E3 '07: Killzone 2 Update

There's likely no other title in the PlayStation 3 library that's been the object of more scrutiny than Killzone 2. The sequel to the promising but flawed PlayStation 2 shooter dropped jaws when a trailer rocked the house at Sony's press conference at E3 2005. The flashy trailer, for the just-announced PlayStation 3, offered a tantalizing taste of the upcoming system's power. The years that followed saw the game and its flashy trailer dissected, with charges that it was just a CG movie that wasn't indicative of what the actual game would be like. Sony's blackout on the game in the months that followed didn't help shake that impression that what had been shown might not be actual gameplay. The doubts have continued to grow in the months leading to E3 as speculation on just what would be shown ran amok. A leaked screenshot and the ensuing Internet soothsaying on what a lone screen foretold of the upcoming game seemed to support the negative view of the game. However, Sony and Guerilla reps made a compelling case for why Killzone 2 might actually realize the promise of its original trailer at a press event on Tuesday evening.

Journalists assembled at a local eatery in Santa Monica and were broken up into smaller groups, which were shuttled into a small theater. Once inside, those in attendance were treated to about 15 minutes of a controlled demo through a level in the game, which kicked off with the air sequence shown in the first trailer. The frenzied tear through the streets and buildings of a war-torn city was a slick showcase of what Guerrilla's been up to all this time.

As we mentioned, the mission began with a military maneuver that gets off to a shaky start when airborne troop carriers take some hits and crash into a war-torn city. The level then focuses on you and the remainder of your squad as you make your way up to an arc tower, which is essentially a lightning-based weapon that is currently blasting all of your friendly aircraft out of the sky with an extremely satisfying zap. The very rough journey sends you in and out of buildings, as well as pits you against mobs of enemies on an impressively packed battlefield. Though the mission is rough on the soldiers, it's perfect for showing off Killzone 2's gameplay.

While we weren’t allowed to actually get our hands on the game and play it for ourselves, watching a level of it in action definitely revealed some details. Like most modern first-person shooters, Killzone 2 is very light on head-up display elements. When you’re just moving around and not firing, there won’t be any HUD at all. The game has you stand still to regenerate health, a technique Call of Duty helped make popular, and if you start taking too much damage, the game drops into black and white, giving you a clear sign that you need to find cover. You can carry two weapons and swap between them at any time. Most of the weapons we saw appeared to be a variety of fully automatic weapons, though a rocket launcher was also shown. You can also toss grenades, and from the looks of things, lean around corners.

Rather than give every weapon a scope, the game has an aim function, which causes you to look down the sights of your weapon. Some of the guns have standard rifle sights, but the rifle at the start of the level had a green lens on it that projected a dot to use for proper aiming. Because these were fully automatic weapons, the aiming wasn’t always 100 percent accurate. All in all, the game came across as nicely hectic, delivering the chaos that you’d expect from the battlefield.

The game's graphics, easily one of its most scrutinized elements, are coming together in spectacular fashion. The characters models were high-poly, offering sharp detail and promising animation, with a lot of really nice gun movement for reloading and aiming. The environment was equally sharp with an impressive sense of scale and interactivity. As we saw in the GDC teaser for the game, you can blow the hell out of a variety of objects in the game, and depending on what the objects made out of, the damage will vary. However, what sold us on the visuals in the game were such things as the stellar lighting, which was shown off in a variety of ways. We saw subtle touches, ranging from the heat glow given off of metal when it's shot at, to the way muzzle flashes from you and your enemies light up the areas around you. The lightning arcs that lit up the sky in the game managed to be both dramatic and subtle with light and shadow dancing around in dramatic fashion. Some of the explosions, especially the one that ended the demo, look really great. Other effects, such as the use of depth of field to give a slight blur to the weapon in your hands while the distance remains razor sharp or the various animations shown by the other troops, help set Killzone 2 apart from other shooters. Though the game was still a work in progress, we were impressed by how well the level ran, despite the frenetic battle taking place.

One of the highlights of the experience was the game's audio, which provided a strong accompaniment to the action. Music tracks mixed in and out of the cacophony of gunfire, explosions, enemy death cries, and crazy rhetoric spewing from a P.A. system in the city. The weapons fire was meaty and satisfying with a winning variety of tones that pulled you in to the experience. Better still were the various gradients of sound that were affected by various elements in the level, such as distance and debris.

Based on what we've seen, Killzone 2 seems poised to live up to the lofty promise of its debut on the PS3. The gameplay looks solid and immersive, with some very cool bits of polish in the form of animation, physics, and interactivity that enhanced the familiar first-person action in some interesting ways. The visuals are extremely impressive and rank among the best we've seen on the hardware to date. Aside from the obligatory high-poly models and vast environments, which we frankly expect out of a PlayStation 3 game, Killzone 2's lighting and particle systems are looking great. Finally, the game's audio and the awesome kick it gives to all the action, is headed in a positive direction that should give Killzone 2 a cool, immersive vibe. Does this mean the game is the be-all and end-all of first-person shooters? Given that development is ongoing, it's tough to make that call at the moment. What we will say though is that Guerilla appears to be doing a lot of things right in Killzone 2. We're anxious to get our hands on a playable version of the game and see how it all handles ourselves, but what we've seen makes us think development is going well.