Killzone 2 pre-release discussion thread

[tha_con]

I'm disappointed about this. We were told we would get a stable 30 frames.
"30 frames with drops" isnt 30 fps locked.

Don't let the comments fool you. Sure, the game may lose frames here or there, but it generally loses maybe 5 frames at the most, and rarely lasts for more than one to two seconds. On top of that, it happens during rare instances. To stack on top of that, the use of motion blur (and all the action going on) will pretty much make you completely unaware that the frame rate has changed in the slightest.

Anyone commenting on lost frames or anything else was looking for it, and not really playing the game.

 

[Neb]

I really see very little innovation in a destructable environment, especially when it hasn't shown to be particularly ground breaking (as seen in titles like Red Faction, Crysis, or Battlefield: Bad Company). Sure, it's interesting, and it's fun, but it does not 'redefine' the way we play shooters.

You dont really know what you miss until you test such game. I could to a certain point agree though with BF:BC in mind since it has prescripted destruction sequences.

But being able to not only enter front door or back door but also through walls, roofs, create new cover by pulling down vegetation etc. Huge amount of new tactical posibilities opens up as you mold the scene to your taste... and the enemy being aware and using it against you!

You just cant hide behind a tree/wall/objects and think you are safe, it will get cut/destroyed/broken/bent off leaving you "naked". Enemies holding position inside a house? Blow it up, tear the walls down, ram it with your tank or car!

Use debris to throw it around when running out of ammo or just take a piece and create a temporary cover against enemy fire etc etc etc. Until you tested such interactive envornments you really cant imagine what you miss.

That said it isn't a deal breaker becouse a game doesn't have it but to neglect the large positivie impact it has on gameplay is almost ridicolous IMO, especially when it is done with amazing physics.

 

[Neb]

Anyone commenting on lost frames or anything else was looking for it, and not really playing the game.

But there are framerate problems in places. As in B3D such things get noticed since this forum is a technical forum. It doesn't get "hush hushed" regarding other games and I dont see why this game needs to be the exception.

 

[LordNerevar]

I've only noticed framerate drops in the desert level.
Motion blur covers it extremely well.

 

[patsu]

I agree we need to explore destructible landscape in the future.

We are getting there rather slowly now. I think one of the WWII shooters allows you to shoot through wall, R2 has Auger and KZ2 has partially destructible covers. Hope to see how well it works in campaign and MP.

 

[tha_con]

You dont really know what you miss until you test such game. I could to a certain point agree though with BF:BC in mind since it has prescripted destruction sequences.

But being able to not only enter front door or back door but also through walls, roofs, create new cover by pulling down vegetation etc. Huge amount of new tactical posibilities opens up as you mold the scene to your taste... and the enemy being aware and using it against you!

You just cant hide behind a tree/wall/objects and think you are safe, it will get cut/destroyed/broken/bent off leaving you "naked". Enemies holding position inside a house? Blow it up, tear the walls down, ram it with your tank or car!

Use debris to throw it around when running out of ammo or just take a piece and create a temporary cover against enemy fire etc etc etc. Until you tested such interactive envornments you really cant imagine what you miss.

That said it isn't a deal breaker becouse a game doesn't have it but to neglect the large positivie impact it has on gameplay is almost ridicolous IMO, especially when it is done with amazing physics.

Still, that brings up the question: What is different?

You're still placed in an action set piece. You're still going from point to point killing enemies and completing objectives. What exactly has changed? Now you can blow up a wall to grab the brief case instead of going through the door. Nothing has changed about the core gameplay, you're still going from point a, to point b, killing enemies in between.

A first person shooter is quite simply stuck in this stigma, and there is absolutely no way to get around it. You will always carry a gun, have an objective, and kill large amounts of enemies in "kill rooms" through action set pieces.

To say any first person shooter is "samey" or not "innovative" is simply saying you're tired of the genre in general.

Destruction is cool, but what it really boils down to is destruction being the next big gimmick. How great was bullet time in Max Payne when it first released? Fast forward to present day, and how laugh worthy are games that feature "time control"? There is very little room for 'innovation' with a shooter, and essentially it boils down to execution, presentation, and replayability.

But there are framerate problems in places. As in B3D such things get noticed since this forum is a technical forum. It doesn't get "hush hushed" regarding other games and I dont see why this game needs to be the exception.

Who said it needs to be "hush hushed"? I'm simply saying if it is getting talked about in such a manner, it's certainly being blown out of proportion.

Further more, isn't that what the frame rate analasys thread is for in the Technical Discussion? I hardly feel it's necessary to derail this thread when you're talking about a small handful of lost frames during rare instances.

 

[the ignoramus]

I've only noticed framerate drops in the desert level.
Motion blur covers it extremely well.

even still, one can detect framerate dips through the controls.

Spoiler

how does the last level of the game hold up?
I heard that that level is by far the most chaotic in terms of what's being rendered in any given frame.

Salamun Bridge?
The train?

 

[RobertR1]

Still, that brings up the question: What is different?

You're still placed in an action set piece. You're still going from point to point killing enemies and completing objectives. What exactly has changed? Now you can blow up a wall to grab the brief case instead of going through the door. Nothing has changed about the core gameplay, you're still going from point a, to point b, killing enemies in between.

A first person shooter is quite simply stuck in this stigma, and there is absolutely no way to get around it. You will always carry a gun, have an objective, and kill large amounts of enemies in "kill rooms" through action set pieces.

To say any first person shooter is "samey" or not "innovative" is simply saying you're tired of the genre in general.

Destruction is cool, but what it really boils down to is destruction being the next big gimmick. How great was bullet time in Max Payne when it first released? Fast forward to present day, and how laugh worthy are games that feature "time control"? There is very little room for 'innovation' with a shooter, and essentially it boils down to execution, presentation, and replayability.

Destructible environments change the gameplay. Strategies and pacing change dramatically. That alone in a big factor. How much time did you spend with BF:BC MP?

 

[LordNerevar]

even still, one can detect framerate dips through the controls.

Spoiler

how does the last level of the game hold up?
I heard that that level is by far the most chaotic in terms of what's being rendered in any given frame.

Salamun Bridge?
The train?

Didn't notice them in the Bridge.
I just started playing the train level so i can't comment that and the last one.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Don't let the comments fool you. Sure, the game may lose frames here or there, but it generally loses maybe 5 frames at the most, and rarely lasts for more than one to two seconds...
Anyone commenting on lost frames or anything else was looking for it, and not really playing the game.

Yes, we are looking for it If Guerilla are very open about maintaining constant 30 fps and reserving lots of spare SPU time to manage that, and then 30 fps isn't reached, we want to know. Especially when it is perceptible. I'm sure it's no big thing at all regards the game, but the tech aspect of me playing the game sees the framerate drop a bit I start wondering about GG's comments. If the drops weren't perceptible, I wouldn't be questioning them.

That said, they're never going to be 100% honest if it would reflect badly. If they said 'we very rarely drop frames' when everyone else is skipping over the framerate issue, they'd get a bad press because Joe Public hasn't the smarts to understand what exactly that means. If GG had said 'we surpass the framerate of most shooters out there by a long margin' it'd be different.

Back to gameplay, I've just run through the demo a bit more. There is an input lag, but I'm not calling it a bug yet. There's a small delay between pressing R1 and the first bullet getting shot, but that's how it would be unless you were shooting a laser with a touch-sensitive button. I claim good sensitivity here from MIDI. An input lag of 10 ms screws up any keyboard performance, and I've paid good money for a fast soundcard. I'm used to jarring delays and on that scale, the delay from pressing R1 to the gun firing is epic. BUT within the game, it's nothing. It's not the difference between life and death. It's not anything I noticed until I went looking for it. The motion lag I haven't particularly noticed. The aiming issues clearly only are a factor for 'serious' gamers who are used to very different systems. From my POV, the bullet spread is so wild anyway that accurate aiming is neither here nor there! If you line up perfectly exactly on the head from a stationary position on a stationary target, the bullets will going whizzing four directions past it nine times out of ten! I'm no worse waving the gun around in the KZ2 demo than I was in Resistance and I don't find the gun mechanics off-putting at all.

I also found that if you look straight down and walk slowly, you get a kick mechanic that can be used to position explosive canisters around the warehouse. This is a nice touch, and there has been a noteworthy variation in the fights. Though the scripting does bug me. When I first played the demo, I grenaded the two chatting Grunts in the warehouse and thought myself clever that I beat them to the punch. Then I tried sneaking past to no avail. Turns out that on arriving at the warehouse, the are so busy chatting and reading their lines from the auto-cue, they won't pay attention to anything. I stood on the galley and waved, and then jumped off and started some fisticuffs with them (midget that Sev is, I could only really hit an uppercut ). So there's no sneaking or positioning or celverness like that. Just lots of set-pieces, and then some reasonable AI firefights.

Online does sound the business. The classes and variety sounds superb. It's ashame they haven't that aspect in the demo at all.

Also, one game I found a different gun, a high-calibre, low ammo sort of thing. Haven't found it since. Is this available in the right place, or a random drop?

 

[deepbrown]

Right I understand that but how is that feel conveyed? When you move the right analog From point a to point b how is that movement from conveyed on screen on kz2? My experience is that there is a brief delay before I see any motion then some acceleration then movement after the analog has stopped moving. This is the lag everone is talking about. It isn't representative of how aiming a real weapon is like at all.

It's not what everyone is talking about. Have you watched video, or not?

It shows a delay from pressing R1 to shooting. It also shows non-responsiveness when flicking the analogue stick. I get neither of these problems.

Ergo facto - different issues.

 

[tha_con]

Destructible environments change the gameplay. Strategies and pacing change dramatically. That alone in a big factor. How much time did you spend with BF:BC MP?

It hardly changes a game from being more of the same. You're still going from room to room, set piece to set piece, blowing stuff up and killing baddies.

The difference being now you blow a hole in a wall next to the door, instead of going through the door. But you still enter the room, kill all the enemies, and grab whatever object you need to grab to complete that objective and move on to the next mission. Right or wrong?

I mean, that's essentially what people have mentioned in reviews and their comments here. That they feel like they're going from "kill room to kill room", right? From set piece to set piece. This is a stigma of the genre. Nothing can change that.

That said, I think it's time we either created a new thread to continue this discussion, or get back on track talking about KZ2, we don't need comparisons to other titles or more off topic discussion here, we've derailed it enough.

 

[deepbrown]

Well it is a problem with Killzone 2 in that, as I said, the gameplay is very samey, certainly in the levels I have played so far. There is little actual ingenuity required in the tasks being asked of the player, and surprisingly few mechanics (short of the hackneyed old exploding barrels) that see the player using the destructible environments to take down the enemy. There are some great set-pieces of that ilk, mind you, but it's nowhere near the level of interaction you had in Criterion's Black for example. I think the point I'm trying to make is that the surprises this game has are all in the visuals, not in the stuff you actually do.

If the game is only six hours long as some have said I should have it finished by tomorrow and I'll be in a better position to comment more authoratively, but I do have a very strong suspicion that the game's ingenuity is all in the multiplayer mode based on what I played in the beta.



Load stuttering is the most obvious, but this game can drop frames badly in certain areas. The motion blur works well in masking it, but it can't disguise the lowering of response in controls when the frame rate does drop. I'm capturing the whole experience of the single-player game from start to finish and will be producing a frame rate analysis in the next couple of days.

No one said the game is only 6 hours. Most have said 8-10 hours. Enough with the down exaggerating play time with all of these games.

There's plenty of surprises in AI, environments, level design, encounters, gameplay.

 

[deepbrown]

I'm disappointed about this. We were told we would get a stable 30 frames.
"30 frames with drops" isnt 30 fps locked. I'd say that spiel we got about the SPUs and percentages was smoke and mirrors then.

Oh gawd.

 

[Cornsnake]

Destructible environments can add a lot to the gameplay if done well. However, to include it in Killzone 2 trade-offs would probably have to be made. So it's hard to say if it would have made it a better game for it. Lets enjoy games for what they offer, and not for what they could have offered.

 

[tha_con]

Also, one game I found a different gun, a high-calibre, low ammo sort of thing. Haven't found it since. Is this available in the right place, or a random drop?

I belive one of the enemies drops that weapon, if I'm not mistaken. There is only 1 of those in the demo, I believe.

 

[deepbrown]

You dont really know what you miss until you test such game. I could to a certain point agree though with BF:BC in mind since it has prescripted destruction sequences.

But being able to not only enter front door or back door but also through walls, roofs, create new cover by pulling down vegetation etc. Huge amount of new tactical posibilities opens up as you mold the scene to your taste... and the enemy being aware and using it against you!

You just cant hide behind a tree/wall/objects and think you are safe, it will get cut/destroyed/broken/bent off leaving you "naked". Enemies holding position inside a house? Blow it up, tear the walls down, ram it with your tank or car!

Use debris to throw it around when running out of ammo or just take a piece and create a temporary cover against enemy fire etc etc etc. Until you tested such interactive envornments you really cant imagine what you miss.

That said it isn't a deal breaker becouse a game doesn't have it but to neglect the large positivie impact it has on gameplay is almost ridicolous IMO, especially when it is done with amazing physics.

Which is exactly why the destructable envinomnet DOES affect gameplay in Killzone 2.

For a start there's destructible cover - crates etc.

Then there's the destructible pillars - once destroyed you won't be able to hide behind them and you'll have to move on. There's also the destructable wooden boards over windows, that you'll have to move from.

Then there's the trophies for killing enemies with the environment and not your bullets or exploding barrels...

 

[deepbrown]

What grand appears to be talking about the game when he says samey is that the pace is the same, and it's all "war war war" - without let up.

It's certainly intense, but this is not true. There are plenty of lulls and changes in both the gameplay and the pace. The objectives change, the environments open up and you're left with trying different tactics.

Yes it's intense, but it lets up and there's plenty of mission variety.

Bit sad to see they weren't able to remove the loading blips between sections though.

 

[tha_con]

Bit sad to see they weren't able to remove the loading blips between sections though.

Ugh...I hated this when I played through Portal and HL2 on consoles....ick.

 

[Cornsnake]

@Shifty Geezer. The helghast in the warehouse on the roof of that small building carries it. You'll need to make him fall off to get the gun. Shooting his legs will increase the chance of this happening. For extra ammo, break open the wooden crates. This is also the gun that lets you decapitate helghasts.

As for inaccurate fire, shooting in small bursts will improve that.