Killzone 2 Hands On

Opening with a kind of futuristic, airborne, Saving Private Ryan-style beach landing, my first hands-on foray with Killzone 2 didn't last much longer than that. Them Helghast are good shots! Dismounting our crash-landed transport, me and my buddies found a trio of the black-and-oranges around the first corner, and I just stood there like a Muppet as they showed me that he who hesitates, in the immortal words of Murray Mexted, is lost.

Second time out, I managed to achieve cover so I could check out the lay of the land, and found it, despite being on Helghan this time around, to be horribly beautiful. The graphics in Killzone 2, much hyped, are spectacular. The renderings are flawless, the light, dust and debris effects hyper-realistic and the looping blood from your vanquished foes has an R-rated sheen to it. The game plays like so many other shooters, so where it makes is impact is in details. Razor sharp AI, necessary ammo conservation, smart use of terrain and a great array of weapons allow should allow this game to hold its own come release time. That will be late February, barring delay

I had a lot of fun with the hide-peek ability, testing out the different kinds of landscape features that can be used as cover. The Helghast aren't shy about hiding, and neither can you be, because the action doesn't let up and walking around like you're invincible sure shows you... you're not. Even on the 'trooper' level, the game is a challenge (and the preview copy we have allows us to play only in this mode, so at this stage nothing can be said for the others). Using the baseline as a guide, 'recruit' will probably be too easy for those of you who are hardened shoot-em-up fans, and beyond 'trooper' there'll be a couple of modes that will make you sweat.

The story in Killzone 2 is that you and your unit have decided to invade Helghan, only to find that the masked ones are rather harder to best in their own world. The inhospitable landscape conspires against you, and the natives use it to their advantage. Up against it as Sgt. Tomas Sevchenko, your main task is to capture the Helghast leader. But what kind of game would it be if that was easy, folks?

The banter between your crew, and small additions like helping them up ledges - or they, you - add a certain level of emotional investment. In an abandoned warehouse where Sev and his mates stumble upon a clutch of the Helghast who've been stalking them, you're expected to keep right on top of your team, making sure your collective firepower is enough to send the enemy packing. At one point, when I was pinned by one shooter, with another sneaking in to flank me, I went for the option of hiding behind a door and waiting. With my boy out in the thick of it, getting rained on by the Helghast, I soon heard him pleading with me to get into the fight. It wasn't a good feeling. And by the time I made my move, he was down.

The game is heavily focused on the intense nature of a firefight. After each objective is complete, you'll get only a few seconds of relative quiet before you meet the next set of bad guys head on. The air is constantly full of loose rounds, flying soil and pieces of buildings, and bright tracer will hold you and your squad in place every time you move into a new checkpoint. The high rating on this one is clearly well placed - quite aside from the profanity, blood and guts, there's the realistic and often terrifying nature of war to be taken into account.

In a year that's seen a lot of great titles emerge for the PS3, some exclusive, (Resistance 2) and some not (Mirror's Edge), our bulky black friend hasn't had the best time of it. Getting beaten out in the sales stakes pretty much world over, it's going to need to do something pretty special to make that ground up in 2009. Knocking a few hundy off the price might not be a bad idea, but in the mean time, producing high-production value, hotly-anticipated games will have to do. Killzone 2 will be one to watch out for, and despite its initial difficulty, I anticipate running through the preview code a few more times between now and Feb. Plenty of gore, plenty of action and - oh, oh, those graphics!