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Kill.Switch (PS2) Hard - 18 "The Real Thing" (Level 5-2)

2,248 views · Published 1 October 2011 · 7:45 · Indexed 1 November 2026

Channel: WhiteKhakis · 2011 · Gaming

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...and they ain't kidding!
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You are no longer controlling a bad-guy or a lady-friend controlling the main guy! Now YOU'RE controlling the main guy! (Yay~!)

This level is HARD. Enemies are everywhere and continually reinforce at the start! You'll have to be moving constantly to clear people out and stay under cover!

That grenade I throw at the start... it goes under that truck there to clear out soldiers hiding UNDER it. Seriously. Also, watch out for the dude shooting out of the truck on the right side - he can floor you in an instant.

3:30 - Yeah, running in like a psychopath was probably a bad idea. 

After clearing out the last room, you may want to look around harder for a health pack - I didn't find one and regretted it next level. (You do NOT reheal at the start of a new area.)


I'm recording this game as I went through it, though, I'm only putting up when I successfully complete a level. What this means is, a lot of the time I'll have the start of the level practiced well (if it's a difficult one) and the rest of it is by ear. (Sometimes the majority is by ear!)

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Kill.Switch is a third person shooter with the interesting distinction of being the first video game of its kind to make cover-based gameplay its driving feature. You may have seen this style in the Gears of War series where it has been popularised.

Apart from that, it's a fairly average shooter, although the AI can be challenging and makes use of cover as well.

One thing that caught my eye was how they manage health in this game. You can heal by staying away from bullets, like in newer games, but... the game ALSO makes it so that your maximum health goes down with damage, too. (Think of it how fighting game health bars work.) What this means is that you CANT just rush into a situation, drop everybody, and then simply wait and fully heal. You are PUNISHED for foolhardy actions by having a lower potential health. That said, you can fully heal (your maximum health, too) with medkits.

If anyone knows another Shooter that manages health in a way like this, I'd be curious to know!

The weapons in this game are okay... I think the majority of them are real-life weapons, but they all kinda... feel the same. I mean, they sound different and all, but as you're looking at the little HUD image it's kinda hard to tell what's what. And what's more, they all end up performing about the same. Although the crosshairs and firing rate of some may be different.

The other complaint is a more major one: The "fog" in this game is atrocious! Half the time it renders a sniper rifle moot. It's generally better to take out your automatic and have at 'em! Might just be the PS2 version, but it still stinks.

The cover mechanic is done well. I rarely use the blindfire mechanic (which this game introduced) because I found it wasn't worth the loss of ammo. It can be used to scare enemies though. Also, I tried tossing a grenade when up against a wall once, and it didn't work, so I assumed that wasn't possible. Turns out it IS (at least when crouching behing a barrier). I recommend tossing grenades in this way - I really could have used it myself!

All in all, a pretty okay game. It's worth picking up if you like getting games that had a big impact on how newer ones were developed. It is a really short game, though. I imagine a lot more so on "Normal". I chose "Hard". Worth a few bucks for a used copy!
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NOTE: WIDESCREEN IN THIS GAME IS NOT "WIDESCREEN". That is... it doesn't give you extra viewing area on the sides. Instead, it cuts off the top and bottom bits of the 4:3 screen, and zooms in. That's a HUGE loss of visual information! This is why I played in "4:3".

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