KILLZONE Shadow Fall [PS4]

[Prophecy2k]

Until they confirm the game won't be terrible, this is a "must not buy" for me.

Loool, Guerilla won't be able to confirm anything like that until the game's finished. Plus a reviewers confirmation of that would be more useful to you than a developer of the game in question ;-)

I'm personally not worried about the quality of KZ:SF. KZ2 is one of my fav PS3 games, KZ1 was awesome in my eyes too, and Liberation was my best PSP game outside of the Patapons. So even if KZ3 was a little on the disappointing side (wouldn't call it terrible), given that game was rushed and too much dev time was misappropriated to useless stuff like stereo 3D, I expect KZ:SF to be a much more polished product.

Spoiler

KZ3 was excellent with Move, so that alone gave it a free pass in my book

I still have some faith in Guerilla. I'm hopeful.

 

[babolka]

another beautiful screenshot HQ

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Yup, GG has a great track record, except KZ3. But then a lot of people prefer KZ3 MP over KZ2. Its just that KZ2 and Liberation were some of the finest games.
But somehow I don't get the same feeling about what was shown of KZSF. It looks like lUnch title pressures are showing, or it is actually the BTeam doing this. The art direction does not seem as strong as Kz2 or 3.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Interesting image. There is a line going from the bottom right of the image to about the top middle of the image, that seems to be a cliff or ledge. It looks like part of the city is sitting on a raised flat slab. Not a lot of detail on the ground/streets between the buildings, but I imagine in flybys the result looks pretty darned good as it did in the first gameplay footage.

 

[patsu]

This type of scene would look great in 3D.

 

[kagemaru]

Until they confirm the game won't be terrible, this is a "must not buy" for me.

I don't understand this. Do you honestly expect any team to say whether or not their game is crap? They aren't going to slam their own work that they are trying to sell.

I think KZ mercenary is being done by Guerilla games Cambridge which used to be Sony Cambridge. The orginial Guerilla studio outside the UK has indeed grown into two teams though. So yeah I think there certainly is another game being wored on besides KZ:SF.

Yeah this is what I was thinking as well. :smile:

Yup, GG has a great track record, except KZ3. But then a lot of people prefer KZ3 MP over KZ2. Its just that KZ2 and Liberation were some of the finest games.
But somehow I don't get the same feeling about what was shown of KZSF. It looks like lUnch title pressures are showing, or it is actually the BTeam doing this. The art direction does not seem as strong as Kz2 or 3.

We've only seen the one demo, correct? I think we should wait until we see more of the game before judging the art direction.

Although I think the B-team could still be developing this, even if the game holds up very well. Assuming this b-team (I hate that term) is the less experienced of the two or at least the team that didn't originaly work on the KZ series, it would make sense to allow them to work on an established franchise while the more experienced team works on a new IP. Similar to what we saw with ND where the second team made UC3 while the UC2 team is working on TLoU.

 

[Scott_Arm]

This type of scene would look great in 3D.

Are they not doing 3D? I would think it would be even easier to do 3D this gen because you can still get good image quality at 720p.

 

[fearsomepirate]

My earlier comment was a form of humor we call "sarcasm" where I come from.

I liked KZ1 despite its warts, and KZ2 is one of my all-time favorite games. They hit so many wrong notes with KZ3 that the series is officially on the "wait and see" list now. I won't enumerate the things I didn't like, so I'll just try to express how the whole thing came off to me.

Basically, GG has great tech guys. Really bright. They've got fantastic artists. Love the aesthetics of all three games. The problem is the overall direction of the game design seems rudderless. When they're not listening to the idiots on the forums, they're haphazardly adding or removing features "because that's how Halo/Call of Duty does it," prioritizing developers over players, or just generally copying what someone else is doing. The changes don't seem particularly driven by trying to adjust themselves to user behavior and needs. They seem to have zero confidence in themselves and their own design choices. KZ4 could be great. Or it could be a potpourri of clashing features lifted from Battlefield, COD, Halo, Crysis, and Wii Fit that all combine for a thoroughly dissatisfying experience.

You know, maybe they'll bring back public custom matches just because DICE is doing it now.

 

[patsu]

Are they not doing 3D? I would think it would be even easier to do 3D this gen because you can still get good image quality at 720p.

Not that I know of. I suppose they can patch it in later.

 

[rockaman]

Well if the non-3d image is going to be 1080p, maybe GG is going for a clean 720p 3d image. That seems like a good tradeoff I think actually. Something clearly not so feasible with nice graphics on PS3.

I bet they will have 3d in there. I'm almost certain GG wants to put it in, bit also that Sony brass are pressuring them as first party to make it an important target.

Who knows, maybe Sony wants PS4 to be a second wind in 3dtv attention to carry 3dtv sales over the long run. I'd visit a Sony store more often if they promise me 3d PS4 gaming to kill time

(Also I very much agree with fearsomepirate...)

 

[Prophecy2k]

Well if the non-3d image is going to be 1080p, maybe GG is going for a clean 720p 3d image. That seems like a good tradeoff I think actually. Something clearly not so feasible with nice graphics on PS3.

I bet they will have 3d in there. I'm almost certain GG wants to put it in, bit also that Sony brass are pressuring them as first party to make it an important target.

Who knows, maybe Sony wants PS4 to be a second wind in 3dtv attention to carry 3dtv sales over the long run. I'd visit a Sony store more often if they promise me 3d PS4 gaming to kill time

(Also I very much agree with fearsomepirate...)

Sony has already publicly stated that there's no longer any push for 3D. In their words, "the consumer spoke" and wasn't interested.

I'd much rather Sony pushes for pointer/move controls in all their shooters.

 

[DieH@rd]

Entire Killzone:SF engine keynote
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_29M8F-sRsU

 

[Gradthrawn]

New interview from Edge. Not a lot of technical detail but it does go into some of the design choices they made along with a lead into the February Reveal demo. Thought this was interesting too:

And this is a launch title, we’ve just got new hardware and we weren’t using some of the hardware acceleration for stuff like audio at the time we did the demo, which we have now done.

I thought it was odd they wouldn't have used the built-in audio hardware. Perhaps the hardware wasn't ready in the early dev kits or maybe they simply ported whatever code they had for audio from the KZ3 engine? Looking at the current Radeon line, I don't see much mention of specific audio decoding support (just support for outputting various formats through HDMI). But on an unrelated note, I did find some of the video info I was looking for (UVD, VCE).

 

[Silent_Buddha]

another beautiful screenshot HQ

It looked much better in motion, though even then you could tell it was low poly. The screenshot just makes it look REALLY bad (elevated railway, base ground texture, shadows, etc.) as you can then focus on all the things that aren't good that you don't notice in a fly by.

Then again, this was probably a bit of a rush job. I'd expect better with the next game they do on PS4.

Regards,
SB

 

[patsu]

I thought it was odd they wouldn't have used the built-in audio hardware. Perhaps the hardware wasn't ready in the early dev kits or maybe they simply ported whatever code they had for audio from the KZ3 engine? Looking at the current Radeon line, I don't see much mention of specific audio decoding support (just support for outputting various formats through HDMI). But on an unrelated note, I did find some of the video

The Gamasutra interview has a few lines. Cerny suggested using the GPU to do raytracing for audio. He also mentioned casually that the audio unit can decode a large number of MP3 streams. It sounds like Guerilla were using pure software decoding before. May be things weren't finalized at that time yet.

 

[patsu]

It looked much better in motion, though even then you could tell it was low poly. The screenshot just makes it look REALLY bad (elevated railway, base ground texture, shadows, etc.) as you can then focus on all the things that aren't good that you don't notice in a fly by.

Then again, this was probably a bit of a rush job. I'd expect better with the next game they do on PS4.

It is too bad that Lair failed. It allowed us to fly, land and fight anywhere seamlessly. ^_^
A few games have tried to capture this grand scale warfare feel, but they should be able to do a much better job nextgen.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The Gamasutra interview has a few lines. Cerny suggested using the GPU to do raytracing for audio. He also mentioned casually that the audio unit can decode a large number of MP3 streams. It sounds like Guerilla were using pure software decoding before. May be things weren't finalized at that time yet.

Gah, I have a feeling that "ray tracing" is going to be this generation's marketing buzz word and used to describe things that traditionally aren't described with the phrase, "ray tracing."

I'd be surprised if it's anything more advanced than what was done back in the late 90's with Aureal 3D and EAX.

But if Sony or Microsoft bring back an emphasis on the simulation of environmental effects (material, shape, angle, reflection, absorption, reverb, occlusion, etc.) on sound, then I'm all for it. I just wish they'd drop the marketing speech and stop abusing the term "ray tracing."

Regards,
SB

 

[patsu]

Audio raytracing may be a tech term. You can look up papers on it.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Audio raytracing should be physically based processing of audio as per surroundings. Instead of applying a general reverb to a sound, a trace or so from the player to the surroundings would be used to calculate correct audio responses. Sound would appear very different when standing right next to a wall versus away from it. Taken even further, you could trace sound from source to the player and determine acoustic effects and positioning - eg. Someone to the left of you can appear to the right if they are in a hallway with the door on your right hand side. Such techniques wouldn't be pure raytracing as you're dealing with a 360 degree pressure wave, but with suitable space and material structures, geometry rays could be used to evaluate the sound processing to perform. So I don't think Cerny's comment was unrealistic myself. Although the lack of universal binaural sound via headphones as standard suggests it'd be such a niche feature, devs probably wouldn't bother.

 

[patsu]

Don't use the mono headset.

Use your own home theater gears or an HMD.

Use the headset for player communication. The HMD should come with its own mic this time.