Guerilla

You know it's a slow summer when I start checking the first-person shooters off my list. I usually only get in one or two a year, but I've been blazing through them lately. Surprisingly, most have been better than average… though Killzone isn't among them. The iconic glowing goggles on the cover caught my attention, but once inside my PlayStation 2, everything else lost it.

With still a year to go, the PS2 already seems to have stretched its resources as far as they can go. I think back to the concept art and demo reels Sony released to hype the PS2 and its "emotion engine," and just how limitless the possibilities seemed. Now, here we are five years later, and all of those technological limits have been reached. All of the PS2's big holiday games suffered from this in one way or another.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Blood, Strong Language, Mature Themes, Violence

Game Description: Killzone is a squad-based first-person shooter, set in the near future during a period of planetary colonization. An invading separatist faction called the Helghast is trying to destroy your colony and take over the planet. Command an elite squad as they stand between the Helghast and their destruction of the colony. Drawing inspiration from classical military conflicts of the 20th century, Killzone is an all-around military experience that will blow you away.

There was some debate around GameCritics.com recently (generated by Scott's score for Manhunt) about whether numeric scores should address the game as a whole, or whether they should just cover how good a game it is. In the case of Manhunt, Scott felt that despite the fact that the game was a perfectly acceptable stealth game, its material was so objectionable that it deserved to be factored into the review.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Stong Language

Game Description: ShellShock: Nam '67 forces you into the most controversial conflict in recent American history. It's January 1967, and you're a fresh-faced soldier starting his first tour of duty in Indochina. Learn the fine arts of jungle warfare and urban guerilla combat to survive. Authentic weapons and advanced AI create an real sense of tension and danger—friendly fire, accidental encounters with the enemy and the deaths of friends will happen—just like in the real Vietnam.