I brought home my copy of Killzone 2 yesterday morning, and got to try it out for a bit before my wife came home with the kids. (Don’t want those impressionable minds filled with that stuff at their age!) Last night is when I really got to play. I played a bunch of games, created squads, created a clan, joined friends, all that.

Awesome.

The game is truly great. The graphics are stupendously wonderful. The game types are awesome. The levels are inspired with great variety. There are lots of players online. There are many of options when it comes to creating games. You can even create your own games and save them as a template to be used later.

Of course, my lack of true talent shone through when I played last night. I only got a few kills per game, and it took me all evening to level up twice. Such is life. I’m creating a clan to help with this problem.

While I had a blast last night, Killzone 2 online is not without its problems.

The largest problem is gaming with your friends. You can join a match that your friend is in, but you never know if you’ll end up on the same side. When it cycles to the next match, the teams get mixed up (otherwise a very good thing), but it’s easy possible (as my dad says) to end up on opposite sides again. You never know if you’ll be on the same side.

My friend pointed out that sometimes you want to be competitive and play on opposite sides. That’s true. But I’d like to have the option, at least, of staying on the same team as my friends. When a couple more friends and I get together to play, I don’t know what we’ll do. The game seems to suggest that you can choose which side to be on, but I guess team balancing was always on because I was never actually able to join the team of my choice.

A similar problem is that squads don’t get kept from one match to the next. So every time you start a new match, you need to set up a squad again. I realize that maybe not everyone in the squad will be around anymore for the next match, but would be easy for those members to be removed. I’d like some squad persistence.

Oh, and while I’m wishing for things, I might as well chime in with one more thing. Killzone 2 is a team game only, but sometimes I wish for some of the best modes from other games. I really really want to have a King of the Hill mode in Killzone 2. It’s by far my favourite mode from Halo 3, and I think that KotH in KZ2 would be awesome. (I don’t suggest Halo invented KotH, I’m just saying I enjoy it there.) While I’m snatching modes from other games, I think KZ2 would enjoy Headquarters too. It’s my favourite game type from CoD. Hey, I can wish, can’t I? Maybe the Guerilla Games guys read my site…