this one is completely disjointed and unhinged; at its core, past all the bloat, you can see what a sharper version of this title could have looked like, and that pervasive vision lingers in the foreground of all the games antics. but all the same you can feel the fervent passion of the development team in each minute of its runtime and their unrelenting, inelastic vow to push the bill and expand the scope of what is possible, sometimes unnecessarily. in all the ways that makes yakuza a titan it is fantastic, in all the ways it makes yakuza tiresome it is paramount. still some of the best side content in the series though, understands the core of what makes this franchise endearing with sniper precision

as far as this particular lineage of call of duty-influenced single player first person shooter campaigns goes, killzone 2 is top of the line and is consistently underappreciated and devalued for it. machinegames scattershot efforts with the new wolfenstein saga could only dream of approaching this level of lumbering oppressiveness, this heavyweight orchestration of life and limb struggle with fearsome artillery that takes the drab grit and muddy colour palette common to the seventh generation of shooters and molds it into a bold statement. lightning in a bottle for an otherwise bad franchise, testament to the value of aesthetics in a shooter