Killzone 2

For five years now, Sony has known that the guns were out for its first-person shooter Killzone 2. So they couldn't cut corners, not after the potentially disastrous first showing at E3 2005, when the supposedly on-the-fly in-game footage turned out to be pre-rendered. If only every company had such a controversy egging them on, because Guerrilla Games set its sights on making KZ2 no less than a definitive shooter. Graphically, its post-industrial hellscape is as eye-popping as anyone could have hoped, using Sony's unique Blu-Ray storage capacity to set a new landmark for detail and design. The game play boasts similarly impeccable craftsmanship, with actually intelligent A.I., memorable set pieces and an innovative multiplayer mode that will give the game legs long after the single-layer campaign has been won. The only real gripe is that the single-player story is pretty played-out. Yes, first-person shooters need someone to shoot at and yes, evil aliens make nice politically correct targets. But as Battlestar Galactica proved in the sci-fi TV arena, a pop-cult product that truly aspires to greatness needs to transcend its trappings. It needs to try something narratively new, not just empirically cooler. There are hints of big ideas at play - the war-for-peace invasion of the Helghast home world has echoes of Iraq and Nazi Germany - but the creators seem content to leave it at that. Not every game needs a social conscience but the recent iterations Metal Gear Solid and Grand Theft Auto, for instance, have succeeded in part because beyond their engaging game play were explorations of the immigrant experience and the privatization of the military. If Killzone 2 had dug just a bit deeper it could have hit its target dead centre.