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Killzone is nothing if not tactical, and those approaching it with a run-and-gun mentality - or just hoping to be able to absorb damage and shoot from the hip - are doomed to frequent bloody death. Thankfully, taking cover is simple and intuitive. Holding L2 snaps you to whatever cover you're standing alongside. If it's low cover, you automatically crouch to suit.
The left stick can then be used to sidle left or right behind your makeshift defences, leaning out when you reach the end, while pressing up pops you over the top to return fire. Should your gun run dry while standing, you'll automatically drop back behind cover while you reload. You can also blindfire over the top. Damage is indicated by splatters of blood around your peripheral vision, indicating the direction of the shots, and the game uses the now-traditional recharging health system. The blood creeps in, colours drain out and if you can't find a safe spot, you'll be face-down in a heartbeat.
Weapons are mostly low key, with a natural emphasis on small arms. There are rocket and grenade launchers, but these are scarce and generally best saved for tougher foes. Instead, you swiftly settle into the rhythm of the game - sweeping and clearing entrenched areas, pressing forward one piece of cover at a time. Shooting on the fly is a good way to waste ammo, and most of your kills come from short, controlled bursts taken down the iron sights view from a safe vantage point. Finding these strategic sanctuaries becomes increasingly tricky as the game evolves, but that's all part of the challenge.
Movement can feel sluggish to begin with, but that's because you're moving like an actual soldier would. Stick sensitivity can be tweaked, but this sense of weight is constant - and important. You're not playing as a floating gun, hovering around a battlefield, and the feeling that you have actual in-game mass helps to ground the combat even further in the realm of the real.
There are no rocket-powered leaps here, but pressing the jump button next to an obstacle of scaleable height allows you to vault over it. Although you don't see your hands actually propelling you over, it feels a lot like Mirror's Edge in terms of physical heft and momentum. You also have limited interactions with scenery objects like switches, valves and explosive charges. The latter two make use of the Sixaxis motion sensor to turn and lock them into place, while the steadiness of your hand on the controller determines how stable your sniper shots will be.
Enemy AI, one of the sore points in the first game, seems convincingly tough, even at normal difficulty. They'll use cover as effectively as you do, try to flank your position, flush you out with grenades and even duck, roll and shuffle to safety if they're caught in the open. If a Helghast trooper is making a break for different cover, and you start firing in front of them, they'll stop and try to head back the way they came. A small touch, perhaps, but indicative of the intelligence you're up against. Their lifelike responses are made more convincing thanks to some excellent animation, which holds fairly steady across all the character models and environments. When a fellow member of Alpha Squad busts a door down with his shoulder, there's genuine weight and momentum to the action. Flags and tarpaulins flutter angrily in the constantly raging Helghan storms, while swirls of dust and billows of smoke display particle effects that manage to be impressive without feeling distractingly showy.
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