Killzone: Liberation Review (PSP) | Push Square

pushsquare.com:

The PSP was many things to many people, a delightful little slice of hardware that ended up with a pretty stellar library of ports and new games — but one thing you could never say about it was that it had a second analogue stick. That sole little control nub on its left had to do a heck of a lot of heavy lifting, and Killzone: Liberation is and was a perfect example of how developers worked around it.

In making a spin-off from its successful first Killzone game ahead of dropping Killzone 2 on the PS3, Guerrilla worked with the PSP's limitations to make Liberation, a top-down strategic shooter that you can now pick up emulated on the PS5 and PS4. Playing it in 2024 makes for a bit of a nostalgia overdose.

If that sounds both good and bad, that's exactly our intention: Liberation is a frustrating mixture of bright ideas and implementation that sometimes feels achingly annoying to play on a modern system, which shouldn't be a surprise. It drops players into the middle of the ongoing conflict between the dastardly Helghast and the Interplanetary Strategic Alliance. We reprise the role of Templar from the first game as he hunts down some Helghast bigwigs over the course of four acts, each comprising five missions.

Each of these stages runs to around 10 minutes long, making for a pretty modest runtime, although the game is padded out by single player challenges that see you drop back into missions with specific objectives in the hopes of unlocking upgrades for your character. There are difficulty options to explore, too, although as we'll cover later they're not exactly welcoming.

You control Templar from a top-down perspective, moving him with your left analogue stick and aiming with the same. You can free-shoot while moving, but the real intention is for you to take cover by holding R1, then pop up while static to free-aim a laser sight at enemies. There's some gentle lock-on here, but it would be too generous to describe it as feeling great. Rather, Templar's accuracy