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Off-target

What this world needs is a really good first-person shooter, exclusively for the PlayStation 3.

Unfortunately, “Killzone 2,” the lavishly animated new shooter for the PS3, isn’t delivering.

“Killzone 2” wanted so much to be that game — you can tell in the gorgeously rendered light, the highly detailed maps and the solidity of its core shoot-and-move gameplay. But like perpetual motion or a Super Bowl-bound Detroit Lions team, a breakout PS3 shooter remains elusive. Indeed, the laws of nature may not permit it.

Don’t get me wrong. “Killzone 2” is a highly respectable game with many appealing touches, but for all the expectations and early praise, I just couldn’t buy into the hype.

The story picks up shortly after the original “Killzone” left off, only this time the forces of Earth are taking the fight to the home planet of their archenemies, the Helghast. Close cousins of humanity, the Helghast left Earth centuries earlier to make their own way in the cosmos. By the time of the events of “Killzone,” they have become bigger and stronger than we classic humans, but they must wear masks to breathe the air of their adopted home planet.

In “Killzone 2,” the Helghast and the Earthlings both play from gratingly predictable scripts — the Helghast talk in pseudo-Shakespearean phrases (“I care not for your life, only for the emperor!”) and the human soldiers are good-natured workin’ guys who crack wise and vow to buy each other a cold one when it’s all over.

But generic characters and forgettable story lines are themselves prosaic in today’s games, where the real horsepower is spent on action. In that lane, “Killzone 2” excels, with fast-paced firefights and good small-squad combat to keep things consistently interesting. In the single-player mode, you can lock yourself into a crouch behind cover, as needed, to pop up and squeeze off rounds and then duck again to miss the response. I instantly mastered the standard-issue rifles, pistols and grenades, although it would’ve been nice to have my laser from “F.E.A.R. 2” or my flamethrower from “Call of Duty: World At War.”

Shaken, not stirred

It also would’ve been nice to move around the levels and keep steady, but “Killzone 2” has the worst hand-and-body shake I’ve ever seen in a video game. You get somewhat used to it, but even after hours of play I still was thrown off by how much your vision and weapon wobble with each footstep. In real life, your head doesn’t swing wildly when you walk normally, but video game designers decided graphics would look more “real” if it did.

When you’re standing still, the worlds in “Killzone 2” do look real, or better. Especially in the multi-player maps, the backdrop has so much detail I almost lost the guys I was trying to kill, who are also rendered in great detail but blended in with the lush surroundings. It was cool to be able to read the captions beneath paintings or taste the rust on metal walls, but I would’ve traded that for enemies who stood out clearly against the backdrop.

And I would trade both those things for a smooth, nonfrustrating PS3 multiplayer experience. “Killzone 2” worked better than the last promising PS3-only shooter, “SOCOM: Confrontation,” but not by much. I was routinely kicked out of games because of server problems; I shot at bad guys who weren’t there anymore; and the team-chat audio in my headset was mostly gibberish. “Killzone 2” unwisely has no push-to-talk feature, so all the microphones are live all the time, creating a nightmare feedback loop of people chewing, delayed sound from their TVs and every crying baby in Christendom.

The multiplayer did have a few new qualities that I appreciated, including sessions that had several different types of games in a row. You might start with a destroy-a-target game, then go into a team death-match, then a defend-an-area mode — all with the same teams and on the same map.

But you can’t escape the fact that the PS3 network limits the possibilities for even the most innovative, well-designed titles. Those failings have meant that “Metal Gear Solid 4,” “SOCOM” and now “Killzone 2” — video games that deserve a fair chance to compete against Microsoft’s XBox Live empire — instead stuttered, lagged and kicked out the players who wanted to give them a chance.

Game Review

Killzone 2

$59.99.

For PlayStation 3.

Rated M for “Mature.”

Buy? Rent? Skip?

Our verdict: Rent