game and I don't really wish to ever play it again and that's a shame.
EDIT: To those who like this game, there's a PS4/5 digital re-release now
https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP9000-CUSA37874_00-UCUS986460000000
So you could grab it and download if you really want. I don't think it comes with the DLC, and maybe one day I'll give it a try again (against better judgement) just for the platinum lol.