WORLD EXCLUSIVE: First Killzone 2 Hands-On
Thursday, July 12, 2007 6:23 AM
By N'Gai Croal
After two years of intense skepticism (see our next post for a more thorough airing of the backstory), Tuesday night's first showings of Sony Computer Entertainment and Guerrilla Games' Killzone 2 to journalists have generally produced extremely positive reactions. But having cleared that first high hurdle, the next question everyone wants to know is: how does it play? We were fortunate enough to be the first to play Killzone outside of the folks at SCE and Guerrilla, so allow us to give you our hands-on impressions of Killzone 2's gameplay elements; our close-up look at the game's visuals, along with some exclusive first details on the title's design choices and story elements, will follow shortly.
Once our intruder landing vehicle hit the ground, it was time to go to work on what we were informed was the third level of Killzone 2. We immediately took refuge behind a berm, hit L1 to drop into a crouch, shouldered our standard-issue ISA assault rifle and started shooting at our Helghast opponents. Pushing in R3 on the right analog stick gave us the iron sight view through the assault rifle's scope--which, when we informed our Sony and Guerrilla hosts was the aspect of the demo which had most impressed us, gave them a bit of pause, followed by minor hilarity, until we explained ourselves further. It's not that there aren't several other impressive aspects of the game. It's just that the focus blur on the outside of the rifle scope, the scope's green tint and curved glass feel, and the green laser dot that indicates where your bursts of ammo should land--all combine for a wonderfully immersive view of the game that sucked us in both as spectators and active participants.
As we cautiously picked our way through the ground combat's opening moments, game director Mathijs de Jonge gave us the first official explanation of the game's cover system, which many of our observant peers picked up on during the Tuesday evening previews. You can always simply crouch behind obstacles, as you would in any other shooter, but Guerrilla has added something extra. When you hit L2 near cover, the game puts you into cover mode. Once you're in cover, you can use the left analog stick to pop up, lean left or lean right to take precise aim at your Helghan enemies. Alternatively, you can blindfire by simply pulling the trigger (R2) on your weapon. You're completely safe behind non-erodable cover as long as the enemy is on the same plane as you; if they've got the high ground, they can hit you if they have the right angle. We didn't ask Guerrilla directly whether the use of cover would be all-but-mandatory, as with Gears of War, or optional; regardless, it adds a tactical element to the game that fits seamlessly with the Killzone mythos. Overall, the cover mechanic works extremely well, without ever having to switch the gamer into a third-person view as does Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Vegas, and we won't be surprised when we see a number of Guerrilla's peers paying homage to borrowing stealing this idea after they get their hands on it.
We also appreciated Guerrilla's decision to go with a minimal amount of screen clutter. Right now, all you'll see onscreen is the aiming reticule and an ammo counter. Don't expect to see the ammo counter in the final product, however. Guerrilla wants to eliminate the HUD entirely by putting the ammo readout on the weapons themselves, as certain other games do with some of their weapons. (One thing we missed from the first Killzone was the visual countdown system that let you see how long your grenade had been "cooked" before you threw it--right now, hitting R1 just throws the grenades with a not-particularly-interesting animation--so we're crossing our fingers hoping that they'll bring the Killzone 1 grenades back.) The health system is similar to games like King Kong and Gears of War: you can take a few shots without any problem, but once you start taking a significant amount of damage, the screen shifts to a striking black and white filter, warning you to take cover. It's simple, it's distinctive, and it works.
The other moment worth highlighting from our hands-on time was our confrontation with the level's mini-boss, an armored Helghan heavy gunner who shares a passing resemblance--and an equally high intimidation factor--with the Big Daddy enemies in Irrational Games' BioShock. Like the mini-bosses of old, there's a trick to killing him, which is to shoot the energy pack on his back until it explodes. You can try to flank him while your AI-controlled squadmate Rico engages him from the front, or you can shoot his visor, which causes him to turn around, briefly exposing his energy pack to the rat-tat-tat of your assault rifle. We couldn't kill him to save our lives, but it was a pulse-quickening enough firefight that we gave it a good ten or so consecutive attempts before finally asking de Jonge to take care of him so that we could continue on with the demo. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get much further than that before our hands-on time came to an end.
If we have a single reservation right now, it's about the level of recoil that Guerrilla has implemented on the weapons. We know that Guerrilla has months to go before they have to bear down and properly tune the game; still, we found ourselves babying the aiming reticule in order to compensate for the amount of drift from each burst of fire. We know from the time that we've spent with the folks from Guerrilla in the past that they're interested in a sense of heightened realism when it comes to their weapons--that's why there aren't any laser guns or energy blades--and we're certainly willing to attribute this to our poor aim or easily panicked demeanor when confronted by waves of armed Helghast. But we suspect that Halo-weaned masses will want to be able to hold down their triggers just a wee bit longer before the reticule starts rising. Nevertheless, we were thoroughly impressed with our single-player hands-on time with Killzone, particularly the first-person cover mechanic, which we provides an excellent tactical option for more deliberate gamers like ourselves, who prefer to hang back rather than rush ahead. If the company continues to design enemy encounters around the optional use of cover, it bodes well for Killzone 2's future depth and replayability.
See our follow-up post about the game's visuals, design and story here.
Filed Under: Scoop, Coming Interactions
WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Expanded Details on Killzone 2
Thursday, July 12, 2007 6:28 AM
By N'Gai Croal
Has any young franchise ever labored under so many freighted expectations? Long before Guerrilla Games' completed Killzone in 2004, back when word was slowly was starting to leak about a mysterious first-person shooter from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe named Kin, that same grapevine carried word that Sony was calling this shooter its "Halo killer." Sony credibly denied this, saying that the frenzy was being whipped up instead by gossipy game journalists, yet the damn-near-impossible-to-live-up-to label stuck, as much from the desires of shooter-bereft PlayStation 2 owners as from the derision of Halo fanatics. And while the end result had several compelling attributes--its riveting opening movie; its muted, blown out color palette; its painterly art direction; and its deliberate evocation of major wars and conflicts of the twentieth century within a futuristic setting--the first Killzone was ultimately much too ambitious for the PS2 to handle, resulting in one of the best mediocre games we've ever had fun playing.
Next, when Killzone 2's mind-blowing E3 2005 trailer turned out to be a computer-generated movie, the hearts of all but the stoutest of Sony fanboys hardened, with many predicting that Guerrilla would never be able to live up to its own hype. In the wake of that perceived betrayal, neither 2006's well-received PSP installment (Killzone: Liberation) nor an intriguingly promising but not-quite-there-yet technical demonstration of Killzone 2 multiplayer's physics system did much to sway journalists' opinion. But through it all, SCE and Guerrilla kept pushing for what they firmly believed they were capable of achieving. And when the "Killzone 2: Mission Accomplished" slide came up at the end of the 20-minute demo, followed by loud, sustained applause from the skeptical crowd of journalists, the gesture transformed itself from a "F--- you" to a statement of fact: for the moment, Guerrilla's promise had been realized.
When we arrived at SCE's Santa Monica studios for our world exclusive first hands-on session (see here for our report), we were escorted into a conference room to sit down with Guerrilla managing director Hermen Hulst, producer Steven ter Heide, and game director Mathijs de Jonge. We began with another playthrough of the level with de Jonge at the controls and ter Heide manning a keyboard plugged into the PS3 development kit, periodically slowing down or pausing the action so that we could discuss a particular detail.
First, Hulst wanted to show us not only that everything from the level's introductory cinematic to the actual ground combat was in-engine, but also to note the amount of detail in the level. So we paused the game with the intruder landing vehicle still airborne so that de Jonge could move the camera through the clouds and all the way down to the city square below--seamlessly. There were no tricks, the entire level was there, already loaded into memory so that we could eventually enjoy a seamless transition from the cinematic to live gameplay. As we zoomed back out to the clouds to resume the demo, we asked de Jonge about the three tower-like ships hovering above the cloud cover at the beginning of both the trailer and the demo. He informed us that those were the Vektan cruisers, from which the ISA is launching its invasion of Helghan. He added that the game itself will begin in media res, with the invasion of Helghan already in progress. The majority of the Helghan citizenry will have already fled their homes--a convenient explanation for the generally empty cityscapes many shooters generally feature, de Jonge acknowledged--but the game's opening will provide further details on that particular story element.
As he pointed out the game's Mohawk-sporting main character--stressing that there are more polygons in a single character model in Killzone 2 than in an entire level from Killzone 1--it finally clicked that we would no longer be playing as Jan Templar, the hero of both Killzone and Killzone: Liberation. The new lead's name is Sev, a veteran of the Legion, which are the ISA's equivalent of Special Forces. Only Rico returns from the first two games for a major role. Hakha is nowhere to be found, but Lugar will make a small appearance, while Evelyn from Liberation will serve as you point of contact on the cruiser. Gamers will periodically return to one of the cruisers between missions, which will serve as a hub of sorts.
When de Jonge hit the ground and began playing the game, Hulst said that they added the brief checkpoint-style pause at that point specifically for the demo so that journalists could see for themselves that the game is real. The final game will have a seamless transition from cinematics to combat. As de Jong continued to lay waste to the Helghast, Hulst and ter Heide explained the game's extensive post-processing system, which allows for a more subtle film grain effect than the one in the first game, along with blur and depth of field. What was most striking was when they turned the post-processing effects off: the level looked almost completely different, as if it were taking place in the mid-afternoon. It's clear that while Guerilla's painterly art style is still very much in effect, it's not just the PS3 that makes the planet of Helghan look different from that of Vecta; the designers have art directed them differently as well.
When ter Heide turned the post-processing effects back on, we finally understood the uneasy feeling that the level evoked within us; their careful real-time calibration of the game's light, shadow and color--"we replace the sunnier colors with darker, grittier colors," says ter Heide--combined with the art direction and level design to create the oppressive gloom that they wanted. "The planet is meant to be hostile," said de Jonge. "The desaturated colors suit it." We hope that SCE and Guerrilla eventually release some video footage showing the difference that their post-processing effects make, because you have to see it to believe it. And from what sources in the know tell us, it's a similar special sauce that has Activision and Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare looking similarly hot.
The cover system that we praised in our hands-on post was coded by the same programmer who handled the cover mechanics in the PSP game Killzone: Liberation, showing that the franchise's detour to handhelds provided some additional benefits. They switched to a third-person perspective (that's just a developer trick; the final game will be first-person only) so that we could see all of the cover animations, by way of explaining that the cover system was designed by first animating Sev from a third-person view, then tweaking the look of it from a first-person perspective. "We expected it to be complicated," said Hulst, "but our programmer took care of it pretty quickly."
One of the things that made us believe in Guerrilla's potential, even when it hadn't yet been fully realized, was the company's attention to detail. Looking up above, we see cables that look like power lines or telephone lines, swaying in the wind. (There's practically not a jagged line to be found on the power lines, or any other lines, for that matter; we're told it's because Killzone 2 is using the Cell's SPUs and the RSX graphics chip to achieve 4x full-screen anti-aliasing.) There's a glow decal that happens when bullets make contact; right now it's applied to all weapons, but they're planning to dial it back and only have it apply to certain weapons. Even the tracer fire seems specific to Killzone 2, as if it has a slight upward arc the further it gets from the muzzle. When you kill a Helghast, a red pool of blood not only forms to indicate that he's dead, but it also turns yellowish over time. The dramatic light and shadow in the previous screenshot of the Helghast vaulting over a rail, which has been the subject of much chatter online, comes from the game's multiple dynamic lights. There's even a complete Helghan alphabet, seen on signage throughout the level, which was created by the game's concept designers. And while we don't think it will replace Klingon anytime soon, it's still evidence of how much specificity the people at Guerrilla want to bring to the Killzone universe now that the console they're working on finally matches their ambition.
From the time that we've spent with the folks at Guerrilla following Tuesday night's media preview and yesterday's exclusive hands-on session, the impression that we've gotten is that they're proud of their achievement, while recognizing that they still have many miles to go. But what Guerrilla managing director Hulst, ter Heide and de Jonge seemed happiest about is the excitement that the extraordinarily positive reaction has created among the rest of the team back home. We're happy that they're happy, but we'll be even happier when they finish the game--so that we can judge the finished product for ourselves.
