As with any FPS, one of the major rules of Killzone is that -if you die, game over, you must restart the level and try to fail less. At least, this is the case for the story mode. There are several non-story modes where, if you die, you respawn in just a few seconds and are ready to go at it again.
In the non-story modes, such as Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, the player has a lot of control over some of the in-game rules and properties for the upcoming battle. You can:
Select the amount of NPCs on your side
Select the amount of NPCs on the enemy's side
Determine the AI difficulty (easy, normal, hard)
Select if you want friendly fire on or off
Select which of several maps you'll be playing in
Determine how a match ends (either a time limit, first to 100, 200 kills...)
Choose whether or not NPC names will be under them when in a certain range.
In Killzone, as in many an FPS, the character(s) have health and armor. When you or anyone is hit, their armor decreases, if they have no armor, their health decreases, when they have no health, they are dead. Some weapons, or hits are enough to kill someone with one blow even when they have max armor and health, say from a rocket from a rocket launcher. An important to know feature in Killzone is that you can kill yourself if you aren't careful (or any number of reasons) and do something such as shooting a rocket into a wall 4 feet away from you. You will die, and if in the story mode, must restart the level from start, or if in the Battlegrounds missions, will respawn, but your awesome rocket launcher will be gone.
When the PS2 and XBox came out, there was an altering in interaction. At least in FPS's, and maybe not all, but certainly the ones I play. They make use of the shoulder buttons -- L1, L2, R1, R2. In Killzone, R1 and R2 are your weapon fire/use buttons, and most weapons have 2 fire modes, a primary and a secondary. Some examples:
ISA standard assault rifle- Primary:machine gun-ish. Secondary:Grendae laucher(holds 1 until used)
Helghast assault rifle- Primary:machine gun. Secondary:shot gun shell (holds 1 until used)
Shotgun- Primary:shoot one shell. Secondary:shoot two shells. The shotgun is interesting, as the player can hit R1 and R2 at the same time and manage to shoot 3 shells from the gun at once when theres only two barrel holes. Shooting 3 shells at once is essentially guaranteed to kill you target if they all hit, but the shotgun only holds 8 shells before needing to be reloaded, so thats nearly half your ammo used. (You can store more ammo on you though, this is the case with all the weapons, save a select few, such as the knives.)
ISA rocket launcher- Primary: Shoot a rocket. Secondary: Shoot a laser guided rocket.
Helghast rocket launcher- Primary:Shoot a rocet. Secondary: Shoot ALL THREE rockets!!!
There is an interesting mechanic in the game... In the story mode, you can play as one of four characters, three being humans and one being half-human, half-helghast. The humans can use their weapons just fine, but when they pick up a Helghast assault weapon from a fallen foe and start using it, they will experience significat recoil. When Hakha (the half n' half guy) uses this weapon, he gets very little recoil, but when using the other weapons, experiences more recoil than the others. Missions can be rather long, so you are bound to run out of ammo.. you would be forced to pick up the dead enemies' weapons and use them, but there tends to be a few deposits of ISA weaponry and ammo on the various maps/missions, often next to dead comrades. So, for the most part, the player can choose which weapon will be their primary weapon- the ISA or the Helghast machine guns, or the chaingun or semi-silent half-sniper rifle gun... until those two run out of ammo, and they have significantly less pickups than the assault rifles.
The characters each have their own strengths and weaknesses creating a good game balance.
Jan- the every-guy. He can run a decent amount of time, climb ladders, crawl through vents and some other tight spots.
Luger- the small, flexible assassin- can run the longest, climb ladders and rope (while holding a gun..), fit into the smallest spots.
Rico- he is the slowest of them all. he can not climb ladders, and certainly not rope or wires. He can not even crouch down and go through some vents or any small openings. But he can hold a lot more ammo than the others and is the best at using the heavy artillery, such as his chain/rocket gun.
Hahka- also a middle road kinda guy. He's the best at using Helghast weaponry but is slightly worse with human weapons. He can also bypass Helghast security thingies, such as trip-lasers rigged to bombs that will kill anyone who sets them off. He also regenerates his health faster than the others, while in down-time (not running around shooting up the place)
The story is a 1player mode. The battlegrounds is 1-2players, locally. If you have your PS2 connected to the interwebs, you can play with / against other people online, something I have never done with this game. 2 Player mode splits the screen, making it semi-harder to tell what is going on in your section, as is the way with nearly all FPSs.
One of my favorite things to do in the Battles mode is to grab me up the Sniper rifle and head up several stories of the biggest building on a particular map- I come out on a little balcony like area and can see something like 60-70% of the entire map from one position. Zoom in with the sniper rifle and you can see very, very far, with great detail. Sniping is fun.. foes have no idea where you are (if they are NPCs) and die with a single hit. Now, since this would be too easy, they made the sniper rifle one of the hardest guns to use. Its actually a Helghan weapon in this game, and therefore has an orange tint on the scope that matches their little goggles. Aiming is very difficult to do, especially at first, and I'm not even sure how to describe it. ...The crosshairs lag.. and you won't move them for a little bit, and then all of a sudden you've overshot your target, aiming at one side of them to the other. It takes a bit getting used to, but once you are, is oh so lethal. You can shoot 6 bullets before needing to reload and can only hold about 18 on you, so it can go rather fast, luckily, there is a sniper rifle bullet pickup mere feet from the location I like to use.
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