Pong and Beyond

834th played so far

Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Playstation 2
Year of Release: 2003
Developer: Namco USA
Publisher: Namco

Kill Switch really is one of those generic titles that does tell you what it’s about, but feels interchangeable with about twenty other games at the same time. Everything about it screams generic-ness – it’s a cover shooter, you’re fighting terrorists, even the cover is desert brown. Right from the start, my question is why? Why Kill Switch?

Our Thoughts

Why indeed? It’s not the best cover shooter, the Gears of War series proves as much (full disclosure – I worked on the spin-off Gears Pop! title, although I never got near the main franchise, and you could apply the same argument even to Mass Effect 2, though perhaps not as strongly). I’ve put the story down as terrorists – the environment certainly seem to cover that – but it’s vague enough that there’s not much there beyond standard story beats. The reason it’s here is not because it’s the best, but because it’s the first -this is what started the modern cover shooters that became such a big thing.

Taken on its own, Kill Switch is a standard military shooter with a cover system that’s rather middle of the road – while a good attempt, the controls don’t feel quite right yet. A large part of it is that the controls are pretty flaky. It’s hard to get the aim sensitivity right, which made the whole thing aggravating, with missed shots for seemingly no reason. Even the move controls suffer though, as crossing some wooden planks took three goes because the controls didn’t let me do it normally.

It’s not worth the aggravation, especially as the story is so paper thin. It’s all standard, I never felt it offered anything special and it mostly bored me. It’s not worth bothering for either.

Final Thoughts

I think this is where the definition of having played a game comes in. I have no desire to finish it and think it’s weaker than what came after it, but being the first, it feels important to know. It feels like a good enough reason to include it, but it’s a game to try, not to finish. Keep it in mind for what it did, not what it is now.