Killzone2 Impressions

Today I made a trip down to my local Gamestop to reserve Killzone 2.Upon doing so I was given a voucher to download a demo of the game.Apparently that is the only way to play Killzone 2 before the game drops on Feb 26th, so I was happy to receive it.Now that I've played through the demo (5 times back to back) I can safely say that I am more excited than ever for the full retail game.
First let me just get the obvious out of the way,the graphics are insanely good.It looks like Guerrilla used a combination of camera shake,blur effects,and camera focus to acheive a graphical look unlike anything youv'e ever seen.Plus with all the things going on all around,you really get a sense of being in an epic battle.The controls feel alot like Socom to me.I know there have been alot of gaming sites talking about how the controls felt odd campared to other shooters,which makes since because Socom doesn't really feel like other shooters either.The difference between this and Socom (at least in the demo) is that Socom allows you to adjust look speed,acceleration,and dead zone while Killzone2 doesn't.The accleration feels different from other games and look speed a tad slower.But it still feels good and seems to "fit" the game well.

The controls almost feel deliberate though,because it keeps you from trying to just run out and mow down everything in site.This is where the cover system comes in.Simply walk up to a flat surface and hold down L2 and your character sticks to the wall.Pressing up,left or right while in cover (depending on where you are behind said cover) will allow you to pop out and take aim at the Helgast.The guns feel really good and firing them gives a sense of really firing a powerful weapon the same way Black did.
The enemy AI in the demo seemed to be really good.Start shooting at the Helgast and you could watch them drop down behind cover and begin blind firing over their heads.Hit them enough times while they are in cover and they will move to a safer spot.Like I said,I played through the demo 5 times and each time the encounters played out differently.

The sound is another high point for the game.I was playing on my 5.1 home theater with the volume cranked and it sounded like a warzone.You could hear the shots coming from all directions and my subwoofer almost shook the pictures off of the walls.The sound was really crisp a did a great job of furthering my immersion into the game.
The only place where I had any problems was with the preset control configurations.Out of the 6 available schemes,I could never find one that put everything exactly where I wanted it.The closest I came was using Alternate2 with "hold zoom" turned on.I also turned both the "X" and "Y" sensitivity up a notch as the look speed felt a little slow to me.The "zoom" button simply pulls your gun up to look down the sights like in Call of Duty,so I wanted it on a shoulder button.The good thing is that,while the config may not be perfect for me,it still worked just fine and most people probably won't be as picky as I am.

Overall,the demo provided a glimpse into what is sure to be one of the best games of the year,if not this generation.The first Killzone was a game that was simply too ambitious and unable to run well on it's given hardware(PS2).Killzone2 comes to PS3 with all the things that worked on PS2 while fixing the things that didn't.Sony should be proud as they finally have a first party shooter that can compete with the best of the genre.With the game hitting stores on feb 26th, i am very excited to play the full game and try out the multiplayer.These next two weeks can't go by fast enough.