Killzone 2 Updated Hands-On

We take our most extensive look at Killzone 2's campaign by going a full six chapters deep.

Because so much of the gaming public's attention is focused on scrutinizing every Killzone 2 screenshot to see whether the graphics will stack up to that infamous E3 2005 trailer, it's all too easy to forget that it's a real, honest-to-goodness game with a real, honest-to-goodness release date not far off. Sony recently reminded us of this by giving us the opportunity to play through the first six chapters of the campaign. What may not surprise you is that, yes, Killzone 2 is an absolute stunner in motion. But if you haven't been following the progress of the game, you'll be pleased to know that it's also an intense and exciting experience with the potential to work alongside Resistance 2 to provide a serious one-two punch of PlayStation 3-exclusive shooters.

Whereas the first Killzone allowed you to play as a number of Interplanetary Strategic Alliance (ISA) members over the course of the game, Killzone 2 drops you into the shoes of a gruff soldier named Sev and keeps you there for its duration. Throughout the campaign, you'll follow Sev and his similarly rough-and-tumble Alpha Squad buddies as they push deeper into the Helghast home planet in an opposite scenario of the invasion that occurred in the first game. Sev isn't the most vocal guy in the world, but you'll hear plenty of quips from teammates like jokester Dante Garza and the perpetually vulgar Rico Velasquez. Most of the story unfolds in the heat of battle via dialogue delivered from these squadmates, though occasional cutscenes give you fleeting glimpses of what's going on deep within the Helghast quarters.
One thing becomes immediately apparent when you begin Killzone 2's campaign: This is not an easy game. The first chapter, Corinth River--an area Sony has shown several times before--drops you right into a heated firefight with no shortage of heavily armed Helghast soldiers trying to take you out from scattered perches. It feels like every balcony, bridge, and window has a pair of glowing red Helghast eyes staring down at you. Starting you off like this seems like Killzone 2's way of saying that running and gunning won't cut it; you're going to learn to be patient and deliberate with your targets, and you're going to learn right away.

To do this, you'll need to become good friends with the game's cover system. It's a sticky cover mechanic where you pull L2 to snap right onto nearby walls or low barriers. From there, you have the standard move set that includes leaning into a doorway or popping up over a barricade, with the ability to look down your gun's iron sights to help you get a bit more precise. What makes this system unique and challenging is that you remain in the first-person perspective at all times, so your vision is partially obscured as you stay out of harm's way. In a third-person shooter you can see almost every target thanks to a wide camera, but here you'll need to poke your head up fast and get to shooting even faster--making that initial moment when you leave cover that much more thrilling.
The cover system is less critical in close quarters when you don't have Helghast soldiers trying to kill you from every which way. The second chapter in the campaign, Blood Meridian, trades in Corinth River's expansive industrial shipping yards and warehouses in favor of tight urban alleyways. In this locale you can become a bit more mobile, charging through the narrow corridors with more close-quarters weaponry, such as shotguns, submachine guns, and your trusty infinite-ammo pistol. But before you get too comfortable, Killzone switches things up in the next chapter, Visari Square, by pitting you against a seemingly endless flood of Helghast in a series of prolonged standoffs. One of these is a small, desperate scuffle with you and two squadmates in a small alley trying to fend off incoming Helghast for 10 or so minutes. However, that's quickly followed by a huge battle in a wide-open city square where you and dozens of newly reunited squadmates need to hold down the fort as Helghast foot soldiers, tanks, and walking piles of metal and Kevlar known as "heavies" come at you in wave after wave.

These two moments are a nice little microcosm of the way Killzone 2 keeps you guessing by sharply switching up the scale and intimacy of battles. Later chapters perform a similar trick by quickly altering the setting. The first few hours of the game will be spent running through demolished cities, but later you'll find yourself in different locales like an elaborate Visari palace and a windswept mining town that wouldn't feel entirely out of place in a Star Wars movie. Fights tend to last a while due to clever AI on the part of the Helghast soldiers. They seem to have attended the same school of cover techniques you have, because they'll be spending just as much time behind crates and walls. What makes things interesting is that their behavior seems to change as the odds of their survival are whittled down. You'll see them get brave in a group and pop up quite often, but when they're in a bad spot they'll stay put and frantically blind fire while defiling your good name.

Of course, you do have teammates alongside to lend you a helping hand at nearly every point in the game. It can be anywhere between one and several dozen at once, but the ebb and flow of battle is something you determine on your own since you're generally taking the lead and letting the others follow you. You won't need to worry about any sort of squad commands, but a bit of teamwork is required when a buddy goes down. In situations like this, you'll need to pull out your trusty medic gun and zap him back to health with a quick spark of life. It's an oddly simple mechanic, but a critical one because your buddies are expert shots who help a lot in battle. Along with constant banter, this helps to provide a feeling of belonging to a greater group despite the fact that you're taking the fight into your own hands most of the time.
Finally, with this being Killzone 2, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the graphics--or more specifically, how awesome they are. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to say Killzone 2 is the best-looking console game we've seen. The use of lighting is probably the most impressive of the game's technical feats: with so much of the game taking place in demolished urban centers with gray steel, concrete, and asphalt, those moments when you're flushed with color are extremely striking. This might include an orange street lamp, the blue glow of a faulty electrical tower, or the green haze in a sewer tunnel, but the way it all reflects off nearby objects like your gun and character models looks terrific. Add in sharp textures, great smoke and explosion effects, terrific depth of field, and an ominous sky that looks like the world might cave in at any moment and you've got a combination of technical and artistic brilliance that's hard to understate. Best of all: the framerate does a good job of keeping up, with the only noticeable hitches arriving during an autosave between checkpoints.
If you were to nitpick the presentation, most people's attention would probably fall on the audio. While the sound effects and music are both great, the voice acting could give Gears of War's Delta Squad a run for its money in terms of smoldering, manly rage. In fact, it can often be difficult to separate one gruff voice from another when your vision isn't fixed on a squadmate's face. It's not exactly an abrasive fault, but it does stick out when you consider how stellar the rest of the presentation is.
Small gripes aside, we had a thoroughly enjoyable experience with Killzone 2's single-player campaign. The combat is intense, the visual aesthetics are amazing, and the level of difficulty provides a rewarding challenge. It seems that PlayStation 3 owners will have a lot to look forward to when the game is finally released. You can expect that to happen on February 27.

Prince of Persia Review

Prince of Persia's shimmering veneer and joyous platforming will cast a spell on you.

In many modern games, you rain death upon your enemies; how refreshing, then, that your main task in Prince of Persia is to breathe life into a darkening world. That doesn't mean that the forces of evil aren't on your tail in this open-world platformer, but the most indelible moments of this enchanting journey are uplifting, rather than destructive. Similarly, the latest iteration in this long-running franchise is a rejuvenation for the series, and it's an ambitious one, offering up a new titular prince and casting certain game traditions aside in favor of player immersion. And for the most part it succeeds, eliminating illusion-breaking mechanics like game-over screens and long loading times in the process. This re-imagining comes with a few caveats, however, and if you're a longtime series fan, you'll quickly discover--and possibly resent--that Prince of Persia is, far and away, the easiest game in the series. But if you can clear your mind and let the game's magic wash over you, its easygoing joy and visual beauty will charm you into forgiving a sprinkling of flaws.

In some ways, Prince of Persia represents a return to Sands of Time's storybook vibe, which had been somewhat lost in that game's two sequels. Yet our new hero isn't exactly Prince Charming, but rather a wisecracking nomad interested only in his donkey (named Farah, in one of several nods to previous games) and the riches she apparently carries. His royal status is referenced but never fully explored, though his companion Elika is clearly a princess, and as the game progresses, you'll become much more invested in her past than the prince's. Together, they seek to imprison the evil god Ahriman, who has been inexplicably set free by Elika's own father. To do so, they must restore a series of fertile grounds to their former fecund glory, thereby banishing the inky black corruption that has enveloped the land. Storytelling isn't the game's strong suit, and the dismissive, often unlikeable prince is hardly beguiling, a poor fit for the captivating journey ahead. Thankfully, Elika exudes enough charm for the both of them, and the relationship they slowly forge lends plenty of emotional impact to the game's final moments.
This relationship enriches the very core of the experience, given that Elika is not your standard game sidekick. She isn't just a helpless companion, but an important part of a number of gameplay mechanics. As the prince, you will pull off moves familiar to franchise fans: jumping, climbing, scaling, and wallrunning among them. There are also a few new acrobatics to play with, such as the aptly named roofrun, where the prince scuttles along the roof in a vaguely simian manner. But if the moves are familiar, Elika's presence enriches and enhances them. She will jump on your back as you scale across vines, reach for your helping hand as you climb, and perform an elegant pas de deux with you when you need to pass her on a narrow beam. In some ways, this relationship recalls that of Ico and Yorda in 2001's ICO.
While in ICO Yorda was totally dependent on her companion, here Elika is far more helpful to the prince than he is to her. She is, in fact, your constant savior, because she will not, and cannot, allow you to die. Should you fall, Elika will grab you by the wrist and whisk you to safety--meaning the last checkpoint. There is a checkpoint at almost every platform, so aside from possibly having to repeat a few seconds of gameplay, there is absolutely no penalty for plummeting to your doom. You will never see the words "game over," and you won't need to save and reload before difficult sequences. Nor will you need to ever puzzle over how to make it from point A to point B: Elika can fire off a magical homing orb that will show you the precise way of getting to your destination. Combined with simple platforming controls that require a minimum of button presses, these facets make Prince of Persia one of the easiest games you'll play all year.

This ease of use makes each individual action seem relatively meaningless as you string moves together. For many, this will translate to a diminished feeling of reward; aside from a few exceptions, there is no sequence that feels remotely challenging, certainly not for players familiar with the old-school difficulties wrought by the early games in the series. Yet while the unique satisfaction of overcoming hurdles is missing, it is tempered by other kinds of rewards. The platforming is fluid, and seamlessly chaining a number of moves together is simple but visually appealing, making for some silky-smooth motion that you'll get a kick out of. Additionally, as you progress through the game and explore some of the more intricate environments, you'll find some truly impressive level design. Each area flows organically into the next, and while the overall design feels a bit more synthetic than it did in Assassin's Creed, platform placement and other architectural features don't feel overtly artificial.
The stupendous level design becomes more apparent when you begin to unlock Elika's various powers--though calling them powers is a bit of a stretch. As you unlock new explorable areas by collecting glowing orbs called light seeds, you will be able to utilize the various colored plates that dot walls and ceilings. There are four types of plates, and each kind initiates a high-flying feat. Red and blue plates are functionally the same (though visually unique), propelling you automatically toward the next plate or platform. Green plates turn you into a sort of Persian Spider-Man, causing you to quickly scale up walls and ceilings while avoiding obstacles. Finally, yellow plates initiate on-rails flight sequences that give you limited room to maneuver around obstructions, sort of like a 3D version of Nights Into Dreams, the Saturn platformer. Many of the sequences combining plate jumps and standard platforming are exhilarating, and the manner in which some of them utilize all three dimensions make the level design all the more impressive. And amazingly, the camera is rarely a liability, which is quite an achievement. Unfortunately, the flying initiated by leaping from yellow plates is a clear weakness. The constant camera movement and overwhelming visual effect used here make for a few annoying sections, and it is never clear whether you need to go left or right, up or down to avoid certain objects. Given that most of the plate-initiated bits are terrific fun, it's a shame these particular flights of fancy were so poorly crafted.
There is some combat, and while it's hardly Prince of Persia's focus, it looks mightily spectacular. You fight only a single enemy at a time, including the four main bosses, which you'll take on multiple times. Battles are on the simple side: you have four main attacks--sword, gauntlet, Elika's magic, and acrobatic vault--that you can string into various combos. Enemies can change states, making certain attacks ineffective, and there are some other occasional twists. Yet like the platforming, it is on the easy side; even if Elika is bound by corrupted tentacles or rendered unconscious, she's always there to pluck you from death's cold embrace should you miss an important quick-time button event (of which there are many). But battles are still uniquely satisfying and look fantastic. The prince throws Elika into the air with ease, stringing throws, slices, and magic attacks together as the camera zooms in and out to showcase the slashes and backflips. The stringent enemy-focused camera and odd scuttling motions of the prince feel confining but work just fine in most of these battles, though they're a bit less successful during certain boss fights that require some environmental manipulation.

Combat's not the only thing that looks spectacular. Prince of Persia is beautiful to look at, thanks to vibrant cel-shading and some sumptuous environments. Tendrils of corruption reach toward you as you navigate the cold, colorless caverns of infertile regions. The contrast between these areas and the beautifully lit vistas and thriving vegetation of healed locales is palpable, and the transformation of a fertile ground from darkness to light may remind you of similarly impressive moments in Okami. There are a few rough spots here and there, in the way of glitched animations and tiny frame rate stutters, but they barely detract from the lovely visual design. While there are some minor differences, all three versions look great and well represent the capabilities of their respective platforms. And all three feature the same lovely ambient music, which sounds more Persian than the very American-sounding prince.
Most will be able to finish Prince of Persia in around a dozen hours, though if you want to collect every scattered light seed and avoid quick travel (you can teleport from one healed ground to another instantly), you could add a few more hours to the total. But while a few unlockable skins may not seem like enough reason to return, this game is so enjoyable and delightful that you may want to return to it as you would return to a favorite fantasy novel or film. While its lack of challenge may lull fans, its ease of use will delight newcomers and draw in anyone who appreciates a touch of magic.

By Kevin VanOrd, GameSpot

Wanted: Weapons of Fate Updated Hands-On

We check out the bullet-bending action in this Grin-developed game based on the Hollywood blockbuster.

Comic book fans might have been taken aback by the cinematic reimagining of the Wanted comic series from creators Mark Millar and J.G. Jones, but there's little doubt that the movie, which starred Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, had a vision all its own. Full of sexy assassins, global conspiracies, curving bullets, and bloody, bloody kills, the film was the kind of setting and story that just begs for a video game adaptation, and the developers at Grin have been hard at work on their latest project, Wanted: Weapons of Fate. We had a chance to play the game for the first time at a press event in San Francisco this week, and it seems like the game is bringing a good deal of the film's flair to consoles.

The press event featured three brief demo levels from Weapons of Fate, two of which starred Wesley Gibson, the weasely office-slug-turned-superassassin (played by James McAvoy in the film). The third mission starred Cross, Wesley's father. As it turns out, Weapons of Fate will have both Wesley and Cross as playable characters, and the plot of the game (which picks up where the movie leaves off) will focus on the mystery of Cross' background and what happened to Wesley's mother. The first demo level we played had Cross looking to rendezvous with an associate on the well-worn streets of a French village. Standing between him and his objective are a number of bad guys. As Cross, we had to wind our way through buildings and alleyways, taking down enemies in whatever way we could. Weapons of Fate is a third-person action game that makes heavy use of both gunplay and close-quarters kills. The close-quarters kills are vicious and easy to pull off; you simply sneak up on an enemy and press the B button (circle on the PS3) when the icon appears onscreen. If you pull it off, you'll be treated to a quick and bloody animation of a brutal takedown--a knee to the face, a knife to the junk, that kind of thing.

Close-quarters combat is fun, but the real meat of Weapons of Fate is when dealing lead. Both Wesley and Cross have the ability to bend bullets around corners, hitting enemies who otherwise would be safely tucked behind cover. As cool as this ability is, it takes some getting used to. First of all, the ability to curve bullets is mediated by your adrenaline level. To pump up your adrenaline, you need to make some standard kills. Once the adrenaline icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen turns blue, you can pull off your curved shots.
The mechanics behind curving bullets take some practice. To start the process, you press and hold the right bumper (R1 on the PS3), which brings up potential targets in red (even if they're behind cover). A curved arc also appears, showing you the general trajectory the bullet will take once you fire; the goal is to move the left stick until the red target turns white, which indicates that your bullet will hit its intended target. Once the target turns white, you simply let go of the bumper, and Wesley (or Cross) will fire his weapon with the familiar sidearm whip.
While the first demo level featured some good bullet-curving action, it was the second demo that really put our lead-twisting skills to the test. Here, Wesley was caught in a small courtyard, outnumbered by a horde of bad guys. The first goal was to grab an unwitting enemy and use him as a human shield while the rest of the bad guys poured into the courtyard. Once the guy was riddled with bullets, we had to guide Wesley around the ample cover in the courtyard--the game has a cover system similar to that in the Gears of War series--spraying bullets around corners and cover to take down all of the baddies. The most challenging of the bunch were soldiers who came complete with huge riot shields. Curving bullets around the shields was effective, though it sometimes took more than one shot to finish them off. We found that getting close enough for some close quarters work was also an effective technique

While the first two demos were fun, and the bullet-curving mechanic is undeniably cool, the stop-and-pop gameplay felt a bit derivative. The third demo, by contrast, was where Weapons of Fate came alive. It might have been because of the head-to-toe black leather assassin's getup that Wesley was rocking (a sartorial nod to the Millar/Jones comic series), or it could have been because of the large amounts of butt-kicking featured in the level. In this level, Wesley was invading a warehouse full of bad guys, and the gameplay cut between animated scenes of Wesley moving through the warehouse, causing mayhem as he went, and quick interactive bullet-time events, where we were tasked with taking out one or more bad guys or hitting a specific target with a bullet to set off a chain of explosions. Though the interactive sequence lasted for only a few encounters (followed by more straightforward action), it was a great change of pace that we hope continues throughout the entirety of the game.
The game is running off the same engine that's powering another Grin game, Bionic Commando, but while BC is focused on huge open levels, the action in Weapons of Fate is more personal and claustrophobic. With all of the great set pieces from the film (we're thinking in particular of the car chases and the fantastic sequence in the train), we're curious as to how the Grin folks will push the BC engine in different directions. Here's hoping that the combat action is mixed up with some great set pieces to give Weapons of Fate the momentum it needs to excel beyond a run-of-the-mill movie port. So far, the signs are encouraging, and we'll keep our sights trained on the game in the coming months to follow its progress. Wanted: Weapons of Fate is currently scheduled for release in 2009.

By Brian Ekberg, GameSpot