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Early Killzone 2 Reviews Looking Good
Reviews are beginning to appear for Guerrilla Games' upcoming first-person shooter, Killzone 2, a PS3 exclusive that has received a great deal of hype over the past several months. The reviews are mostly complimentary, but not overwhelmingly so; Ars Technica says it has "some of the best graphics yet seen on the PS3," and is a "solid take on the war-gaming genre." They also acknowledge that this is the latest game being held up as a standard for how good PS3 games can be, though the PS3 may not need such validation anymore. Edge Magazine is critical of the story, saying, "you could play the levels in random order to little ill-effect," but found the gameplay redeeming enough to warrant a 7/10. Concerns were raised early about the quality of the controls, but Guerrilla Games has affirmed that no changes will be made. Though the game won't be out for about a week yet, rumors of some fairly typical DLC plans are already cropping up. Giant Bomb recorded some video showcasing Killzone 2's multiplayer a while back.
Early reviews? Scores have been pouring in for weeks! The game has received more than two dozen reviews from numerous sources, the vast majority of which have been unanimous in their praise of the game. The only blips have been EDGE (a magazine which has been going rapidly downhill for the past few years) and Maxim's review, which scored less than 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. There again, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Having played the demo and watched all the gameplay videos, I'm confident my pre-order decision was a good one (£30 off Play.com, so it's not exactly breaking the bank).
The only downer I felt was that the original cast members from the first game, Templer, Lugar, etc., are not the lead characters in this sequel. I'm not even sure if any of them feature at all, apart from an odd cutscene here and there. A shame, really. Sometimes I think video game writers and designers need to consider that games like Killzone should care more about what happens to these characters as they fight this war. They don't have to be the most overly developed of characters, but at least it would allow the player to build an affinity with them, be more drawn into the story, and therefore enjoy the game on another level. (rant over - sorry)
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Gamers need to stop worrying about the sales numbers of the PS3 and arguing over the merits of PlayStation Home. The truth is that the system is flush with excellent, exclusive games, and we're way past the point where you can call yourself a hardcore gamer and not own the hardware.
That is something I would expect to read on a fan-boy site and not a tech blog.
Gears, Vegas, GRAW and many other games not only have cover systems, but implement them better than Killzone. That it also sticks doggedly to a first-person view so you can't see much while in cover isn't a significant innovation, if you ask me.
Yes, Edge got rather carried away with their review of Halo 3. However, 7/10 is if anything better than I'd expect to see at the bottom of that text - they've reviewed tonnes of PC FPS titles like that and given them 6/10.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
You're somewhat in the right direction, but not entirely right. The main difficulty programming the PS3 is not that it's particularly hard to break up a game engine/ AI/ graphics effects/ whatever into enough threads to keep the PS3's SPU's busy, the hardest part is actually scheduling the threads to prevent memory contention, stalling SPU processes, communicating inputs & outputs etc. It's a step back from writing code and having the compiler do all the hard work, only having to track the interaction between 2, maybe 3 threads that run all the time. With the PS3 you'd be handling the same 2 or 3 threads on the PPU, plus tens, maybe even 100s of 'micro-threads' distributed over the SPU's, constantly starting, pulling data from RAM, spending some time processing, pushing back the result, etc.
It doesn't really help that game engines are generally based on existing codebases and ported between architectures all the time either. It's not easy to extract high performance from a game engine that has to run well on the homogenuous 3-core architecture of the 360 as well as on the heterogenuous 2+7 core architecture of the PS3. And let's not forget the split-memory architecture, where half of the main memory effectively has zero bandwidth to the CPU and should only be accessed from the GPU. Which leaves only 256MB of RAM or a major headache laying out your data in memory.
Last but not least you're right about the GPU: the 360 GPU has significantly better fill-rates, especially when complex shaders are used. The Cell in the PS3 can be used to offload graphics stuff and not be limited by shader performance, but again it's not easy.
I believe the KZ2 engine was designed from the ground up for the PS3 architecture, which probably explains why it looks so good compared to cross-platform PS3 titles.
we are beginning to see the effect of the better capabilities of the PS2
yes, the PS2 will trounce all other current generation systems.
p.s.
In all honestly I think it does in a lot of ways. I have a 360 but the ps2 is the only system I brought to college.
It wasn't really that odd. Sure the PS3 fanboys went mad, but that was to be expected for anything other than a 9 or a 10. The review its self was pretty positive (if you read it), and Edge traditionally scores lower than the IGN or Gamespot's. 7/10 is a solid score.
Ive not played the game, but honestly from what i have seen, the gameplay is nothing other than run-of-the-mill for a shooter. Multiplayer seems to have had more thought put into it, but even that is basically COD4's level/unlock system.
If i had a PS3 i would buy it for sure, because i like shooters. But for anyone else there are games that provide the same experience already out.
Often with these big platform exclusive games, their review becomes a review of the platform -- rather than the game -- in many readers eyes. Saying Killzone 2 is average is saying the PS3 is average, so there is more at stake for some than just a game review.
As for Edges reviews generally. There are some inconsistent scores. But because the review is written and scored by an individual, and that is the only opinion given in the magazine. It is bound to happen from time to time. Overall the magazine is still one of the few i trust for an engaging read and sensible reviews.
Wannabe nerd.
Playing video games... on a blue ray player? How deliciously absurd!
Edge places a high value on innovation, and openly admits to doing so. Even those who rate Killzone highly admit that, while amusing, it brings absolutely nothing to the table not seen before. It takes zero chances, preferring to polish the pre-existing experience. Even Gears 2 made SOME changes to the formula, both technically and in terms of storytelling and gameplay flow.
For many gamers, that's just fine. But as someone who plays most everything that comes out, I'd much rather a score tell me if the game will truly surprise me, as opposed to just being a well-trodden path through the FPS woods. Not everyone looks for the same thing in a review, but then, that's why there are multiple review sources. You can't whine about the over-dependence on metacritic and the generally poor state of numerical reviews, as many do of late, then penalize one source for actually trying something different and using the full 10 scale.