VG CHARTZ escribió:Killzone 2 wasn't on my radar at all. I didn't play the original Killzone, heck I didn’t even own a PS2. So all this talk of Killzone 2 has somewhat passed me by. Until now that is. The first thing that struck me about Killzone 2 is that it’s stunning. It’s easily host to the best graphics I’ve seen on a console, and this is just the multiplayer aspect of the game. The character models are nicely detailed, in the multiplayer part of a game you kind of expect them to be a little bit dodgy, but here they’re actually pretty good and you can see all the little details on each character’s clothing thanks to some superb lighting and shadow effects. The rag-doll like reaction of your enemies to every bullet is superb – watching your enemy recoil with pain in a different part of the body with each and every bullet that enters him makes the experience much more engrossing than in previous shooters. Blood splatters out of, and around, every single bullet hole and your enemy actually looks like he’s being hit by bullets for a change.
Character movement is spot on as well. You feel the weight of your character and all of his military equipment in the controls and you hear it in the sound effects. This means that your movements are relatively slow compared to a lot of FPS games (although you can sprint for short bursts by clicking down the left stick - think Call of Duty but with the sprint bar actually displayed on the screen). This is particularly the case when it comes to turning around. If you get flanked by the enemy and you don’t see them coming you don’t really stand a chance because you won’t turn around in time, your best options are either to try and sprint away and regroup or to stick it out and hope to do enough damage to take him down with you. The sound effects are great in this respect because whenever you move you can hear your boots on the ground, and the shuffle of your clothing and clinks of all of your equipment. Similarly when you jump you can feel the weight of all your equipment and clothing because you don't jump very high and the camera moves violently. It’s a slightly odd thing to note, but Killzone 2 also has a nice reloading animation. The guns are as detailed as you would expect from such a graphically impressive game, but the animation is spot on as well. I’m not quite sure why, but it just works. The camera movement is great as well, the camera shakes left and right as you run - it's very much the FPS version of Gears of War's camera, but less dramatic (presumably to prevent motion sickness).
Killzone 2 is full of little graphical details like that which make the game more enjoyable – huge chunks of debris will fall off of many of the walls as they’re pummelled with more and more bullets, revealing the metal that holds it in place. Explosions seem more realistic and visceral than in other games, so that after the short initial burst of flames the core of the explosion is actually a deadly cloud of dust and chunks of grit that fly everywhere, causing your screen to cloud and bloody up. When you’re struck by too many bullets you feel slightly dazed and confused because as well as the usual red blood effect there’s also a strange blue lighting effect, it’s almost as if your character is about to pass out.
When all of those little details come together it can make fire fights seem really visceral at times. This is compounded by the fact that you have to be aware at all times of your allies - friendly fire is on by default so most of your matches will include it. Teamwork is the most effective means of winning an online match as you would expect, but run down a tight corridor behind a couple of teammates as they’re firing on the enemy team at the end of the corridor and you almost feel helpless. If you fire and accidentally hit a teammate and he dies you’re punished with minus experience points, but stand there and do nothing and your teammates might both die leaving you pretty vulnerable, all the more so because the game is very balanced, to such an extent that 1v1 draws are quite common. A lot of the time if you go up against someone 1v1 you will end up killing each other, more so than in any other shooter I’ve ever played.
Initially I did have one criticism of Killzone 2’s graphics, and that was that it was far too dark. Sometimes it was hard to see where I was going if I was in a darkened room, particularly on the Salamun Market map. It was like playing half-blind and it was making the game feel far too overbearing. This was easily resolved, however, by adjusting the brightness settings within the game’s options. This was a massive improvement because it made the game much brighter, I could see all of the detail in the levels and I wasn’t getting ‘lost’ in the darkness.
There were 3 maps available in the beta – Salamun Market, Radec Academy and Blood Gracht. I’m not that keen on Salamun Market or Blood Gracht, but Radec Academy is excellent. Blood Gracht is set in what looks like a futuristic, semi-industrialist shanty town. All of the buildings are tightly packed together and are all spread out over different heights. They’re divided in two by a dried up canal, which can be crossed either by going into the canal and then up underneath the structures or by utilising the home-made bridges that consist of scraps of metal and poles. The sky is dark and swirling with blackened dark green clouds and the colour palette is a mixture of greeny brown structures offset against grubby white interiors. The buildings are a maze of tightly packed corridors and rooms, so it can be a very confusing map to negotiate at times, and it will take some time to learn. At times it’s hard to gauge whether you’re in friendly or enemy territory and it can be quite easy to become separated from your team.
Salamun Market is the darkest of the 3 maps. The layout is fairly simplistic compared to Blood Gracht with two huge buildings facing each other with a large dirt road separating them. The buildings consist of identical sets of massive staircases leading to a second level where a bridge joins the two buildings together. Behind each building are the base camps for each team, which are accessed either by going through some tight winding corridors directly behind the main buildings, or by going out into the more vulnerable open where there are smaller buildings and flimsy semi-permanent structures and encampments which are to either side of the main buildings. It’s a less cluttered setting than Blood Gracht and has more open spaces which makes it ideal for the patient sniper who is willing to wait for a skirmish to break out in the open.
The final map is Radec Academy and it’s easily my favourite map. It’s much brighter than the other two maps, set in what appears to be a disused military academy, so there are a lot of pristine white walls and the architecture is much grander than on the other maps. One team is set in an enclosed outdoor storage area full of tanks and dusty storage units (and my, how stunning that dust is). The other camp is set on the other side of the map near the toilets (yey!). There is an upper and lower level for each base camp and separating the camps is an impressive courtyard which is the focal point for most of the fighting. The courtyard is surrounded by both upper levels, so this map is the most ideal for medium-long range combat, where people attempt to pick of the enemy as they run around the upper level opposite or come out into the open courtyard. The only way into each base camp, other than through the main courtyard, is via the passages to either side, which allows for effective flanking movements against the snipers based on the upper floors.
The two teams spawn by default at their main base camps. These camps are protected by a number of turrets to guard against camping. That’s not to say camping is impossible though. Turrets in Killzone 2 aren’t as powerful as say the fully upgraded turret in Team Fortress 2, and if you get caught in the firing line you aren’t ‘trapped’, you can easily move out of the way without sustaining too much damage. However, take a turret on 1v1 without cover, and with only your basic weaponry, and you will die. So the turrets are vulnerable to attack, furthermore there a plenty of gaps in the defences where their line of sight won’t catch you, so it is possible to sneak into an enemy base and cause havoc, just don’t expect to stay alive for very long.
As far as gameplay goes, it’s very similar to Call of Duty 4. If you’re a Call of Duty fan like me, you’ll be able to adapt to Killzone very quickly. There are a number of differences though, for example because your enemy will visibly react to your bullets when they’re hit you feel more engaged and you can actually see that you are indeed hitting them, whereas in Call of Duty 4 you get that sense of hitting the enemy through the use of a subtle sound which you instantly recognise and by the crosshairs changing style slightly. Another gameplay difference, and the one that stands out most visibly to me, is that when you aim in Call of Duty 4 you hold down the trigger and to zoom out you release it. In Killzone 2 by contrast, you click the trigger to zoom and have to click it again to zoom out. I prefer the Call of Duty 4 system to the Killzone 2 one here, when you’re in a frantic battle with an enemy suddenly charging at you from the side you need every fraction of a second, so a quick release system is preferable in my mind. One final difference that I noted was that firing from the hip in Killzone 2 is much easier and much more accurate, in fact in any close or medium range combat I always fire from the hip in Killzone 2, something I rarely do in other FPS games.
In short, Killzone 2’s combat is both engaging and addictive, like the very best FPS games on the market. Combine that with the best graphics on a console and you have a hit exclusive on your hands. It’s evolutionary, not revolutionary, but Killzone 2 is shaping up to be one of the PS3’s biggest games of 2009 and it’s not going to disappoint.
Me llama la atención el comentario final, es evolucionario, no revolucsionario. Si os fijais en el texto viene a decir que jugablemente es muy adictivo, mola un huevo y tal, pero vamos, que tampoco cambia mucho la dinamica de los shooters actuales.
A mi, sobra decir que me la pela, siempre y cuando sea un juego divertido y la historia me enganche.
Respecto a los gráficos, pues nada que no se haya dicho ya, acojonantes, lo mejor que existe en consolas etc.
Lo que quiero decir con esto, es que no deis un veredcto final de los gráficos son ver el resultado total del juego.
![[Alaa!]](/images/smilies/nuevos/sorprendido_ani2.gif "Ala!")
. O si alguién tiene alguno por hay que tengo unas ganas locas de probarlo y como que hasta finales de febrero es un poco larga la espera. Saludos ![[bye]](/images/smilies/nuevos2/adio.gif "adios")
![[360º]](/images/smilies/nuevos/vueltas.gif "como la niña del exorcista")
![[+risas]](/images/smilies/nuevos/risa_ani3.gif "más risas")
, pero bueno da igual a 720p se ve de cine ![[poraki]](/images/smilies/nuevos/dedos.gif "por aquí!")
![[tadoramo]](/images/smilies/adora.gif "Adorando")
![[qmparto]](/images/smilies/net_quemeparto.gif "Que me parto!")
![[carcajad]](/images/smilies/nuevos/risa_ani2.gif "carcajada")
![[oki]](/images/smilies/net_thumbsup.gif "Ok!")
