Although CES isn’t known as a “gaming conference” both Sony and Microsoft had impressive  booths dedicated to exclusive titles coming out for the Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2009. One of the big daddy exclusives that will be gracing our presence in February 2009 is, of course, Killzone 2 and I spent about an hour on the first two levels and I’ll tell you all about it, after the jump.

My absolute first impression of Killzone 2 is that I thought that it could be the best looking video game ever made.  Period.  The game is strikingly good looking. From character models to facial animation, everything is top notch, which is important as the graphical prowess goes along way toward dressing up an otherwise by the book shooting experience.

I really don’t mean “by the book” in a derogatory way.  Most shooters are all the same, with different color paint and a different “hook” like a cover system or crazy weapons, etc. Killzone 2′s hook, if it has a hook, is just how darned impressive the game looks.  The visceral way you move about the environment, with every detail dripping with extra care, from your reload animation to descending ladders, nothing has been left out.  It’s these details that give you a sense of presence in the game that draws you in and keeps you playing and wanting more.

As far as the gameplay itself, the default controls leave a lot to be desired.  As has become standard on exclusive shooters on the PS3, the default “fire” button is frustratingly set to R1, with R2 for grenades.  Even more awkward is that the L2 button is mapped to their cover system, a la Gears of War, but that isn’t the frustrating part.  The frustrating part is that when you “pop” up to fire on an enemy, you then have to click the left stick to zoom, making things just a tad more complicated in an intense firefight, which is basically all the time in the game. The options menu did not offer a more “Call of Duty 4″ type control system, so I made due.

As far as the numerous complaints about the horizontal and vertical sensitivity that I have read, I did experience, however, that was easily rectified by dialing down the sensitivity in the  options menu.  Problem solved.

More gameplay and final word on the next page.

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