I'm not a big fan of first person shooters. The last year I really sat down and played more than one of them was in 2006 after the 360 came out and my only choices I had were Call of Duty 2 and other gun-fests. Since then, I've missed a ton of the biggest releases in the genre and committed the no-doubt criminal action of having never played more than a little of the CoD4 single player campaign. On top of this I bear the treacherous cross that is fanboyism, the omnipresent voice in the back of my head chanting "Sony" with such fervor that I wake shaking in the night. Clearly the following impressions should be taken with a grain of salt.

I really enjoyed the Killzone 2 demo. Nine times out of ten I fall under the umbrella of the tourist. When a game is beautiful I take notice and that's a feature that has been given no lack of attention in Killzone 2.

But I've seen pretty graphics many times. Gears of War 2 is gorgeous. Comparing screenshots it could be argued that it's as pretty as Killzone. But it's Killzone in motion that gives it an edge I don't think other games have, within the genre or otherwise.

Though at any time there are no more than four of your own squad members and a half-dozen enemies, I always felt I was on a massive battlefield. Shots were fired and dust was kicked up in such a way that I had no idea what was going on. Allies and enemies alike would run past me, fall to the ground, shout unintelligible battlecries and fall in a haze behind my blood-stained vision. Characters and environment alike feel like they are constantly in motion and chaos. Lighting is dynamic, an addition that more games need to make since Dead Space showed off the affect on a player's psyche it could have. As standard as the game is from a run and gun (or in this case, stop and pop) perspective, the immersion factor is through the roof.

Good graphics and animation don't make a good game. But much like gamers are sometimes devided between those focussed on skill and those on tourism, games come in multiple categories too. Approached as a "game" Killzone 2 might be everything we've seen before in a pretty but ultimately redundant package. As an "experience" it's like nothing ever before it. If you, like me, are a player who likes to throw themselves into a game and hope that it will draw you in even furthur, I think Killzone is for you.