Killzone HD tweaked to be 'more familiar' to players of Killzone 2 and 3

Some HD remasters have been quite lazy, simply taking old code and pumping it out in 720p. Guerrilla Games is putting a bit more effort into the upcoming release of Killzone HD, however.

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Some HD remasters have been quite lazy, simply taking old code and pumping it out in 720p. Guerrilla Games is putting a bit more effort into the upcoming release of Killzone HD, however. Not only is the game getting a bump in resolution, but there are quite a number of tweaks being added in an effort to make the game better.

For example, "the team even solved a few bugs we hadn't discovered when the original Killzone went to gold master," technical director Michiel van der Leeuw revealed. The game's release on PS2 meant that post-release patching simply wasn't possible.

"Where possible, the Killzone assets we retrieved have been resampled or recreated at a higher resolution," senior programmer Frank Compagner told the PlayStation.Blog. "Textures, for instance, were originally designed at twice the required size and then downscaled to fit into PlayStation 2 memory. For PlayStation 3 that's no longer a concern, so the game uses the full-sized textures."

Not only are the textures better, but additional tricks should make the game a bit more high-definitiony. "The frame rate is smoother, the shaders are of a better quality, the LOD settings have been tweaked to nearly always show the highest level of detail, and the engine now applies MSAA filtering," van der Leeuw added.

Because the PS2 and PS3 have different controller sensitivity, the controls needed to be tweaked. Guerrilla took advantage of this necessity by changing the controls "to something more familiar to players of Killzone 2 and 3." That doesn't mean you'll be able to jump in the game, however. "No, something like that would require extensive changes to the levels, to prevent players from climbing out of the geometry," Compagner noted.

Killzone HD will be available as part of the Killzone Trilogy, or as a standalone release on PlayStation Network. Both versions will be available on October 24th.

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    October 5, 2012 6:45 AM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Killzone HD tweaked to be 'more familiar' to players of Killzone 2 and 3.

    Some HD remasters have been quite lazy, simply taking old code and pumping it out in 720p. Guerrilla Games is putting a bit more effort into the upcoming release of Killzone HD, however.

    • reply
      October 5, 2012 7:33 AM

      Looks great, can't wait. All I want to know is will this game have multiplayer at all?

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        October 5, 2012 8:06 AM

        Yes, but offline only.

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          October 5, 2012 8:10 AM

          As in, LAN multiplayer? The original game did not even have this.

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            October 5, 2012 8:17 AM

            [deleted]

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            October 5, 2012 8:23 AM

            are consoles even capable of lan?

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              October 5, 2012 8:33 AM

              The original Playstation had a system link cable that could connect two systems. It had been prototyped with more, but was reduced to two by time of mass production. The beta of Destruction Derby could link 8 systems.

              I remember Bushido Blade had a first person vs mode that could only be used via system link.

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              October 5, 2012 10:48 AM

              Absolutely. The PS2 had an ethernet jack on its network adapter in addition to the modem, and had a modified FireWire connection named "iLink" for early network games.. Nearly ever original XBox game which had an XBox Live capacity also had a LAN capacity for local games. The Dreamcast used a dialup modem but later had an ethernet adapter, the only thing stopping it from being used for LAN play was time, little was developed for it so the demand for LAN gaming never materialized.

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              October 7, 2012 8:47 PM

              [deleted]

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      October 5, 2012 7:38 AM

      wonder how much it woudl be. I really did like KZ2

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      October 5, 2012 8:48 AM

      am I the only one that liked KZ1 more than the sequels?
      I mean the sequels do have some awesome graphics, but dumbed down
      the weapons compared to part 1.

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        October 5, 2012 8:55 AM

        I liked it better too, but it's been so long I can't say for sure. At the time I think it would've been a much better game if it was on the x-box because I think the PS2 really held it back, but now that it's on PS3, I'll probably pick it up and find out.

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        October 5, 2012 9:41 AM

        I never even played the first Killzone.

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        October 5, 2012 10:12 AM

        Killzone is a much more interesting (if very flawed) game than the sequels.

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