KZ3 preview...

I would definitely do a preview. And you should submit it at Gameroni.

Just kidding. Seriously, though I'd love to see a preview of this. You obviously have the history to be able to accomplish it. I got rid of my copy of KZ2 (still went for 40 six months after release!) once they started all the patching nonsense.

If you want to write a preview to be posted here at HG, I'd support that. Honest opinions backed by evidence is the only requirement -- Sony put the beta out there themselves for feedback, so there's no reason to hold back a well-supported impression. It's up to you, really. If you do write one, HG mail it to me and then I'll throw it out in front of other staff members for comments, editing, etc etc blah blah.

//Zig

Serious question: Did anyone ever care about Killzone? I only played the second one and it was okay (I guess), but I don't get the sense that anyone loved it so much that they're totally hyped for the third one.

..no, not since the patching started. :/

But... ah.. what was interesting about it - apart from the way the controls worked, before they borked it, and so on... - was the rendering techniques, particle physics and the animation. *shrug* There was a link between the gameplay and the first person view that you hadn't seen before in KZ2, and it did something unique with the graphics. And no, before you start, it's not just grey and brown.

If you want a small demo of how good this thing actually looks, you can download a 40mb file off the psn called "behind the bullet". This is the real-time rendered segment they made a TV spot trailer of (and then sent it for two days on some obscure channel in the US I think). And then run this in different speeds and angles, and so on. This is the actual engine, and it's how the game looks in motion - apart from a few high resolution assets, such as Neville's eye and the reflection of the Hig power-suit in the pool halfway through. They've also slowed down the particle physics spread a little, to make it look good enough in slow motion. But other than that, this is how the game actually looks.

But yeah, you're right. I don't keep up with the buzz, but yes - obviously very, very few people really have any sort of expectation for KZ3 right now, thanks to how the series has been made into the ultimate console hardcore shooter.. And they've basically said goodbye to anyone who doesn't s....

...*cough*cough*

They've gathered a very select group of fans, is what I'm saying. A group of fans that don't really care about the game, more than the attention from Sony and GG..

Btw, thanks, Zig - that's great. Let's do that, and you can edit out the worst of the swearing and the gnashing of teeth, and so on..

I never actually played KZ2's multiplayer. Its campaign was actually quite well-made as far as these things go, but the controls were what held it back from greatness, in my mind. Pretty terrible.

The multiplayer used to be quite fun. It was so insanely fast paced that anyone could go in, get a hundred kills, and feel quite accomplished. If you were actually good at the game, you might even be able to help your team win.

..you also had those 10 vs. 10 games where everyone worked their ways down the highway, covering areas as they moved down, things like that.

Had many really, really good games like that. Even on the tiny maps, there were these incredibly intense moments where you would, say, blind-fire to clear some space to move up. Have a friend suppressing the enemy, and then giving you enough space to crawl out and shoot from a better angle. It really was incredibly good - nothing like it.

And then... by "popular demand".. they increased the running speed, the stamina, decreased the recoil, made the "instability" visual only, made the spread almost non-existent.. made the spread mechanical around the crosshairs, instead of dependent on your momentum, things like that.. aimed mode got some added random spread as well.. - and we got the run&gun stuff that is there now. With the laughable detached gun-animation that fires curved bullets when you strafe.. lol.. you know..

The majority are idiots, though. I remember people begging Valve to adjust Left 4 Dead to make it better for death matches and run and gun tactics. Thankfully Valve gave them the finger and released TFC2 patches instead.

..mm. I mean.. who are these people, anyway? I've been trolling the official forums because I ended up having way, way too much spare time for a period. It's not something I'm proud of - that I have too much spare time. But I kind of keep posting, just to have someone eventually grow tired of it all and say something like: "ok, this is the internet, good grief, let's just forget about the whole thing". And then I can stop.

But that doesn't happen. Instead, we're genuinely having these conversations about what we think "people" want in a shooter game.

It's like when we played the MAG beta - like a lot of people, I was thrilled to be in it, and maybe have a small part in making the game launch reasonably well without any horrible faults. Felt great to be able to point out the annoying clipping errors on the back of a corner on the far end of the map before launch, rather than walk in a huge arc around it every time later... But beyond the bugs like that - I didn't have anything I thought they should take on board. Kept saying that every time I made some sort of suggestion. And that's the way most thought, rather than launch into endless tirades on the net about what was wrong with the game, and how it should be made...

I mean, almost no one of the people who played - even the ones who played 10 hours a day for a while - actually went the extra mile and signed up on the forums to sound off.

Instead, we kind of just thought the game played just fine, and that when the bugs were gone, the game would launch, and that would be that.

No such luck, unfortunately. On the forums, turns out they really argued about whether the concept was possible to sell - and thought it didn't, because so few people were positive.. Had one in the beta despair over it - he said: "the people just want to play the game instead of going on the forums!". lol.. I mean, that's negative feedback for the concept, isn't it.. Spellbinding people to download a 2GB update every week for almost three months..

Of course... the Sony folks know that - that the amount of people actually posting on the forums are perhaps 2% of all the people who play. In the kz3 beta forum now, for example, a thread will have perhaps 20 unique views before it's off the first page. Only way to interpret that is that we have the same people talking all the time. And even less people watching the threads.

Still - when you read what they write, you can easily think that "everyone" agrees.. :) ..and.. that's how that works..

IT's actually a difficult concept to wrap the mind around, because the voice of so many is actually expressed incorrectly through the voices of few and then listened to by many until it is assumed it is the actual voice of many... gah...

You got it in one, though..

Someone at the official forums berated me over having an opinion one time. He said: "remember that the majority always is right".

Presumably that meant I should keep my thoughts to myself, if I didn't know already that it was what "everyone" felt should be the truth.

The majority is often wrong. After all, about 7% of the population are brains, and 93% of the population are feet, spleens, thigh muscles, etc. All parts are necessary for society to function, but the belief that the "majority" is capable of forming a well-supported opinion is incorrect.

That's why bottom-dwellers like to pretend opinions can't be wrong.

//Zig

Yeah, he's confusing "the majority always get their way" with "the majority is always right."

..Ok. So the preview is done now. Zig edited it. I like the edit.

Anyone have any suggestions about what I should do with it..? :)

That's a good question. I thought we still had "preview" functions here, but it looks like that is gone. I was going to ask Venter about that...

If it works for you, I could post it under the "news" category (but still call it a preview) and credit it to you.

//Zig

Sounds good to me.

Posted -- let me know if you spot any issues. We'll feature it in the focus window sometime this week, too, for more exposure.

//Zig

:) yay. lol

Thanks a lot.