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There's 6 new screenshots of a city enviroment, with big huge ass buildings, looks dead impressive, anyway the article.
We've been hurt so many times before. That succulent Danish pastry that tasted of dry rot, that stunningly attractive, witty and intelligent girl who turned out to be our long lost sister, everything but the tanker level of Metal Gear Solid 2. What failed us is our willingness to believe, we so want to believe and bit-by-bit it's killing us.
But we won't be fooled again and so we approach this Next Big Thing with phasers set to sceptical and one eye on the nearest exit. This is Killzone and if hype were water then prepare to enter monsoon season. This first-person shooter has already been touted as a Halo beater, not only by us (sorry about that) but also by what seems like the entire Internet community. It's almost totally unnecessary though since Killzone won't be with us until next Christmas when Xbox owners should be enjoying Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, Halo 2. If you really want to play Halo, then you've got plenty of time to save up and buy the right machine for the job. Can we say this in a single-format magazine? Well, it might not be a popular or correct thing to do but it does have the added bonus of being the truth. Back to Killzone and a game that really is looking far too good for anyone's benefit. For the first time ever on the PlayStation 2 someone is developing a first-person shooter that seems to have everything bang on.
The game is set in the not so far of future so, and this gets us very excited, there won't be any beam weapons available to the player. We can't think of a FPS that has features both laser or plasma as well as ballistic guns where we actually preferred shooting globes or lines of light at a target. Given the choice it's bullets all the way and this is something that Killzone's developer Guerrilla understands to a wonderful degree. Even at this stage we can tell that the design of the game's available arsenal has been taken on by someone who knows and understands how an anti-aircraft gun can be beautiful, how the components that make up an assault rifle can be inspiring. But all the cordite in the world can stops an alluring arsenal from feeling less than satisfying the moment you pull the trigger. Too much recoil and you feel that you're playing the role of a small child who has found daddies gun cabinet, to little and your sense of disbelief can't handle consecutive shots hitting the same location time and time again.
Guerrilla know this and have not only given each piece of destructive hardware their own handling characteristics, each weapon will perform differently depending on who's using it. That's right, you can play as different characters, each one is adept at different tasks. One may be deadly with a pistol while rather loose with a rocket launcher, or vice versa. Don't worry that the wrong choice at the beginning of the game will lead you to a section where you'll have to shoot a wart of a fleas arse from 1000 metres though, your going to war as a team of four so if your not up to the immediate task at hand you know that one of your comrades will be. And with the mention of team-based combat a shivers shoots down your spine. It's not surprising really, before Freedom Fighters we had yet to see such a game mechanic implemented with any form of fluency in a game. In Frontline other soldiers were purely cosmetic, in Red Faction 2 they were just plain annoying. Sometimes they'd behave in a realistic and acceptable way, the other they would stand between you and the target, acting for the entire world like a human shield for the enemy.
In Killzone the player is the star, the player is the lead actor and reason for everyone else's existence. Sure, your buddies will help out, but they won't steal the show from you and they won't storm to far forward in an attempt to hijack your glory. They won't die on you either since their artificial intelligence will tell them to return to your flank when situations get hot, that, and because they just can't die, full stop. This isn't Guerrilla's vain attempt to shield you from the horrors of war, it's just there way of stopping you playing medic for the duration of the game. For that you sort of action you can wait for Mediczone, which will never be released because we just made it up. What we haven't just invented for the purpose of poor comedy is that Killzone's AI is set to be superlative. We've heard tales of intelligence so many times before and we know that there is a difference between acute AI and the semblance of acute AI. For the purpose of the player it doesn't matter that on in game entity is smart, it just has to appear that it is.
In Freedom Fighters your teammates look as if they are deciding a course of action. They hide behind objects, take turns to enter rooms and generally act as if they know what they are doing. The trick is that they really don't and that what you are really seeing is a far simpler set of calculations rather than anything that can be deemed true intelligence. The clue to Killzone's intended use of AI is in its name. In military terms a Killzone is the area of an ambush site where the enemy can expect to receive 95% casualties. This can relate to an attack with small arms as well as one using shaped explosive charges. This takes planning. It isn't something performed by running from the beginning of a level to the end while killing everything that dares cross your path like an Ikari Warrior suffering a Vietnam flashback. Your team is going to have to be far more tactical to survive. And since you don't tell your teammates directly what to do and have to rely on their own smarts. Of course we could also take clues from Killzone's former name of Kin and suggest that levels will involve you and your team creating a greater sense of family by exchanging gifts with the enemy, but that would be blatantly ridiculous. You've seen the screenshots and you can see the game has a distinctive look.
This is down to two points. The first is the use of technology. Each character is drawn with three levels a texture detail in their skin. As they get closer to you the lower resolution detail is faded out, higher resolution faded in. This means that at any range you know you'll be looking at some of the most detailed characters the PS2 has ever seen. Texture work throughout will be of a high standard more akin to game's that rely on you running along set paths than those that must deal with providing eye-candy through a constant 360 degrees. Think Metal gear Solid 2 first-person mode, but with more details, even in the details. The character design itself is of a scope and quality that already looks well beyond anything that has emerged from Konami's stable. Guerilla's insistence on keeping the game's arsenal within the realms of feasibility flows into the design of the soldiers themselves whose kit has been taken from images of men at war from across the twentieth century. This chimerical approach shows perfectly in the way that World War one-style gas masks have been blended with modern night vision goggles, which are then topped of with a re-imagining of a standard US Marine helmet. By refusing to make these characters too fantastical in either their appearance or behaviour the developers have created a look that is so strong as to give it iconic status. This is the look of a FPS on a PS2 - and the game is not even out yet.
With its haunting military design and looks that look almost too good to be true we're reminded of games of the Amiga era that showed equal promise. This is where we feel we must err on the side of caution. Anyone remember Rise of the Robots? Shadow of the Beast? Microcosm?
We do, we read magazines that hyped these games that looked unfeasibly good only to find out that the actual images in the magazine where around sixty percent more fun than the actual games could ever hope to be. Yes, we're still angry but our point is that at this stage we really want Killzone to be The Best Thing Ever. We really do. Then we see how the release date of "next Christmas" which in our books puts it almost in the year 2005, especially if it slips (which obviously NEVER happens to anticipated titles). If you take into account substantial rumours that the big three developers are expecting some form of PlayStation 3 technology this Christmas, then you can see we have something quite intriguing here. Obviously this is purely from the rumour mill that we've created but it wouldn't surprise us if Killzone ended up as a launch title for the PlayStation 3. Either this is to be the case, or it just won't be as good as it looks. We don't want to sound too pessimistic, but we've been hurt before.
We've been hurt so many times before. That succulent Danish pastry that tasted of dry rot, that stunningly attractive, witty and intelligent girl who turned out to be our long lost sister, everything but the tanker level of Metal Gear Solid 2. What failed us is our willingness to believe, we so want to believe and bit-by-bit it's killing us.
But we won't be fooled again and so we approach this Next Big Thing with phasers set to sceptical and one eye on the nearest exit. This is Killzone and if hype were water then prepare to enter monsoon season. This first-person shooter has already been touted as a Halo beater, not only by us (sorry about that) but also by what seems like the entire Internet community. It's almost totally unnecessary though since Killzone won't be with us until next Christmas when Xbox owners should be enjoying Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, Halo 2. If you really want to play Halo, then you've got plenty of time to save up and buy the right machine for the job. Can we say this in a single-format magazine? Well, it might not be a popular or correct thing to do but it does have the added bonus of being the truth. Back to Killzone and a game that really is looking far too good for anyone's benefit. For the first time ever on the PlayStation 2 someone is developing a first-person shooter that seems to have everything bang on.
The game is set in the not so far of future so, and this gets us very excited, there won't be any beam weapons available to the player. We can't think of a FPS that has features both laser or plasma as well as ballistic guns where we actually preferred shooting globes or lines of light at a target. Given the choice it's bullets all the way and this is something that Killzone's developer Guerrilla understands to a wonderful degree. Even at this stage we can tell that the design of the game's available arsenal has been taken on by someone who knows and understands how an anti-aircraft gun can be beautiful, how the components that make up an assault rifle can be inspiring. But all the cordite in the world can stops an alluring arsenal from feeling less than satisfying the moment you pull the trigger. Too much recoil and you feel that you're playing the role of a small child who has found daddies gun cabinet, to little and your sense of disbelief can't handle consecutive shots hitting the same location time and time again.
Guerrilla know this and have not only given each piece of destructive hardware their own handling characteristics, each weapon will perform differently depending on who's using it. That's right, you can play as different characters, each one is adept at different tasks. One may be deadly with a pistol while rather loose with a rocket launcher, or vice versa. Don't worry that the wrong choice at the beginning of the game will lead you to a section where you'll have to shoot a wart of a fleas arse from 1000 metres though, your going to war as a team of four so if your not up to the immediate task at hand you know that one of your comrades will be. And with the mention of team-based combat a shivers shoots down your spine. It's not surprising really, before Freedom Fighters we had yet to see such a game mechanic implemented with any form of fluency in a game. In Frontline other soldiers were purely cosmetic, in Red Faction 2 they were just plain annoying. Sometimes they'd behave in a realistic and acceptable way, the other they would stand between you and the target, acting for the entire world like a human shield for the enemy.
In Killzone the player is the star, the player is the lead actor and reason for everyone else's existence. Sure, your buddies will help out, but they won't steal the show from you and they won't storm to far forward in an attempt to hijack your glory. They won't die on you either since their artificial intelligence will tell them to return to your flank when situations get hot, that, and because they just can't die, full stop. This isn't Guerrilla's vain attempt to shield you from the horrors of war, it's just there way of stopping you playing medic for the duration of the game. For that you sort of action you can wait for Mediczone, which will never be released because we just made it up. What we haven't just invented for the purpose of poor comedy is that Killzone's AI is set to be superlative. We've heard tales of intelligence so many times before and we know that there is a difference between acute AI and the semblance of acute AI. For the purpose of the player it doesn't matter that on in game entity is smart, it just has to appear that it is.
In Freedom Fighters your teammates look as if they are deciding a course of action. They hide behind objects, take turns to enter rooms and generally act as if they know what they are doing. The trick is that they really don't and that what you are really seeing is a far simpler set of calculations rather than anything that can be deemed true intelligence. The clue to Killzone's intended use of AI is in its name. In military terms a Killzone is the area of an ambush site where the enemy can expect to receive 95% casualties. This can relate to an attack with small arms as well as one using shaped explosive charges. This takes planning. It isn't something performed by running from the beginning of a level to the end while killing everything that dares cross your path like an Ikari Warrior suffering a Vietnam flashback. Your team is going to have to be far more tactical to survive. And since you don't tell your teammates directly what to do and have to rely on their own smarts. Of course we could also take clues from Killzone's former name of Kin and suggest that levels will involve you and your team creating a greater sense of family by exchanging gifts with the enemy, but that would be blatantly ridiculous. You've seen the screenshots and you can see the game has a distinctive look.
This is down to two points. The first is the use of technology. Each character is drawn with three levels a texture detail in their skin. As they get closer to you the lower resolution detail is faded out, higher resolution faded in. This means that at any range you know you'll be looking at some of the most detailed characters the PS2 has ever seen. Texture work throughout will be of a high standard more akin to game's that rely on you running along set paths than those that must deal with providing eye-candy through a constant 360 degrees. Think Metal gear Solid 2 first-person mode, but with more details, even in the details. The character design itself is of a scope and quality that already looks well beyond anything that has emerged from Konami's stable. Guerilla's insistence on keeping the game's arsenal within the realms of feasibility flows into the design of the soldiers themselves whose kit has been taken from images of men at war from across the twentieth century. This chimerical approach shows perfectly in the way that World War one-style gas masks have been blended with modern night vision goggles, which are then topped of with a re-imagining of a standard US Marine helmet. By refusing to make these characters too fantastical in either their appearance or behaviour the developers have created a look that is so strong as to give it iconic status. This is the look of a FPS on a PS2 - and the game is not even out yet.
With its haunting military design and looks that look almost too good to be true we're reminded of games of the Amiga era that showed equal promise. This is where we feel we must err on the side of caution. Anyone remember Rise of the Robots? Shadow of the Beast? Microcosm?
We do, we read magazines that hyped these games that looked unfeasibly good only to find out that the actual images in the magazine where around sixty percent more fun than the actual games could ever hope to be. Yes, we're still angry but our point is that at this stage we really want Killzone to be The Best Thing Ever. We really do. Then we see how the release date of "next Christmas" which in our books puts it almost in the year 2005, especially if it slips (which obviously NEVER happens to anticipated titles). If you take into account substantial rumours that the big three developers are expecting some form of PlayStation 3 technology this Christmas, then you can see we have something quite intriguing here. Obviously this is purely from the rumour mill that we've created but it wouldn't surprise us if Killzone ended up as a launch title for the PlayStation 3. Either this is to be the case, or it just won't be as good as it looks. We don't want to sound too pessimistic, but we've been hurt before.
(if it's true) they're even delaying THE PRERELEASE VIDEOS now...? 
