Killzone: New Hands-On Preview (P.3)

We get some quality hands-on time with one of the most talked-about PS2 games in recent memory - have Sony and Guerrilla been able to pull this off?

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The sound team at Guerrilla has done an admirable job of capturing the futuristic war-torn world of Killzone. The quality of weapon sounds shows considerable variation though, with the larger anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons coming across as particularly wimpy. The voice acting - not yet complete in this build - is of adequate merit. It is, however, overshadowed by Joris de Man's emphatic score. De Man made use of the 72-piece Russian Philharmonic Orchestra in creating the ambient music that flows through levels. It's never obtrusive, but serves as an aural reflection of the action onscreen. His compositions receive more attention in the intermission cinema scenes, where epic themes sustain the battle between the two great forces.

Currently, Killzone's two main shortcomings are in the areas of logic and graphics. Guerrilla's initial idea was to put the player in the middle of an ongoing war, and to make an experience that feels real. This reality is shattered, though, by logical inconsistency. Take as an example character movement. There is no jump button - you can't lean around corners either - and so you have to rely on following the linear paths the developers have created though levels.

This leads to situations like one in the first level, Helghast Assault, where Templar is obstructed by rubble standing no more than shin height. Templar can vault over certain predefined obstacles, but you can't take him in directions not pre-approved by Guerrilla. And this can lead to ugly gameplay devices like running into invisible walls or being forced to follow ridiculously contrived paths through levels. Any semblance of free will or possibility of level exploration is destroyed by these needless tethers.

Unfortunately, the area most immediately obvious to most gamers - graphics - is where the bulk of inconsistency currently lies. Guerrilla has done a good job of pushing the PlayStation 2 hardware; the character models of high detail, especially the Helghast stormtroopers, who visually define evil in their pseudo-Russian/Nazi regalia. The ISA forces, on the other hand, are generally blander, but instead they bring with them intricate facial models, particularly for the story's central characters.

Right now, it seems that Guerrilla might be pushing a little too hard though, as the three-week-old build we played was often coming apart at the seems. There's substantial clipping and pop-up prevalent throughout the game - especially in the third level, New Allies - and several portions simply prove too taxing, bringing the frame rate down. But we must stress there is some way to go before the optimisation is finished and this is likely to improve a whole lot. As our Sony rep explains, "the guys at Guerrilla are literally undertaking a day-by-day process of optimisng the streaming process so that there is as much detail as possible, without the engine reading data so heavily that it affects the speed." That said, it's still fair to say that the developers have got a significant task before them in bringing the quality up to what gamers have come to expect from the game.

The hype surrounding Killzone has been building for well over a year now. Gamers the world over are anticipating an experience to rival Bungie's Halo. It seems a little unfair to fault Guerrilla for not meeting these unfounded expectations. What the Dutch developer has done is create a game that will entertain, provided the presentation can be polished in time. There is enough evolution of the genre here to ensure that it provides one of the better first-person shooter games on the PlayStation 2. Only time will tell whether Guerrilla's final product will be enough to stave off the building expectations.

Killzone is set for release on the PlayStation 2 in North America on 26 October and in Europe in November.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games

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