The demo opened with the same cinematic we have been seeing for years, but this time it was done using the in-game engine and still looked fantastic. Yes, Killzone 2 is beautiful, that shouldn’t be shocking at this point. Even in its “pre-alpha” state, which is unfinished, glitchy, and has plenty of graphical issues, the game has the best visuals this console generation. When compared to games like Far Cry 2 and Crysis, Killzone 2 stands tall and has amazingly high-resolution textures and character models. 

Gameplay is another story. Killzone 2 doesn’t feel bad, exactly, but it also doesn’t play much better than the original. The controller has a strange layout which feels off, and while the game looks like it should be amazing, shortcomings in pacing and gameplay prevented the demo from being anything but mediocre. I hope that with this most recent delay they can modify the control scheme to make the game more fun, because as of now the visual aspect is the only achievement in Killzone 2. Even so, the game is SO good looking I imagine that it will be worth a purchase based on that alone. I still have high hopes that the game will turn out fantastic, but after the demo on the E3 floor I'm not as optimistic as I was before.

On an unrelated note, about ten minutes into the game I began to run towards some enemies and the game froze. For a second, I thought it was a framerate problem, but after about a minute the game didn’t move at all. People began to take pictures and a red block slowly dropped over the screen. We went back today to record more footage of the game and were told that recordings were no longer allowed, and were guided to some of the other PlayStation demos. We didn’t ask why, but I’d like to think that an entire day’s worth of press and media missed out on recording footage of one of the PlayStation 3’s biggest games because I froze it. It's a "pre-alpha" build (after, what, four years in the oven?) and there's still plenty of development time to fix this, but that doesn't make it any less funny.

That’s right, I am the first person to beat Killzone 2. Eat it.

 

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