Straight from the Gorilla's mouth: there is a new Killzone 2 trailer hitting the PlayStation 3 network at 3PM PST today. The announcement came shortly after a preview of a real-time demonstration of the game running on developer hardware, a video that we will all be surely discussing in great detail as soon as the embargo lifts and it is available for all to see. The bad news: we did not see multiplayer in action. It looked prettier than Halo 3 so far though. I'll say that.
On a personal note, I had the pleasure of joining Sony tonight in their Killzone 2 presentation and am stewing on what I just saw. My first impressions are probably exactly what you'd expect to happen: the game looks good and it is a close approximation to the cinematic prerendered video that made us all drop our pants in 2005 ... but not quite as breathtaking. However, the famous scene with the sky marines flying in and reacting bluntly to the situation on the ground was recreated quite faithfully and played for us in slow motion and from a variety of angles. Other highlights included highly destructible environments and the way enemies reach to each bullet you put into them. I saw a miniboss with a heavy machine gun, electrical weapons, an interesting "blackout effect" where the screen goes black and white and in slow motion under times of heavy trauma. These are all things you will all more than likely see for yourselves in a few hours, so I will not ruin the entire sequence.
As I sat here trying to decide how well they did and say something completely fair, it just dawned on me that it could best be summarized by what they DIDN"T show. They didn't offer a side-by-side view of the original concept video. I'm sure the gaming community will scramble to do that amongst ourselves in a few hours, so we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. That was a tough check that they're real-time demo couldn't cash, but I did leave with an optimistic smile. Maybe on the PS4.