Killzone 2's Successor

As Killzone 2 finally hits stores today, we take a look at what Guerrilla Games could do next.

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#1: Return of the PSP

The significance of Killzone: Liberation, Guerrilla's handheld return to the embattled planet Vekta, can't be understated. At a time when the developer was still shuddering in the aftermath of the E3 2005 "target footage" debacle, its next-gen comeback years away, its existing games hardly the stuff a gun-nut's dreams are made of, Liberation was a badly-needed turn-of-the-tide: a tight, muscular top-down shooter with a clear and amply-repaid debt to the Contra series. More than that, it allowed Guerrilla to nail down and refine some of the basic gameplay strategies carried off to such hard-hitting effect in Killzone 2: tense, duck-and-cover combat, cinematic physics and tactical opposition.

A Liberation follow-up might serve a similar role in the next couple of years, tying together the second and (highly probable) third home console iterations. The timing is certainly right for an announcement: Sony has just injected a hefty dose of first-party goodness into the PSP's ailing software line-up, with Motorstorm, LittleBigPlanet and Resistance all coming to an arthritis-inducing analogue nub near you.

One way of doing it might be to regurgitate the original's mechanics with graphical tweaks, a new story, modes and guns. While this doesn't sound tremendously exciting, it could be the more sensible approach given the care with which Liberation is constructed. We can think of any number of drastic alterations - moving the camera in closer and tilting it back for something a little nearer to SOCOM, or fleshing out those ally commands into a context-sensitive, Gearbox-esque squad system - but untoward fiddling could scupper the original's heavily retro yet somehow unique appeal.

Filling in the picture around the core game with decent community features and an enduring multiplayer component would do wonders either way. How about a scrolling news feed so other gamers know when you top the leaderboards? Wireless co-operative modes? Customisable player profile pages, so you can trick opponents into thinking you're a fan of the n00btube? Trophies, surely, would be a given, and how about Clan support? Or even - dare we say it - some kind of persistent worldwide tournament, with the servers aggregating the results of individual matches to generate a regional victor? Or shrinking down some of Killzone 2's objective-driven match types? The sky, as they say, is the limit.

Acts To Follow:

• Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror - still probably the best handheld third-person shooter around, barring its sequel Logan's Shadow.

• God of War: Chains of Olympus - Ready At Dawn's pint-sized Kratos out-punches most PS2 titles for graphical panache. Pinch that engine, Guerrilla.

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