Postal Redux is a slightly peculiar game. On the one hand, it’s a fairly simple shooter that uses an isometric perspective. You enter a level, there are a certain amount of enemies, you need to kill 96% of them. The game couldn’t be more straight forward. At the same time, it’s a game that goes out of it’s way to be edgy. Part of this is because the developers had hitherto been working on children’s games. So for them, Postal 1 was a way of letting off steam.

And to their credit, Postal 1 and it’s remaster Postal Redux are certainly as far away from a kid’s game as one can get. You play as the Postal dude, and you go postal across the course of 22 levels. You can shoot yourself, and indeed are encourage to shoot basically everything that moves. Animals, civilians, the police, clowns, it doesn’t matter. Now you can play through levels without killing civilians, but I think that’s missing the point really.

As for the gameplay itself, it’s fairly enjoyable if a little basic. You do get access to a whole host of different weapons, although ammo tends to be limited. You just run around shooting everything that moves. There are some health kits to pick up, and that’s about it. Every level is largely the same, at least in terms of objectives. The whole thing should only take you around 3 to 4 hours to complete. Once you’ve finished all 22 stages, the game is pretty much over. Fortunately you can play through every stage with a friend, if you know any sick puppies.

Regarding the rest of the game, there isn’t much to say. The soundtrack was extremely minimal even if the soundscape is appropriately mad. The graphics are decent and have certainly been touched up since the original release. The performance was alright considering this is an Unreal Engine 4 game. The plot barely exists. One thing to note is that the camera is a bit all over the place, with the perspective changing between levels. Also the train station level is weirdly hard. Oh and the AI bots (the clowns) are beyond useless.

And that’s about all I have to say about Postal Redux. I know it’s a short review, but this is a short game. It’s nothing special, but it is nice to see a remaster/remake that adds some new content for a relatively niche release. The gun-play is fine, nothing special but the weapon variety does help. I do wish that there was a bit more to do, that the bots were better and that the OST wasn’t so minimal. Otherwise what you see is what you get. Namely a isometric shooter for people who want society to EAT LEAD.

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First up is the wannabe Star Fox imitator “Redout: Space Assault” (henceforth referred to as “AS”) which in spite of the name has nothing to do with the quasi-popular high speed racing game Redout, aside from one or two shared sound effects. Now Redout was widely seen as a spiritual successor to Wipeout on it’s release and while it did have some differences, that inspiration was pretty nakedly and unabashedly worn on it’s sleeve. Space Assault is a similar attempt to piggy-back off a formerly popular but now dormant IP, and unfortunately it completely and utterly sucks. The first of AS’s myriad issues is that it’s a mobile phone game port (yay!) which is not disclosed anywhere on it’s Steam page with the exception of the mixed review section. Now I was willing to let this one slide, against my better judgement, as I thought that a Star Fox clone didn’t really need many controls as the whole point is that it’s an on-rails shooter. So all you’d really need is the ability to shoot and do a modicum of movement across the screen, which theoretically a smartphone could handle. Alas the game handles poorly and has a weird feel to it that I can’t quite put into words, but essentially you always feel a little sluggish and the enemy projectiles have the same issue. This means dodging them can be weirdly annoying, an issue that really makes the game a pain in the butt. To make sure it wasn’t just a SKILL ISSUE I went and played the original Star Fox on SNES, only to discover that I didn’t have that issue at all and so it was just AS living up to it’s moniker.

But(t) of course just having weird controls and a suspect pedigree wouldn’t be enough for me to totally drop the game, as I’ve beaten around 600ish releases and honestly a lot of them had some issues. What makes AS so wretched is just the lack of any redeeming features. The story is cliché and bear in mind, this is cliché within the context of videogame writing. It is so, so, aggressively bland and utterly fails to provide even the flimsiest reason for the player to engage with it or care about any of the characters. These characters also don’t do themselves any favours because their dialogue is below “Direct-to-DVD sequel” levels and it feels like every line of dialogue was cranked out by a bored intern on a single, lazy afternoon. The voice actors meanwhile appear to be totally aware that the plot, writing and characters are all a big pool of wank because they put zero effort into their roles. In space no one can hear you scream, so why bother having any dialogue with emotion, wit, charm or warmth? I can only assume they had random members of staff perform these lines because honestly everyone has the same accents (despite ostensibly being a diverse international group) and no one can act. As for the rest of the sounds, you’ve got standard PEWPEW space laser noises. Alongside a totally forgettable OST with some occasional attempts to insert PUMPIN electronic music during the action sequences. Last but not least, you’ve got a missile lock-on noise so enjoy a slightly tinny beep beep beep every time an enemy shoots a missile at you – which they do quite frequently!

And you’ll need to frequently avoid those enemy missiles with a half-hearted barrel roll feature as you have a Hull strength life bar and a regenerating Shield. So far, so Sci-Fi. But for some reason a bunch of random attacks just ignore the shield, to the point that in the early game it’s pretty much 50/50 as to whether you can regenerate any damage or not. Fortunately the developers have included absolutely 0 penalty for dying (I guess it’s a phone game so they know the controls are garbage?) …Well that’s not entirely true, as you lose the money you’ve accumulated thus far in that mission when you are instantly respawned exactly where you died. Although as the money can only be used for really, really lousy upgrades that barely make a difference (e.g. you need to buy the missile upgrade ten times to go from shooting 3 missiles per salvo to 4) AND you get most of your money from objectives and upgrade cards (you can equip one of these at a time, and they do really exciting things like increase your shield bar by 6%) it’s a very light-touch punishment. Speaking of the missile upgrades, you have two main ways of attacking the baddies; your normal laser weapon which can be swapped during the game for a variety of equally useless types and missiles which are much better because they do more damage and auto-lock on. You have infinite ammo for both, but the enemy health bars have been deliberately designed so that you’ll need to constantly spam both weapons to clear through everything in good time. This wouldn’t be an issue, but some missions just abruptly end after around 3 minutes if you didn’t shoot enough of the bad guys down. But don’t worry, as the missions are very bland anyway and you’ll probably not even notice that you’re replaying them as they’re basically all premised around doing the same thing against the same enemies (seriously the Act 1 boss and the Act 2 boss are the same). To it’s credit the game does have some “free flight” missions where it dumps you in space surrounded by the same props that it uses in every other mission, but this time you need to find the enemies as they won’t come to you! This would be more interesting if your space ship didn’t feel really slow and, there was like, stuff going on but alas these missions blow chunks too. Oh and once you beat all the 48-ish missions the game comes with, that’s it as there are no other gameplay modes. Probably for the best to be honest.

Second up on the naughty step is a game that broke my big fat clogged heart, as it just has such a great concept. Big Mutha Truckers 2 (henceforth referred to as BMT2) is an attempt to marry Crazy Taxi with a big dumb parody of truckin’ across all 48 continental US states. Unfortunately this parody is really, really dull and is very predictable with every character falling short of the “amusing but played out” archetypes they’re aiming for and instead feel like a very uncreative pre-teen designed them. But it’s a quasi-budget release, so it doesn’t matter if it’s dumb and unoriginal so long as it’s a dumb kind of fun. After all, no one was that bothered when the Simpson’s made their own crazy taxi rip-off even though it had extremely familiar characters and very little original gameplay ideas. Unfortunately BMT2 is just… bad when it comes to the actual moment to moment gameplay and it feels like it was really, desperately hoping it would be carried by it’s tongue in cheek characters and world. Alas this doesn’t pan out, as neither the gameplay nor the writing is above D-tier and so you have two shoddily put together halves colliding to form a weak whole. There’s really not much to be said about the writing, other than the fact that every character is summed up in their entirety the first time you meet them and after a few encounters you’re just bored of them. You’ve got the Hollywood airhead, the douchebag celebrity, an Area 51 inspired alphabet agency spook, a couple of hill-billies, a generic greedy millionaire businessman and a corrupt Russian who spends the game on his big ass yacht. You go between these KOOKY, ZANY, THIGH-SLAPPING characters to earn cash by moving items that one of them will sell you on the cheap, to another character who is willing to pay more. Ostensibly there’s some strategy to this, but… there really isn’t. Just buy the cheapest items and Keep On Truckin’ til you make a profit while trying not to let the stale, repeated character quips get you down.

And trust me, I don’t enjoy writing this as the game has a sort-of heart to it. You can tell the developers wanted to make an amusing game, but much like with Cel Damage the humour is simultaneously going to go over the heads of the well-behaved kids and yet isn’t funny enough for the grown ups. It’s just stuck that awkward spot, much like a stand-up comedian who’s bombing because their material just isn’t that good. You don’t hate it, but you do wish it would end if only to save everyone’s sanity. As for the gameplay, as mentioned above it’s pretty basic and while you can use the money to buy upgrades they don’t really make that much of a difference, because pretty the whole game is split between two activities. The first is driving from character to character to make that sweet, sweet money. The second is compromised of missions, which also involve driving from place to place but have a bit more effort put into them even if they’re still pretty bland. The big issue here is just that the driving mechanics aren’t very well implemented, so you have a game that’s almost entirely based on driving and the driving isn’t very good. Sure there are some moderately entertaining environmental hazards (and the cops) to watch out for, like UFOs stealing your cargo, but these are little sprinklings of inspiration that are trying to distract you from the fact that the core gameplay mechanics are bad and that the game just isn’t funny. Unlike Redout Space Assault this game does have plenty of content, but most of it’s locked behind delivering enough cargo to store up money so you can the next mission which plays the same as the grinding so that you can then grind so more to unlock the next mission and so and so forth. There are one or two features that are actually OK, such as the ability to set a time limit between destinations with lower limits providing a larger delivery bonus (which encourages and rewards skill) and a variety of radio stations ala GTA including a talk show with a decent amount of content. It’s just that none of it is good and there’s a reason that this franchise died on it’s ass with mediocre reviews. If you played this game as a kid, hang onto those memories and do not bother revisiting BMT2. Especially as the current Steam port is so busted that even basic Steam features like the overlay and screenshots don’t work.

Last but not least in our trinity of tedium, we have Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop which is the sequel of sorts to Alien Swarm the throwaway Valve project that was most notable for letting the player receive a free TF2 hat. Unlike either of the two preceding games, I didn’t pay anything for this one but instead came across it while searching for a free game that I could play with a friend on his lousy laptop. As such you might argue that it doesn’t deserve it’s place on this list, as it’s literally free and to my knowledge doesn’t even have a monetisation system due to the fact that it’s a labour of love from a dedicated modding community. Yet in spite of the potential for a cute little underdog story, I’m including it here for the simple reason that neither me nor my friend enjoyed it. In fact the more we played, the more frustrated we became as while the game has some good ideas it’s also riddled with questionable design choices that got on our collective tits. Due to it’s price I promise not to be as mean to it, but still why the fuck does the infestation system require you to place a medkit down and then wait for some god damn long? Who thinks this is fun? Who thought “oh my goodness we’ve made the game BETTER take THAT Greg Coomer”??? There’s a ton of content in this game, but also a lot of WHY’s that remain on our minds after playing through the first campaign and mutually agreeing that we are not going to bother with the rest because fuck that noise.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself, because many of you are probably asking “what the hell even is Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop?” Well I’m glad you asked dear reader, as it’s a top-down shooter that allows up to 4 player co-op in which your team is split between around 8 characters and 4 classes. Each class has two characters who are slightly different in terms of their stats, but these stats don’t seem to matter that much anyway so I think this is more for the advanced players to care about. As me and my buddy were casuals only playing the game because we were running out of options, we just went with a medic (because otherwise you are guaranteed to die) and a Tech Marine because they’re mandatory for most of the missions. Once you’ve chosen a character you get a surprisingly extensive unlock system, where you pick 1 weapon, 1 weapon or utility item and then one equippable item. There’s a variety of guns, but also some more interesting tools like a deployable sentry turret, a medkit that heals the squad, an ammo pack for the squad and a bunch of other things that aren’t weapons per see but are useful tools for the entire squad. Then there’s that utility item which is generally a bit mediocre, such as the ability to weld the occasional door, take a bit less damage (not that matters much), lay down mines, take a personal medkit for emergency heals and so on. Once you’ve picked your squad and your gear, you’re then able to play through any of the game’s approximately eleven multi-mission campaigns. These missions might have sections where you need to use a certain item to clear the path, such as big rocks that need to be destroyed with a mining laser or hive-growth that needs to be destroyed with a flamethrower (or a mining laser). Unfortunately the game doesn’t tell you if this is going to be the case, but in our experience the map-makers are generous enough to provide those items when they are needed to prevent you from being totally stuck. Now as for all these shiny new weapons, they’re generally pretty varied but they all have not that much ammo which is a problem in a game where you are shooting things a lot. Missions do tend to give you some more ammo every now and then, but generally speaking you need to be careful with your shots (especially as friendly fire is enabled) and even your reloads as reloading a magazine throws any remaining ammunition away. Plus reloading can take a surprisingly long time for a game in which even the basic enemies can knock you around like a pinata, which is somewhat negated by the introduction of the active reload system that’s also used in Gears of War.

So the game itself is free, it has a lot of content, why is it in the did-not-finish triad? Well aside from the counter-productive nature of the game having eleven freaking campaigns which feels a tad excessive frankly the biggest issue is just that most of the enemies are annoying to deal with. You’ve got the standard grunts who can almost stun lock you, as their attacks knock you back a little bit and can mess you up more than they otherwise would. Then you’ve got ranged enemies which love to hang out just off-screen while pelting you, big fat enemies that eat up a lot of ammo then explode, annoying little enemies that spawn into the game world with a little jump that makes them temporarily immune to gun fire and are too quick to melee. Plus there are flying enemies that are a fucking pest because they’re so small and fast, spawners that spawn in those little enemies with their stupid little jumps constantly and are a chore, especially as when they die spawn more. Wrapping up the selection of annoying enemies are levelled up ranged baddies that fling explosives at you and finally (from what we played anyway) a boss monster that is immune to damage from the front and takes a lot of bullets being fired into their ass to give up. Oh and of course I almost forget the small infectors who will take you from full health to fully dead (no respawning btw) in about 6 seconds unless your medic deploys the tiny medkit with it’s tiny healing radius next to you. An action that takes slightly more fumbling than you’d hope for, and if you’ve split up or they’re picking their nose it’s over for you. As a bonus if the medic dies, then everyone who isn’t a medic can’t take their medkit tool so after that it’s basically sudden death. Did I mention that the basic bitch enemies are almost constantly respawning? Because once you combine that with the skimpy amounts of ammo, the game does become a bit of an endurance test. Can you and your friends manage to get through an entire campaign without getting frustrated at the game? Great, then go do another 10! The scoreboards tell you if your friends bothered, and I can safely say that all of mine gave up around the end of the first campaign. Because this is a game with a lot of love put into it, by people with questionable test in videogames. It’s the quintessential problem with the fan project, namely that the fans are really into the base game and so they’ve made a game that’s only going to be of interest for people who really into the base game. Imagine if they made L4D3 but each player had a specific type of mini-game they’d occasionally have to do, and if any of your team died you got to eat a big mouthful of shit. That’s basically the Alien Swarm: Reactive drop experience. A great game for those who really want a 4 player co-op top-down shooter that requires coordination, but a bad game for those who don’t have 3 friends with those interests. The best I could do was one additional buddy, and he kept dying which meant that I slowly lost the will to live. After clearing out 3 of the boss enemies, avoiding infection, fighting through the whole map and then rushing our way back out, I died at the final hurdle because the extraction objective wanted to make things more exciting by taking even fucking longer than it usually did. Oh and did I mention my buddy kept dying because you can’t see shit in most of the areas of each map, as everything is made deliberately dark so that the game can have a spooky horror vibe. Either find 3 patient friends with plenty of co-op top-down shooter experience, or crank the brightness up and hope for the best. Either way, it’s an acquired taste much like that freakish Corsican cheese that’s filled with maggots and mould. You might have a great time and I wouldn’t think less of you for doing so, but we didn’t and that’s why we cut our losses.

And that’s the trio, each of which I’m proud to say are in different genres and from developers (or modders) of varying pedigree. Unlike the slightly meaty promise at the start, I didn’t end up HATING all of them and in fact consider Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop to be fairly impressive in it’s own right. As for the other two however, they can eat my big fat arse as they are fucking garbage and I am mad that people are inadvertently still paying real money for them. Of the three, I’d give Alien Swarm: RD a tentative chance of redemption as we all love modders really, but the other two should be avoided at all costs. Especially Redout: Space Assault as the developers really should know bloody better than to shit out such a woeful and half-assed game. If you disagree with my take on the worst Starfox clone I’ve ever had the misfortune to play, then get on your bike. At least Big Mutha Truckers 2 was trying (albeit failing) to be entertaining and to offer something a bit different. It had heart, if not only brains or intelligently designed gameplay. Redout: Space ASSault is the definition of a bland, boring, ambitionless, uncreative, tedious gaming experience. They couldn’t even be bothered to avoid repeating the boss fights. Fuck that game. I did hate it, and Big Mutha Truckers 2 was a Big Mutha Pile of Poo (don’t complain about this petty and childish insult, it’s exactly the level of dialogue and writing from that game) even if it’s not quite so reprehensible because intention matters. In conclusion, Redout: Space Assault is fucking woeful, Big Mutha Truckers 2 is a Mutha-Trucking disappointment and Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop is just a bit of a pain in the backside.

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Quick Note: As of the time of writing (July 2023), Killzone: Liberation has multiple levels locked behind a free DLC delivery service that no longer works. While there are workarounds available, you’ll either need to locate the files and manually install them on your modded PSP or download a specific pre-patched .iso to enable them to work on an emulator of your choice. Unfortunately emulators cannot easily install the DLC due to a bespoke patching system that was used, so if you want to play the final chapter you’ll need to do some digging ahead of time. Alternatively honest and law abiding citizens can buy the shiny new remaster

Killzone Liberation is a great and relatively unique game in the sense that it manages to feel like a standard Killzone game without taking place in a first person perspective. Instead of following in the steps of other FPS games on the PSP (such as Syphon Filter), the developers at Guerrilla decided to transport the series into a cover-based isometric shooter with generally positive results. Despite only having one thumbstick to play with, the control is by and large perfectly acceptable and camera issues are rare in spite of the scale of the game which features multiple large (for the system) levels. The game itself is set two months after the original Killzone and has you controlling Templar, a captain in the ISA (Interplanetary Strategic Alliance) and one man army in the fight against the Helghast forces on Vekta who are still attempting to subjugate the planet in spite of their losses in the first game. The use of recurring characters and the way that the game is closely tied in to the rest of the series is somewhat surprising for a portable “spin-off” game, even if the plot is largely nothing special. Essentially the Helghast are the baddies, as denoted by the fact that they have nazi-motiffs, brooding commanders and seemingly innumerable hordes of grunts that scream about how they want you to suffer or that they’re going to slaughter you. As for the ISA, they’re a fairly generic sci-fi America with the standard issue amount of quips and allusions to “liberty” and “freedom”. Fans of the series will probably be aware of how these concepts were toyed around with in the other killzone games and media, but for the purposes of Liberation they are played entirely straight which is honestly fine. I can’t imagine anyone picked this game up for the plot, myself included.

Instead most people picked it up for two reasons, the gameplay and the visuals both of which have been heavily refined and hold up pretty well (hence why it got a re-release on PS4 and PS5 relatively recently). Starting with the visuals, they’re surprising good for a handheld system and are light-years ahead of anything that the DS could put out and frankly are seemingly beyond the reach of even the 3DS which came out years later. Now I did play this on an emulator (as my PSP is in my parent’s attic in a box somewhere), but even allowing for the various upscaling and AA that was applied it is still a visually impressive game that seems more akin to a PS2 release than a PS1 game. While some finer details are lacking, the game is able to successfully present a variety of different enemy types and environments while still packing CGI cutscenes and in-engine cutscenes that look great. There are also plenty of nice touches including splash effects for water, glass shattering during shoot-outs and even the visual cues related to the awareness level of enemies (yellow eye-visors for oblivious, orange for alert but hunting, red for actively pursuing you). Guerrilla have always been capable for showcasing the potential visual fidelity that various PlayStation systems have offered and Killzone: Liberation is no exception to the rule.

And while I’ve personally found Guerrilla games to be a bit hit-or-miss in the past, I can confirm that Killzone: Liberation is my own personal exception to the rule as it is in my opinion the most enjoyable game in the series. The reason for this is simple, the isometric gameplay system they’ve adopted is punishing but at the same time highly engaging. As much as I yelled at this damn game and cursed the various people who worked on it, I can’t deny that everything just clicks in a way that so many other developers can’t match. Templar is a one man army, but he is always on the brink of getting overrun and a snap judgement will either save his bacon or condemn him to an abrupt and inglorious end (and you to the load checkpoint screen). The reason for this is simple, you don’t have that much health or that much ammo at any given time and the various Helghast you’re up against are specialised and quite often gluttons for punishment. Even the simple soldier can be a pain to deal with as you’ll need to use up a whole magazine to deal with them, assuming you land your shots (which is finnicky) and that they aren’t in cover and that you don’t get flanked by their comrades in arms. There are also so many types of enemy to deal with that they’re constantly getting introduced throughout the game, all the way up to the midpoint of the final (non-DLC) chapter. In addition, the game utilises elevation and cover to block shots meaning that you’ll need to make use of the R-shoulder button to duck lest you get shredded by the barrage of enemies. These enemies also make use of cover, alongside strategic use of the elevation and melee attacks which knock you on your ass.

Once you add in the boss fights, the dastardly way that the developers just love to screw with you sometimes (e.g. putting bombs in the hitherto safe supply crates) and the fact that the various enemy types can synchronise in brutal fashion you have a real fight on your hands. To give a brief example, the game often likes to send one or two regular goons your way and a specialised trooper (such as a sniper or shotgunner). If you focus on the specialised trooper you’ll get mown down by the regular goons, if you focus on the goons you’ll get flushed out of cover by the specialist or just killed near instantly depending on their type. Oh and there are turrets, mines, tripwires and the occasional vehicle to deal with as well. The Helghast are legion and you’re still trying to be the “One Man Army” for better or (frequently) for worse.

Well that’s not entirely true, one part of Killzone: Liberation that I wasn’t expecting but is actually mainly well handled is the fact that multiple missions have you teaming up with another character from the first game. There are a handful of one-off “buddies” as the game calls them, such as a general packing a revolver and some scaredy-cat VIPs that don’t do much, but you spend around half the game working with either Rico or Luger who put in serious effort to steal the spotlight from you. Rico has a machine gun and a propensity to call the enemy ASSHOLE (seriously he says it almost every time he starts shooting a new enemy), while Luger has a crossbow that shoots explosive bolts. Just be careful as your buddies are so keen to be the hero that they’ll shoot you if you get in the way of their shots and will take damage if they run in front of you while you’re shooting. They’ll even get pissy and punch you if you hurt them too much, apparently oblivious to the fact that there’s a game over screen tied to your health bar.

Both have their own health pool that can be replenished via a healing syringe, and if they’re reduced to 0hp then you’ll need to give them a shot in the arm within 20 seconds or they’ll die FOREVER. Fortunately these syringes are fairly plentiful and so you don’t really need to worry about their health, unless they get stuck directly in front of a turret or are getting bullied by the shield-toting melee Helghast enemy type. They’re invaluable for splitting the enemies attention and can hold their own, while essentially doubling your damage output. Unfortunately they’re never there when you really need them (like in the boss fights) but I guess the developers wanted you to work for that taste of sweet, sweet, victory. One last thing worth noting is that they can also be bossed around via an orders overlay, which lets you tell them to focus on a specific enemy, use their ability to make the level proceed (C4 for Rico, grappling hook for Luger) or take cover in a specific spot. You rarely have to use this, but it can be very helpful to have them distract certain enemies while you flank for an easy kill.

And those kills can be made even easier if you opt to gather the optional collectibles or attempt the various side-challenges which unlock as you play through the campaign. The collectibles themselves are fairly straight forward, each level has a set amount of cold hard CA$H hidden within it in the form of suitcases that are tucked away in wooden crates. As you gather more of them, your total funding increases and more weapons unlock alongside upgraded versions of those weapons should you earn enough. You don’t need to dip into your funding to unlock new weapons or upgrades as they’re unlocked automatically once you’ve reached a certain level of funding. As for the side-challenges, these provide “points” which are used in a similar manner to unlock various abilities such as the ability to hold extra grenades or to have double the amount of HP. These abilities can be very powerful, although your first playthrough of the campaign will be relatively normal as you can only gain these points through challenges which are tied to clearing each act of the campaign. As such you’ll need to have cleared most of the acts to unlock the most overpowered abilities.

And once you’ve cleared most the acts, the game has a few more bits and pieces of content with which to incentivise you to keep playing. Unfortunately the multiplayer servers and community don’t really exist anymore, so the multiplayer mode isn’t much of a draw these days. To my knowledge you will still be able to take part in local co-op though, presuming you can find someone else with a PSP and a copy of the game. This will let you play through any missions you’ve completed in the single player campaign, but with a buddy. Of course both of these modes are still a factor if you pick up the remaster (which is “free” on PS+ platinum) so those looking for the most content might want to take a look at that version. For everyone else, you’ve got the Jukebox to enjoy the OST, the collectibles mentioned above and uh… that’s about it. Therein lies the flaw with the bold new online age that the 7th console generation (and to a lesser extent the 6th) ushered in, namely that a lot of Killzone: Liberation content just doesn’t work any-more. You can’t get the last act of the game (and there are only 4 in the release version), you can’t play online and co-op is more tricky to utilise. As such those of you who stumble upon the game at a very low price for the original PSP version are advised that you’ll be missing a good chunk of the game. Fortunately what’s there is still great and I’d recommend it to any player looking for a challenge, but be aware that you’re not getting the full experience as the developers had intended.

To conclude, Killzone: Liberation is a fun but challenging Isometric cover-art shooter that is a great showcase of what the PSP is capable of. While many of these capabilities have died out, what remains is a visually impressive and faithful adaption of the Killzone series to a handheld system. There are myriad enemies and features contained within the single player experience, and between the (admittedly short) campaign, the collectibles and the challenge modes there is still a healthy amount of content on offer. No doubt the best experience would be to play the remaster, but to my knowledge you can’t own that on disc so as the industry marches on that version of the game will be lost to time. For those of you who don’t own a PS4/PS5 and a PS+ subscription, I would have no issues recommending the base game with one important caveat – this game can be unforgiving and you should be prepared for a short but brutal campaign.

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