You're reading a Games Convention 2008 preview, which we've broken into three sections to make it easy to sift through during this week of convention madness. Check out GAMESCON.1UP.COM for all (meaning words, screens, and videos) of our coverage from the show.

What's the game about? By now, you should be nicely familiar with Sony's long awaited first-person shooter for the PS3. It's been the highlight of several of the company's E3 press conferences, and it's been steadily gaining hype as we've seen its cinematic visuals nearing the experience Guerrilla set out to achieve in the incredible target video released early at E3 2005.

What's new for Games Convention? At E3 last month, Sony gave a rundown of all the multiplayer options that Killzone 2 will support -- a pretty darn substantial offering. At Games Convention in Leipzig, Sony allowed us to actually get our hands on the multiplayer game. Sony also confirmed A.I. bot support, which allows you to include bots in multiplayer games when there aren't enough human players in a match -- according to Sony, they'll mimic human behavior so well that it'll be hard to realize the difference. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see them in action to judge this for ourselves.

What's our take? Up until now, I'd viewed Killzone 2 primarily as a single-player experience -- it's always just struck me as a very cinematic FPS, emphasizing story and staged events. Having played it for a good while at Leipzig, though, I'm convinced the multiplayer is getting just as much attention from the developers -- and Killzone 2's multiplayer should be able to hang with the best of them.

Killzone 2 offers eight different maps to choose from (more will be available for download later), with some better suited for massive 32-player skirmishes, while others are designed for just a handful of players. Before entering battle, you choose your character's badges, which essentially dictate how you want to play by offering you different abilities. For example, you could choose a medic badge, which has a health pack and allows you to revive other players, or you could choose an engineer badge that lets you repair things and use sentry turrets. Since you can choose two badges and combine them, you could then create, for example, a medic engineer who can revive people and repair things. The neat thing about the badges is that you can switch these on the fly before respawning. And speaking of respawning, you can see real-time video feeds of what's going on in each spot, so you don't accidentally end up spawning into the middle of a firefight. Also cool is the ability to respawn wherever the team's leader is.

Killzone 2 offers all sorts of map customizations, such as choosing your mission types (Assassination, where you hunt down an enemy soldier chosen at random; Search & Destroy, where you have to trigger explosives; Body Count, where it's all about how many kills you pull off, to name three) and weapons. We got to play rounds on both small and large maps, plus modes like Assassination. I'm happy to report that it was fantastic -- multiplayer felt great and was tons of fun. The available weapons were nicely varied and all felt substantial, the map designs were cool (with a good mix of open and confined areas, staircases, and windows), and there was a fair amount of strategy, such as placing sentry guns in key locations. I had so much fun playing that it was hard to pull me away to let others check it out.

The only concern I have at this point is the occasional slowdown when the action got a bit too intense. It wasn't bad at all -- it didn't affect the gameplay -- but it was certainly noticeable at times. Here's hoping this is something Guerrilla can polish up before the game hits, though it may just be an irreparable side effect of just how much detail the game's pushing onscreen (an all-out firefight in Killzone 2 multiplayer really is a sight to behold). Still, with the multiplayer gameplay already so good, and with all of the other multiplayer goodies Guerrilla's supplying -- from clan support to online leaderboards -- I'm convinced Killzone 2 is going to keep playing long after the single-player campaign's complete.

I played Killzone 2 a LOT at the GC. Totally awesome! Awesome!!

The level we played was pretty vast and, despite playing against Guerilla Games employees in Amsterdam, lag was non-existent. The graphics are indistinguishable from the single player gameplay and the motion blur and (incredibly) pretty explosions are ever-present. We've seen this game a few times now and we're still amazed by how good it looks whenever we get a chance to play. According to our copilot, Guerilla Games' Simon Larouche, the only limitation they have to take into account for multiplayer is destructibility. Physics objects such as locker doors will still exist in multiplayer, but fully destructible walls will not.

Ploid wrote:"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

TF, and FFXI, Winback, and Doom, and pong. I'm glad they did it though. EA and Valve won't update crap for orange box on the ps3.

Edit:
"Secondary badge ability: Tags all on-screen enemy players with a hidden marker, which broadcasts their coordinates to team mates."

And MGS4 (SOP).

Edit2: Darnit I'm watching CoD4 run in the background as I'm away from the console, this game looks perdy. Trying to be like Vedder and keep CoD running 24/7.