Reviews// Killzone: Liberation (PSP)

Throughout the course of the missions you'll discover supply depots and crates. The depots contain ammo, alternative firearms, health and explosives such as grenades or C4. The crates, once destroyed, may give up health, ammo or suitcases of Vektan cash. Taking the time to seek out and beat open the crates is certainly worth the effort, as ammo, health and cash is often hidden within. Collected cash avails weapons upgrades that can be selected at the start of each mission, though the usefulness of this is questionable, as we'll touch on later.

Throughout the early stages of the game you encounter mostly common-or-garden Helghast Troopers, with the aggressively attacking Shock Troopers increasing as you progress onto later missions. Before long you'll be well acquainted with snipers, commandos, attack dogs, grenadiers and rocket-wielding troopers, plus an assortment of anti-personnel hardware such as pressure and laser mines, and robot spider mines. However, it's good to know that you can use the enemy's hardware against them, luring them into minefields or triggering a spider mine to follow you, as you do a run-around the enemy forcing the mine to head straight for you, hitting the enemy trooper on the way.

On occasion you'll team up with another squad member to whom you can issue commands. In addition to the basic escort mode, you can instruct your buddy to hold a particular position, attack a specific target or, if they're suitably equipped, place explosives to remove obstacles. It's a similar situation with civilians, though they don't help in fire fights, you can instruct them to take cover while you deal with a threat. As your buddy takes fire, you have the option to increase their health by using syringes found at supply depots. Even when their health is exhausted, you still have time to give medical assistance, a timer counts the seconds 'til they expire. This is something of a life-saver in terms of gameplay, as few things are more frustrating than seeing your AI buddy killed in attempt after attempt, with no way of administering First Aid. That's not to say your buddies are dumb. When you tell them to escort, they do so without getting snagged up on scenery or losing their way. When you tell them to take point, they'll get straight to it and attack the nearest enemy; and when you forget to give them instruction, they just get on with helping out wherever they see fit.

When help isn't at hand, choosing the right weapon is all the more important. As you are only able to carry one firearm at a time, the choice you make at the start of a mission could leave you ill-equipped later. Supply depots sometimes offer other firearms, but these are often other assault rifles, offering little difference to the default rifle, shotguns (useless for distant attacks) or sniper rifles (equally useless for close-quarter attacks). This means you inevitably choose the stock assault rifle at the beginning of the missions, and stick with it for the majority of a mission. Indeed, unless you find yourself in a situation where a sniper rifle or rocket launcher is available and well suited, the only reason to switch weapons is when you rifle is low on ammo.

With the long-range weapons, you're let down by the restricted field of view. With a sniper rifle you would expect the camera to back out and give you some clue as to distant threats, but it stays exactly the same, which greatly diminishes the weapon's usefulness. There are weapons that do force a change in the camera's distance - military hardware. At several points you're given the chance to hop into vehicles, such as a tank or hovercraft, and here you're afforded a wider view of the environment, which is a good thing given the unlimited rocket supply these babies carry. You can't, however, get carried away, blazing through the levels blowing the crap of everything in a barrage of rockets and a rain of hot lead. Sadly, you're forced to take things more slowly by the numerous mines scattered across your path.

Alongside the campaign missions is a set of challenge missions, available in either single or multiplayer mode. All are time-based challenges, with target practice, demolition and "hold the fort" missions rewarded with gold, silver or bronze medals. In addition to the medals, progress through the challenges upgrades your weapon capacity for the campaign missions. Equally, progress through the campaigns opens more challenges, giving further reason to keep plugging away at both modes of the game. As if there weren't enough to be going on with, the multiplayer option allows for co-operative campaign play or head-to-head death match games.

SPOnG Score: B

Killzone: Liberation is thoroughly absorbing and at times incredibly intense shooter. It sucks away the peripheral world, a world where blurting out, "’Aave some, you little $#!@!" isn't exactly appropriate due to the proximity of old ladies, small children and the over sensitive. It really is a great little shooter, and by that we don't mean it's short, but that it fits snuggly into your pocket and your time-slice lifestyle. It takes no time to get into the swing of things, and is easy to put down and pick straight back up later - essential for those "oh, this is my stop" moments. Getting about and targeting is straightforward, but pinpoint targeting can be frustrating, as is the lack of long-range targeting. The missions are polished and well-structured, but the storyline is rather uninspiring. So, if you get stuck at any point you're probably going to try out the challenge missions rather than hammer away at a tough campaign just to see where the story takes you. However, these are pretty minor niggles that ultimately don't detract from the game.