Killzone 2: Singleplayer Hands-On Preview

Guerrilla has first-person shooting stardom in its sights, but is there enough ammo in the clip? Kikizo hangs tough with a new single-player build.

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Engagements balloon from close-quarters stand-offs in the slums to full-blown warfare backed by tanks and buggies, but there's rarely a shortage of hiding spots for you and your enemies; the key is to probe the well-articulated urban chaos for that convenient loophole which gives you line-of-sight without undue risk, propping a gun barrel in the V between two girders, or poking it through the passenger window of a blackened car hulk. The game gets a lot of mileage out of its layouts, obliging you to retrace your steps through cleared areas against different and differently situated sets of enemies. Capturing an objective is never as straightforward as it sounds: you'll inevitably have to defend your prize against a ferocious Helghast counterattack, APCs busting through walls to vomit the redeyes into your midst.

We're not entirely sold on Guerrilla's cover mechanic. Holding L2 locks you to a surface, tilting left stick lets you move along it, peer over it and crane round corners. All this comes at the cost of your vision and manoeuvrability, vital quantities indeed in Killzone 2, but more importantly it feels inconsistent on several fronts. Enemy accuracy takes a miraculous hit once you lock to cover, prompting the feeling that you're sheltering behind a wall of negative statistics rather than brick and mortar, and crouching is confusingly mapped to the same button by default.

Our multiplayer beta write-up mentioned how satisfying Killzone 2's character models are to shoot: dial that up a thousand for the fully physics-enabled, procedurally animated troops you tackle in single player. The Helghast react differently depending on what you shoot them with and where you've shot them, leading to a game which rivals Sega's Condemned for hit response. It's more than a cosmetic point of departure from the multiplayer, too: weapons like the shotgun owe their potency as much to knock-back as stopping power.

The worst you can say about the weapon selection (of which you can carry one primary plus the default pistol at a time) is that it's rather sober, with nothing in the way of crazily inventive alternative fires, and that a couple of the choices feel a bit gratuitous. There's a marvellous double act at its core: the ISA rifle comes with a handy laser dot viewfinder and is thus better at range, while the cheap Helghast equivalent lacks this aid but is more powerful. As you'd expect, the submachine gun and shotgun are absolutely devastating in a corner but useless beyond it. One thing you'll quickly learn is that accuracy is more important than savagery: unload a clip at somebody and the recoil will have your rounds pinging from the scenery, but drill out short, disciplined bursts and it's surprising how quickly the Helghast go down.

There's a definite trick to the use of more esoteric weapons, none of which make you unstoppable. The flamethrower is good for a close-quarters rampage or to halt a determined advance, pouring a stream of napalm that clings to floors and walls - just be careful you don't light up yourself or your allies in the process. Heavy machine guns are best fired from a stationary crouch to compensate for their kick, and while the rocket launcher can knock chunks out of armoured cars its projectiles are easy to dodge. The sniper rifle makes brilliant use of the motion-sensing Sixaxis - a steady hand equals a steady aim - and the grenade launcher is great for indiscriminate crowd control in wide-open spaces.

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