Archive for category K

I’ve been thinking about Killzone 2 lately. Maybe it’s because of the very successful launch of Halo 3, or the imminent launch of Call of Duty 4, but shooters have been on my mind. There’s a lot that’s not known about Killzone 2, but I thought I’d take a poke at giving the developers my thoughts. Hopefully they read this site!

So here’s my list of things Guerilla should do to make Killzone 2 is a hit.

• Avoid Annoying Me
  Have you every played the original Killzone? Did you like the fact that your character bobbed up and down like a jack-in-the-box as he was walking? I found it terribly distracting and quite annoying. As a matter of fact, I only played the demo, and this fact alone stopped me from checking out the real game. Guerilla – don’t do that! Or how do you like the fact that MotorStorm asks you what language to use, every time you play? Stop that! Or really bad menu load times? Or the stupid online play disclaimers that you see, all the time? Stop that! It’s annoying! It looks like Guerilla may be falling into the same pit in Killzone 2 when it comes to weapon recoil. Check out this Killzone 2 walkthrough. Sure it might be realistic to have weapons kick way back, but you know what? Games aren’t about realism, they’re about fun! Fun first, realism second.
• Level Variety
  Everything I’ve seen so far of Killzone 2 looks the same. The same types of corridors, the same types of buildings. It all looks gray and drab. I know that it’s early days yet, but I hope that Guerilla is working hard on giving the levels a lot of variety, including some colourful levels as well. (They could be set in a greenhouse or something!)

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The video below is from GDC ’07:

Looking pretty damn good. A lot of people keep banging on about how crap Killzone was, which obviously means that Killzone 2 will also be crap . It wasn’t the greatest FPS of all time but it certainly wasn’t crap. It was definitely a victim of it’s own hype but hopefully it’s sequel won’t make the same mistakes.

Killzone 2 Gameplay Demo from GDC ’07

Killzone 2 was being shown behind closed doors at Leipzig, and from IGN’s report, linked below, it’s looking mighty fine. IGN emphasized the fact that Killzone 2 will rely heavily on dynamic lighting effects for ambience. I have no problem with that – lighting makes a HUGE difference. As well, they reveal that the game will run at 30FPS in 720p. Not much of a surprise there.

Killzone 2 Preview

If you want some screenshots of Killzone 2 from ThreeSpeech, follow this link:

Killzone 2 Screenshots

And lastly, here’s part one of a Killzone 2 interview:

Killzone 2 Q&A: Roy Postma, Part 1

Below is a link to an interesting article about Killzone 2′s lighting engine. Some of it, obviously, you have to take with a grain a salt. Like the fact that “The closer to the nozzle the wood fragments are – the brighter the light will be“. Well, duh! Even the very first lighting models invented 3 decades ago did that.

But what I found most interesting is that it said that none of the lighting effects are baked in. That is, if you turn off all the lights in a scene, you’ll get complete darkness because no lighting effects are in the textures. I wonder if this is indeed the case (given the somewhat sensationalistic nature of this article). But if it is true, I have to wonder if the developers will make proper use of this. Can I shoot out lights to make a room darker? If I shoot out a light above me before the enemy arrives, will the enemy see me? All sorts of possibilities open up…

» Killzone 2’s Lighting Engine: Overview