Killzone 2 was Loading Screens game of the year 2009 and now the Amsterdam studio is back with the sequal. Announced back in may with the first look at this years E3 the new game is going to feature support for both Sony’s big things for Playstation 3 this year 3D and Move. The game starts of where Killzone 2 end with the vicious Helghast dictator Visari lying dead at the feet of Sev and Rico. With Visari dead the Helghast are in disarray , that and the fact that his parting gift a nuclear bomb wiping out most of the ISA forces you are now on your own against a ruthless Helghast war machine. The press release calls it “David vs. Goliath…if Goliath had thousands of troops and a thermonuclear arsenal.”
From the Trailers and screen shots ( you can see these on our Facebook page or our flickr account ) that have been put out by Guerilla games this promise to look every bit as beautiful as Killzone 2 and of course if you have the kit it will all be in glorious 3D. Guerilla are also promising levels 10 times bigger than those in Killzone 2 and many more environments including snow , toxic nuclear wastelands , space and even alien jungles. Every environment will require you to change your game play style! They have also added a brutal new melee system on top of the guns with a range of moves in order to best your enemy.
This new title look amazing and is promising to be another game of the year winner.
We are hoping to have the trailer for you soon!
This was one of the best games of late 2009 in my opinion. It is a SCI-FI First Person Shooter style RPG which to me sounds like an amazing combo, don’t know about you. Borderlands has a ceil-shaded look and feel and is based on the very popular unreal engine from epic, it was created by the same people that made ‘Opposing Force’ the mod for ‘Half-Life’ which saw you playing as the soldiers sent to investigate. The game takes place in the future on the planet of Pandora where legend tells of a hidden ‘vault’ full of treasure. You can choose to play as one of 4 characters , your choice here kind of determines what would be your class in a normal RPG. The options are light Melee , Sniper / Range weapons , standard all rounder and a heavy melee specialist. Each one of the characters have a special skill that can be gained early on in the game and then enhanced through earning skill points. I played through the game as the sniper characters who special skill is ‘Blood Wing’ a bird of pray that you can command to help you kill enemies from a distance. By leveling him up you also get him to give you more items when an enemy is killed or to attack multiple targets. I also better say here that apart from the first part of the game I played it in co-op with a friend on-line. The co-op aspect of the game is fantastic , having 3 options in the way that you play co-op ether connecting over the internet using the PSN , over a LAN not usual seen in playstation games or split-screen. Playing over the PSN was pretty effortless , you could ether choose to start the game in co-op where you host a game invite your friends to join you ether before or during play or you could invite a friend when you saw they where online and the game would start a co-op session for you. Though this did involve exciting then rejoining the game in co-op it wasn’t too frustrating. What was frustrating however was the fact that on some evenings for whatever reason the game would completely fail to start due to connection issues.
So you start on a bus traveling to the town of firestone on pandora. On arrival at firestone you get to choose your character from the 4 people traveling on the bus. Exiting the bus you meet clap-trap a small robot that acts as a guide and will run you through a relativly short tutorial. You also meet an outer body guide that appears to you as a vision to help guide you on your hunt for the vault. After customizing you characters name and appearance at a ‘new you station’ you can start on you adventure. Clap-trap will then guide you through using the controls, skill points, combat, quests as well as giving you the basic load down on the locals and introduce you to pandoras medic ‘Dr Ned’ you will then play what are group of static quests to advance the story and to get you use to how the game works, and unlock the car. The car is the 2nd fastest way to get around pandora and comes equipped with ether a light and heavy machine gun , or a light machine gun and a rocket launcher and can be occupied solo or in pairs. A nice feature is when you are playing multiplayer each person can have their own cars , or one person can drive and the other shoot which is very useful,
Once you start getting into the game it is very fun , the level of difficulty is such that the enemies in the current area of your quest are a fun challenge but never too hard that you are going to get frustrated and throw your controller at the TV. The side quests are interesting though can like so much of the game get a little repetitive but I do find this a feature of many RPG’s. The characters are well balanced but you can tell that the developers never really intended this game to be played solo as some characters are very specialist and lack the all round skills that you would need to play a solo adventure. For example the character I played as was a long ranged character and lacked short range skills meaning that if you were ambushed (and you frequently are ) you could quite easily end up dead on your own. The game basically consists of completing quests that can be found in a number of ways. Some quests will advance the main story and help you to find the vault, other quests will give you background information on pandora , its residents both human and non-human and some will give you nothing more than experience. There is a wide range of these human and non-humans living on pandora and for some reason they seem to want you dead so finding a good gun and upgrading your shield is a must. As with most RPG when you kill these enemies they give you a range of items these can then be used or traded. The games inventory system although a little complex to get your head around to start with especially with the special shields, gun, equiptment and character mods that you obtain does add an interesting and worthwhile aspect to play. Unlike other sci-fi RPG on a similar vain examples been ‘Mass Effect’ and ‘Fall Out’ borderlands does draw you so that you want to complete the quest , side quests and find out the secret of the vault. This is where I personally felt most let down, the ending to the story was shocking and at the same time very disappointing and made it feel like the hours that you had invested in the game had somehow been misspend. Saying that the game does make it feel worthwhile as you play and is very enjoyable adventure. I think that if you are a fan of RPG’s and of Shooters then Borderlands is definitely worth a play. I don’t think however that it has much replayablity , after going through it once I have not had the urge to go back to pandora this may change in time and I am playing to get all the huge amount of DLC that has come out for it.
Information on Screenshots
As you can imagine I listen to a lot of gaming podcasts and read a fair amount of gaming articles. What I find surprising is how many people seem to be down on the Playstation 3 and PSP. I own all the consoles and so have played all the current generation consoles and by far my favourite are the Playstation family.
Starting with the PS3 v the XBOX if money isn’t an object (which I understand it can be with the Playstation 3) why would anyone choose to buy an XBOX 360. The Xbox has a lot of weaknesses compared to its Sony competitor. The most annoying thing I have with the 360 is the shear amount of noise the thing makes I find that I have to turn the volume up on the TV just to hear the game. The majority of the noise is from the units DVD drive, there is no way that you could watch a DVD on it, you wouldn’t hear a thing. This brings me to the actual technology in the two machines. The XBOX is only equipped with a standard DVD drive where as the Sony has a blue ray player not only will this allow you to watch amazing high definition movies, you can play high definition larger games without changing the disc, you machine will be future proof because Sony have engineered it so a lot of updates can be done v firmware and it justifies the slightly larger price tag of the Playstation 3 because taking the cost of a console ( such as the XBOX ) combined with the cost of a blu-ray player is far more than the cost of the Playstation unit on its own. The Playstation has better processing technology as well as a better graphic processor as the Playstation was designed to be a games machine , The XBOX is nothing more than a PC that has had a games console OS on it. This makes games that take full advantage of the Playstation raw power look and play beautiful a good example of this is the amazing Final Fantasy XIII that came out earlier this year ( March 2010) which is beautiful it also only comes on one disc. The next advantage in my mind though I can understand that this is more of a preference is the controller. I personally find the Playstation’s controller is comfortable to hold, with the buttons and controls in a nice configuration, It is also lighter than the XBOX beast of a controller. I really don’t think that the game catalogues on the two consoles make a large enough difference to pick one over the other both of them have amazing catalogues that are improving all the time. With the release of Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2 coming to the Playstation 3 last year and a relatively poor outing from XBOX I personally think that the Playstation 3 is begin to pull ahead on this front as well. If all of that is not enough though the Playstation wins in the looks department the console looks beautiful either the old shiny one (that I have) or the new slim really standout in a good way under you TV. Whereas the XBOX? Really? It is PC gray with imitation chrome. At the end of the day I think the best solution is to be like me and own both but don’t diss the PS3 it is a far superior console to the Xbox 360 and with move coming soon and some exciting titles coming to the platform in 2010 I think it’s a great time to own the Playstation 3.
Published: August 13, 2010
Tags: First Thoughts, kill zone, killzone, killzone 3, One 2 Watch, Playstation, Playstation 3, upcomming