Play felt a bit flattened by the initial Killzone 2 showing at E3 2007, and it took the explosive trailer of the Sony conference to set us right with the game. Now, as we recover from the semidisappointment that was Leipzig 2007, we’re still seeing Killzone 2 as the spoilt child of the PS3; overhyped and loved without justification. With the first being as flat-chested as it was, why should we gather around the bosom of Killzone 2 with such hungry eyes?

Well, it is pretty, isn’t it? For most gamers, this is all they have to go on when a game is in its pre-release stage, and we’re in a similarly castrated position with Killzone 2. The gameplay looks to have a lot of tried-and-tested features that we’ve seen before, so we’re still a little bit anxious to see how Killzone 2 will set itself apart from other FPS games.

There’s the cover system, which Guerrilla is touting as an ‘exciting’ new feature. One question, though: has it played Rainbow Six Vegas? In that game, we saw exactly the same type of cover and fire, which already outdates the kind of cover tactics that Killzone 2 values so much. It still looks a lot more exciting and upscale than Rainbow Six Vegas, but none of this is new enough. This needs to be a benchmark for what FPS games can achieve on the PS3, but the Nectar aspect of Haze sounds more interesting than anything that a mere cover system will offer.

Unfortunately, the other new features are equally sparse. The lack of an HUD is something we’re quite pleased with, though. Although the absence of a health bar doesn’t make the game any more realistic (people usually die when they’ve been shot ten times in the chest), it does make it more immersive when you’re not forced to glance away from the action in a heated firefight. Combined with the near-complete nature of the destructible environments (see Building Ruination boxout), the game’s ability to immerse you becomes that extra bit sharper. If this feature is universal in the final product (ie, it’ll allow you to damage every part of the environment), then Killzone 2 could at least be a trailblazer with one facet of its overall experience.

Killzone 2 isn’t all a rehash, thankfully. A new enemy was shown at Leipzig, wearing heavy armour and wielding a chain gun, which was a departure from the usual set of Helghast cannon fodder. This particular enemy had a cunning brutality to his approach, murdering a gaggle of your troops before you can actually shoot him yourself. Once again the animation was superb, and his towering height and inhuman look really highlighted the intense design of Killzone 2. We weren’t completely reversed by this one enemy, but it does give you a bit of hope for similar design quirks in the final product.

After all, the set pieces and unpredictability made the original Killzone what it was. Guerrilla could create semi-competent war scenarios, certainly, but everything we’ve seen since then suggests that the PS3 is the technology needed for the on-rails feel of these elaborate set pieces. Still, couldn’t the developer have shown us something a little more innovative at Leipzig? All we have to go on is a middling mini-boss, a borrowed cover system that Guerrilla is over-keen on and a seemingly linear level design, which can be damaged with a bit of firepower. It’s all been seen before. Granted, we’re big fans of the huge scale of Killzone 2, but we’re holding back our better praise until we see something new.