14 DAY TRIAL // Guerrilla Games has once again talked about its upcoming Killzone 1 HD, a remake of the classic Killzone that came out back in 2005 for the PlayStation 2, and revealed that the power of the PS3 allows for a much more improved experience.
Killzone 1 impressed quite a lot of PS2 owners with its gritty first-person shooter action and on the PlayStation 3 it was followed by two impressive sequels.
Now, in order to give PS3 owners a chance to experience the game that started the franchise, a special high-definition remake is going to appear later this year onto the new home console.
We have already heard developer Guerrilla Games say Killzone HD is how the game was meant to be played and now the studio has revealed just how the remake is making full use of the PlayStation 3’s extra power.
“Where possible, the Killzone assets we retrieved have been resampled or recreated at a higher resolution,” said Frank Compagner, senior programmer. “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. Similarly, the menus and HUD-elements have all been upscaled and reworked to look good in 720p.”
The graphics are also much smoother, according to Guerrilla’s Technical Director, Michiel van der Leeuw, as the PS3 can allow for extra visual effects.
“A lot of the improvements to the game have been facilitated by switching to the more powerful PlayStation 3 hardware. 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 – which, by the way, looks really sharp on a lower-polygon title like Killzone.”
The controls have also been tweaked, with the help of Killzone 2 and 3 Game Director Mathijs de Jonge.
The difference between PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 controller sensitivity meant that the controls required tweaking anyway, so Mathijs used the opportunity to change them to something more familiar to players of Killzone 2 and 3,” van der Leeuw added.
Killzone 1 HD is out on October 24 for the PlayStation 3 via the PSN.