Killzone Updated Hands-On

Currently in development at Guerrilla (formerly Lost Boys), Killzone is a futuristic first-person shooter that will boast both an extensive single-player campaign and online support for up to 16 players when it's released in November. We recently spent some time with the latest preview build of the game, which comprised a significant chunk of the single-player campaign as well as a number of "battlefield" multiplayer options that we were able to play against bots.

A tutorial it might be, but the first level is no walk in the park.

The single-player campaign kicked off with the same tutorial level that we played previously at both E3 and G4techTV's G-Phoria event earlier this year. The tutorial did a good job of reacquainting us with the game's controls as we navigated and eventually retreated from a network of trenches and bunkers that were being advanced upon by Helghast forces--whose glowing "eyes" made them easy to distinguish from our allies (for the most part). We got to kill plenty of the advancing enemies before retreating, of course, and one of the first things we noticed is that the armor worn by the Helghast was significantly more effective than that worn by their cannon-fodder counterparts in most other first-person shooters. Although the enemies' blood could clearly be seen after every shot, we found that the Helghast were able to sustain quite a few hits to the body before they'd even think about showing off Killzone's rag-doll physics. Headshots, thankfully, proved to be much more effective and were definitely worth the effort, especially since they also helped to preserve valuable ammo.

Our own body armor wasn't to be sniffed at either, mind you, because you'll find that you're able to sustain at least six or seven shots from an enemy rifle (or even a mortar) before you're unceremoniously taken to the "Failed" screen and given the option to quit or try again from either the start of your current level or from the last checkpoint that you reached. What's more, if you manage to avoid enemy fire for more than a few seconds at any point, you'll notice that you recover health at quite a significant rate (if you've played Halo, the implementation is very similar to Master Chief's shield). Your health won't always return to 100 percent, of course, so you'll need to find first aid kits for that. However, the system does ensure that you shouldn't ever have to head into a battle knowing that the next hit you sustain will be your last. Also familiar to fans of Halo will be Killzone's weapons system, which allows you to carry any three (as opposed to Halo's two) weapons simultaneously, along with a handful of grenades. Because ammunition is often in short supply, you'll be forced to change your weapons often by using whatever you're able to procure from the bodies of your slain enemies and fallen comrades--both of which will be plentiful.

To say that fallen comrades will be in plentiful supply isn't necessarily true, actually, since your actions will invariably determine how many members of your current, generic group (as opposed to when you fight alongside other central characters) survive any given encounter with the enemy. You'll quickly learn, as awful as it sounds, that your best bet is often to have your allies do as much of the killing as possible. That way you'll not only save your ammo, but also, should any of the good guys get killed, you'll be able to help yourself to their ammo as well. If you do all or most of the work yourself and none of your comrades die, your only reward will be to progress to the next area with less ammo, since your allies will often opt to stay behind to "secure the area" while you scout ahead.

You'll occasionally be able to use fixed gun emplacements against the Helghast.

Whether or not the artificial intelligence in our preview version of Killzone is representative of what will be featured in the finished game remains to be seen, but right now the best word to describe the behavior of non-player characters in the game (and, in particular, your comrades) would be "inconsistent." We've seen a lone, gung ho private gunned down ahead of us as he foolishly charged into a room where enemies were hiding, and at the other end of the scale, we've witnessed a group of three soldiers hiding and doing their best to look busy while basically doing nothing to aid us as we went up against an armored Helghast vehicle and all of the enemies that accompanied it. Allies wandering across and even taking up their own positions in our line of sight in the middle of a gunfight have also proved to be a nuisance on occasion, although they did make for pretty good human shields while we were reloading. Killzone doesn't claim to be a squad-based shooter in the same vein as something like the Rainbow Six series, but almost every level we played felt like it would have benefited from us having the ability to issue even the most basic commands to those who were trying to help us out.