Since the launch of the Playstation 3 (PS3), the Xbox 360 has had two huge games that the PS3 simply couldn’t match: “Halo 3” and “Gears of War”. Has the release of “Killzone 2” given Sony its Halo?

“Killzone 2,” developed by Guerilla Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, was released on February 27 to much critical acclaim.

In the game, you play as Sev, one of the four members of Alpha Squad, and fight against the Helghast, which immediately remind of you Nazis.

Themes of fascism and the general struggles of war are presented well enough, but the story is nothing to write home about.

Killzone 2 is a generic first person shooter in almost every sense. Every aspect of the game play can be traced back to one first person shooter or another. The main aiming aspect of the game, iron sights are taken straight from “Call of Duty;” the recharging shield is straight from Halo.

With that said, first person shooters generally don’t thrive off of innovation and Killzone 2 can’t be docked for imitating the leaders in the genre, especially considering it executes with near perfection every important facet of a first person shooter.

The weapons are balanced, unique and fun to use. The level design is superb, with varied environments that give good opportunity to use the game’s cover system, which activates any time you’re near anything that can be crouched under. In addition to the cover system, the game has some of the best pacing of any in the genre. Every subsequent mission and objective is more intense, more engaging, and more “epic,” culminating into one of the best ending levels of any first person shooter.

The games artistic design also impresses; the Helghast look sufficiently scary and the levels are incredibly bleak with a distinct war stricken look.

Multiplayer is another important aspect of Killzone 2. The guys at Guerilla Games have definitely given Killzone 2 some legs. There are many unlockable skills and weapons, and the game rewards players who continue to play months after the launch of the game. In fact, it can be somewhat difficult to begin playing multiplayer if you didn’t start when the game first launched; there is a learning curve.

The most talked about feature of Killzone 2, however, are the visuals. They truly are magnificent to behold. This is the closest any game has ever gotten to photo-realism, other than Crysis on the PC, and it will be a while before the benchmark of Killzone 2 can be passed onto consoles.