Click Here. Sad day indeed. I hated buffy and angel for years, till a friend let me borrow the dvds. Wow, i turned into a huge Joss Whedon fan. I watch all his stuff. Love dollhouse, love fire fly and serenity. I don’t like every episode of angel and buffy, but there are moments. Especially the episode where angel gets turned into a muppet. LOL. Any way, the green demon who ran a karaoke bar. He was one of my favorite characters, and loved his last role on the last episode of angel ever. I miss that show. Now I know a reunion will never be the complete. RIP Andy Hallett. Go ahead, make fun of me, I don’t care. I love Buffy and Angel.

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WOW they added this top site thing, opera had it, but man the way apple does it, it’s more like cover flow from itunes. I love it, so much more style. Dig it. There are still bug in this beta, but if you have a mac, you can go to apple.com and download this for free. I totally love it. The below image more than the top image is what sold me.

This is amazing, so many times I used to go to my history to try and find a web page, and only seeing the text titles never really helped most of the time. But in safari 4, it saves a snap shot of each site the way you left it, so man you can cover flow back through the sites visually and see where you were and remember them by looking at them, not viewing text titles, this helps me a lot when i am on deviant art looking for new photographers and models to feature for my blog, this tool is very helpful to me. I love the new Safari 4 beta. Can’t wait till all the bugs are out of it. This totally kicks butt with a macbook pro, cause it uses the double finger pad swipe to scroll like on the iphone and ipod touch, so cool. It’s all the little things like this that mac me love my mac more than my pc any day of the week.

Opening words: I had very high expectations for this game. E3 2005 Killzone 2 trailer. I could not believe my eyes. This is what next gen was going to look like? Really? That and the Heavenly sword demos from than same e3 were the very reasons i even considered buying a ps3. This is the flag ship ps3 game. This is sony’s Halo? Does this live up to the e3 2005 trailer? Does it live up to the hype? Is this a halo killer? Has sony Finally got it’s flagship title for this generation of consoles? YES, YES, YES, YES, and YES. Oh and BTW, in single player, if you want the super fantastic AI, play this on veteran and not normal, in normal it is ok, in veteran it is AMAZING, more like a war simulator, simply breath taking ai.

Single Player: 9.5
I have read in a lot of other magazines that the single player was lame, that the story was lame, that the multiplayer is way better. So i went in expecting crap. I was really disappointed by resistance 2′s single player part of their game. So i had already been let down a little by it and cod 5. IGN and a lot of other magazines gave this a lower score than gears of war 2 a game I am not at all that impressed with. So i really was thinking that Killzone 2 was going to let me down as well. I played the multiplayer part of this game first. Wish I hadn’t. Ok, now to my opinion. This is exactly why I prefer the PS3 over all the other consoles. The games really feel epic, like a movie. I don’t get that at all from the AAA titles on the 360 or WII. What really sets this thing over the call of duty’s, and Halos? Well lets just start with the graphics, OMG, and also the sound OMG. The story is good too, no it’s not award winning, but It really sold me on why I was fighting, and the conflict and differences between the enemies and your team. You are always surrounded by a team or a teammate. This really makes the experience feel more social. The cut scenes and the acting are actually really good in this. Especially the bad guys, whoa. The AI in the single player is great, well not so much your allies, but the helghast or very intimidating, evil. They taunt you, curse at you, make you feel like they hate you, that they are going to stop at nothing to end your life. I have never felt this fear in any other game I have played. The helghast are not stupid. They do not shoot from the same spot every time, If they see you aiming at them, they will duck or move away. The will flank you, throw grenades, avade you, or come running after you, some of them roll, and jump. The AI in this game beats all other AI I have encountered in FPS games so far. So to say that Killzone 2 has the best graphics on consoles, well that is one thing. Saying that the AI in killzone 2 is the best on any FPS to date, well that really is something to take notice in. Why? Because the game reacts to how you play it. So if you play it differently every time, and change your strategy, so will the Helghast. This means that you can play the single player over and over and still see and experience the enemy in a different way every time. WOW. The level design and pacing is perfect. Seriously, some of the architecture in this game is breath taking, but you will miss it if you don’t stop and really look around you. The pacing is just right, I played it for an hr and stopped and came back and played again, never got sick of it. The story unfolds in a timely way as well. Some people have complained about the single player game being to short, well it took me about 10 hours on the normal setting to beat. Some complained that it lacked co-op in the single player, wait, they are working on DLC content that might add this, and new missions to the game, so don’t you worry about that, they are listening to us fans and if this sells well, they will tweak it for us if we ask them enough. This company is really cool, kudos to Guerrilla Games.

Presentation: 10
Are you serious? There is no install. WOW, and it runs pretty good too, only hiccups when loading the new level on the fly, but it only happens when there is nothing going on, so who cares. Load times are like any other game. The video, the characters, the menus, the load screens. Everything has so much polish. This is the perfect way to interface the menus. The load screens are like hologram baseball cards, so cool, and its six axis controlled, the load screens will slant in 3d, it’s so cool. Everything, the medals, the ribbons, everything is so polished and real looking. Kudos. The presentation from the fmv and the in game acting, perfectly woven together. Everything in this game looks amazing and like it fits, It sells the fiction in a very realistic way. No other game in my opinion comes close to this as far as making a space sci fi war story look and feel, yes feel real. The propaganda from both sides is so well done. The bad guys really believe in what they are fighting for, so does your protagonist and his teammates.

Visuals: 9.7
The MOTHER @$%ING ATOM BOMB. The best graphics on a console to date. Seriously. The way they made this world look, a grimy dark world of scrap metal and industrial parts in a desert. So cool. There is hardly any vegetation. The frame rate is solid most of the time except when there is a ton of stuff happening, but it never really interferes to much. The way the helghast look, WOW, the orange glowing eyes, their old school industrial revolution look in black. Wow. I love how things break in this game, when you shoot things, it damages them. There are very realistic particle fx going on too. Ash like snow, the debris from explosions. No other game has this kind of detail. The textures look pretty good, not as good as top end pc stuff, but as good as anything great out there, the vision blur really adds to the realism though and most of the time you are moving around and it blurs just right to make it look real, amazing. Some of the details in the levels are amazing, I love the physics from the way they look when they get shot, to the ribbons and cloth flapping and reacting to the weather in real time. The weather is another thing that really effects you in this game, in the desert sand levels the wind plays a role and can effect you, but you can see the sand almost like a gas flowing over the ground in natural jet stream like fashion. Seriously, it is in the details. There is so many particles, so many lighting fx, when you shoot holes through something, light beams will shoot through the holes, stuff like this, it’s so fantastic. Be sure to stop and look at the environment, you can lose track of the details in the heat of the war, so be sure to gander from time to time, you will really see why I am freaking out over this. So realistic, This graphical engine out classes all of the others as a whole(even crysis), because of the particles, weather, blur and lighting, oh and AI. I have only one real problem with the display, it’s not wide screen, even tho i am playing on a wide screen hd tv, the screen view reminds me more of the old doom days on a regular old square monitor that was not wide screen. I think that is how the camera angle looks. No wide view, it looks like it’s stuck in the old school view of old games. But i don’t care honestly. I bet it’s cause it’s true 720p, most games on the ps3 and 360 run at 1024 not 1280 across. Even less in some games. These next gen systems are not as powerful as boasted, they really cut corners to get the games to look as good as they do. I had to drop some points for this. One more thing though, the rag doll physics rock, when you shoot people, the way they react is amazing. Every bullet hit will make them behave the right way. The last video on this page shows in slow motion some very cool kill sequences in slow motion to show this off. Impressive. I almost forgot, The detail on the guns as you reload them is amazing.

Audio: 10
The voice acting is really well done. In fact this is what floored me the most in the game. I hate to give anything away, but there is this one part in the game when you first get the flame thrower and man. When you start lighting people up. OMG. WTF. They scream and moan and rant like they really are on fire. It has the best death acting I have ever heard in any game. Not just for that, most of the guns make them groan, but the flame thrower and the lightening gun, OMG. The Lightening gun. OMG the sounds they make. LOL like there teeth chattering in anguish. OMG It’s so #$!%ing cool. It had me rolling on the floor. The guns sounds amazing, The surround sound is great according to KRZTOV. They really spend a lot of time on the sound. The sound track in the game is pretty good as well but in multiplayer, you can pull up the xmb and play any play list you want! Nothing like rocking Cradle of filth, old metallica, and napalm death when you are running around fragging people. Thank you for custom sound tracks! THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!! Also, when you are in multiplayer playing as the helghast your commander blurts out orders, and wow, it sounds like megatron from the old transformers cartoons, COOL, super evil too. I love how the helghast curse and groan. So cool.

Game Mechanics: 8.7:
Before I did anything, I changed the controls to mimic call of duty 4(it’s the alternate 2 control preset) with hold to zoom on, and unlike the demo, which i had to adjust, the final release, I felt fine with the default controls. The controls, this is where I felt kind of weird with the game at first. There is this sluggishness, this unresponsiveness. I thought they were just letting the game feel like their is weight to the guns. I thought there was inertia, but this isn’t true, it’s delay, it does stop on a dime, it just feels like inertia because there is a lag on the controls. Click Here to read about it and see a video of the delay being measured. up to 167 milliseconds on the fire button. That kind of sucks, but honestly, i really hate the super fast glitchy controls on cod 4 and 5. I got used to it, and most of the people i play on line with have gotten used to it. This by no means ruins the game, it’s not like lair or anything. In fact, this kind of reminded me of how all the old wii games played, with a little lag. Strange. I also think the dead zone is weird, I hope they add a custom control for the dead zone like in socom confrontation. This game feels and controls a lot like how battlefield bad company did, and I really liked that game and the mechanics as well, so I am kind of used to it from that game. Oh well, They said they might patch it to fix it. But some how, I think it has to do with how many screen buffers, and how many things are going on, that there is a big buffer there to pull it all off. Even the way it is, it’s still really fun once you get used to it. The sniper rifle mechanics with the six axis is simply amazing. the best sniping ever in any game. You zoom in, and then tilt the controls a little here and little there to get it to line up, and man this works so well. There are tiny innovations like this in the game that really made me like the controls. Seriously, you do get used to the controls. The way the six axis controls were worked into planting bombs, opening stuff, and turning wheels, wow, I really liked it. Innovative and felt perfect. There are plenty of guns, they are all very realistic looking except one, the lightening gun. That gun rules. The standard assault gun, some mini machine guns, sniper rifle, grenade launcher, rocket launcher are all here, but the flame thrower and lightening gun, OMG. The BOMB. All the people in this game can take a lot of bullets, I thought it was cause the guns were weak, but it’s more because of how armored everyone is. The guns all feel slightly different. The Rail gun is hilarious too, AHAHAH. I was kind of disappointed in the weapons system, you cannot put different scopes on the guns and stuff like this, handles, so still socom confrontation is king of the weapons when it comes to customizing them. Even cod 4 has more options in this regard, had to deduct points for that as well too. oh well. One other thing I almost forgot to mention is the running, this has the best running, it feels just right, and guess what, your guy has endurance like a real military grunt would, you can run for a while, just like how all games should be. Can’t run and shoot, so its like cod 4 and 5 in that regard.

Multiplayer: 6.0
Please click on all these links to watch all the videos explaining the classes in the multiplayer portion of the game, these are all the things you can unlock. Assault Badge, Engineer Badge, Medic Badge, Saboteur Badge, Tactician Badge, Scout Badge. I played the multiplayer first after i watched the above videos. I was so disappointed at first, because it was so generic. No one had unlocked anything, and it takes days of playing it straight to really get into all the cool stuff that really sets this above all the other online shooters on the market. YES, this multiplayer is better than all the others because of all the tweaks. Sure some of the ideas are from other games, but a stealth sniper cloak? what game has that? Snipers can broadcast all people on the map? what game has that? Heavy armor and weapon guy who can run super fast? What game has that? These little tweaks and the six axis sniping really adds something to this that no other game has at all. Some have said we’ve seen this all before. Sorry, not tweaked like this we haven’t. Nothing on the PC touches this. No 360 game touches this. Not only that, the warzone online game mode that rolls all kinds of mission battles in one game with out making you reload. So it will start as team death match(body count) and who ever is randomly selected on that becomes a VIP that must be protect in an assassination mode that starts out of no where next, Then into a plant the explosives mode or defend location mode on the fly, then into take the propaganda to the destination mode out of no where etc etc etc. This is so cool, These games can last up to 30 minutes, and this is the best way to level up. There is nothing else like this on the market, and this really sets it above all the other games in terms of features. There are also clan games, you get clan points, and you bet your clan points on clan matches, winner takes all. you earn clan points by playing other modes. But this really adds bragging rights to the game in a new way that has not been done before. This is where the game shines the most. The multiplayer is fantastic. The levels in multiplayer are great, designed very well, the small maps i really love, and the big maps with 32 players is very epic and intense. I prefer 20 or less, because in the 32 player maps, the controls get more lagged and the frame rate can really get BAD in some situations. 20 or less and it runs really great. A new thing I have discovered playing today, is that during peak hours, and even with 20 people, the game slows to a crawl, aiming becomes really hard, and there is a cheat that allows you to press L1 while aiming the shot gun, and it auto aims. Really cheap. The slow downs are pretty bad in multiplayer, and the game just seems to crawl sometimes. The over all feel of the game is like you are on valume at times. Ok, during the peak times, only play medium 8 to 16 players, then it plays ok. Anymore than that, and it runs horrid. But on off peak hours, i can find and enjoy some 32 player maps. AFTER PLAYING MORE GAMES AND COMING BACK TO THE MULTIPLAYER IN THIS< CONTROLS LAG SO BAD, ITS LIKE YOU CONTROL LIKE YOU ARE SWIMMING UNDER WATER. FUCK THIS.

Replay:10
The single player AI, and all the new cool stuff in the multiplayer that isn’t in any other game will keep you coming back for more and more. I cannot put it down. Seriously. This is my favorite first person shooter of all time now. It used to be Half Life 2. Not anymore.

Total Score: 8.5 out of 10:
I had to dock a few points for the lag in the controls, and the screen looking cut and cropped, not wide screen view, like an old tv point of view. Other than that, this game is solid. I only had a few complaints. When i first started playing it, my first impressions were kind of MEH. I’m not kidding, I started to kind of hate it. The weird controls put me off at first until I got used to them. Multiplayer is a chore until you unlock stuff, seriously, I had to put in a couple of nights just to get the medic unlocked. Now that everyone else has leveled up, it can seem a little unfair when you get into some games, but that is why when you play, set it to look for people = to or less than your rank. After beating the single player, and unlocking a lot of the multiplayer, WOW the game grew on me hard core. So don’t judge it until you play it a lot more, the game reveals its best parts in both single player and multiplayer more towards the middle of the over all progression. Then you will find all the OMG moments in the story, and the weapons and perks. Not to mention, The two main bad guys Radec and Visari are so cool in my opinion. The speeches that Visari makes are really moving as well. I loved the over all design and graphical feel of this game. The helghast are my favorite bad guys in all video games now, they have this storm trooper star wars meets 1940 nazi stalin feel to them that really kicks butt. It is fetish like in some ways. I loved it. If you like first person shooters, this will be heaven for you once you get used to the controls, or until they patch the controls to take the lag out, if they can, they are working on it so. This is a must buy in my opinion, not a rent, a buy, the multiplayer and single player deserve a lot of your time. Click here to buy Killzone 2 for playstation 3. If you are an FPS whore, now you really have a reason to buy a PS3.

PS: If they fix the bugs, the screen aspect mode problem, the controls, i will bump my score up to a 10. There are a few things that kept me from giving it a perfect score. They did take things from other games, but they did innovate on them more than anyone else has to date.