Killzone had a big push at the Sony E3 booth and got a lot of attention from attendees. The environmental graphics are some of the most beautiful seen yet on the PS2, but the laggy networked gameplay didn't impress sharp shooters.
Killzone is a squad based shooter that pits futuristic soldiers in gritty warfare environments. The E3 demo was setup for online multiplay for four people. The shooters started out in various locations of a sprawling jungle. The jungle had swampy areas, lots of shrub to hide in, and mountain top locations that could be used for sniping. Everything in the environment looked great. The locations were textured with a mass of detail, the shrubs used transparencies and individual blades could be seen. The shooting however, was less than great.
Players did not have a radar. Instead each player was attached to a name that floated around the screen to display their location. The names really only got in the way of the game and didn't give an accurate picture as to where anyone was. When players headed in the direction of the opponent's name, many times it would reveal that the character was way in the distance. Turning an aiming was a bit choppy, which made it more difficult to be accurate. But the most damaging thing in multiplay was the choppy movement of the networked players. Players would move around like there was a strobe light being flashed on them, which made it hard to secure a shot. The weapons themselves had a decent firing range with the standard weapon that could double with machine gun and a grenade shot. A scope was also attached for a possible zoomed shot.
Killzone was definitely not fully optimized at E3 and only gave an indication of what could be a good shooter. The visuals are great, but the choppy aiming and network play needs to be much improved before this FPS has a shot.
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