Sounds of a Killzone

Audio: Creating the Atmosphere.
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Importance of game audio- Killzone uses the whole range of game audio setting the game in a more believable universe and making it a much more immersive experience than it would be without the sounds it uses. The game takes place in the future, but not so far in the future so it still uses physical guns rather than things like laser blasters and what not. Killzone is also based on war themes, and there is a certain... aura/atmosphere to war... Killzone presents both these things nearly perfectly.

Game audio formats- Killzone is exclusively for the PS2 that came out in 2004. As such, it does not face the limitations of earlier games from the 80’s and the like- no frequency modulation synthesis or module music. However, KZ still made use of beeps, occasionally, however these beeps were used in navigating menus/selecting menu buttons. Still, the PS2, according to Joris de Man, KZ’s composer, the PS2 doesn’t have much memory, so he had to make/use small sounds that still worked well. Killzone features Dolby Pro Logic II technology.
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“de Man: Dolby was very helpful to us and once we got the SDK (Software Developers Kit) we had it implemented in days. I couldn't believe the difference it made. They'd also sent us a surround setup so we could try it out straight away. A decision was made shortly after that we were going to support it all the way—not just in-game but also in the cutscenes and music mixes.
Dolby: What has been your favorite game in terms of the audio you've created?
de Man: Again, Killzone. It has really been a dream project come true. The game has a very strong visual design that is futuristic yet not sci-fi, very gritty and hard-edged. During the game I really wanted to immerse the player in sounds of a battlefield, with bullets whizzing past his or her head, screams in the distance, explosions, etc. Dolby® Pro Logic® II is perfect for delivering that. We encoded premixed ambiences which were mixed in Quad to Pro Logic II as background ambience, while the game sound effects themselves are real time, panned by the Dolby SDK. The combination of those two makes for a very immersive experience.
Dolby: Could you describe how audio is so important in Killzone?
de Man: The audio functions as aural cues for the player, so they know who is shooting at them from where, which would have been much more difficult without surround sound. Apart from that, I had the opportunity to work with two live orchestras for the soundtrack, which was amazing and very satisfying. With one I recorded the main titles (a few years earlier, which we used in the pitch for Sony) and the other for all the cutscene music earlier this year.
I'm very pleased with the way the game sounds. It features a lot of weapons with very detailed reloading animations and I spent a lot of time making them sound real and beefy. I also created "headwhizzes," which are little bullet trail sounds, which work beautifully in surround. Each time a bullet flies past the player close to his head you'll hear it whizzing past. This also serves as a signal to the player that the enemy is getting too close!”

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Sound effects- the things that basically put you ~into~ the game. They can make a world of difference in a game when used well compared to when not used well or at all. One of the main aspects of the sound effects was their use in weaponry. Every gun has its own sound- for shooting and reloading. There are also the sounds of stomping… the rushing of feet, it could be your own, or it could be an enemy’s! This would provide some warning so that you could prepare yourself to end the foe while minimizing the damage you would take.
When playing a game, its hard to know what is behind the audio other than what you hear, so I did some research on this and apparently, the biggest innovation in game audio is the stapler, according to de Man at least. I have an odd, tiny black bump on my arm. It’s been there awhile. De Man goes onto talk about the stapler more and foley:

“In a search for objects to use for foleying, I came across this office stapler that had some nice mechanical sounds. People at Guerrilla often see me wandering about the building tapping or hitting things to see if they could be useful somehow soundwise.
Anyway, the stapler sounds ended up being used for the reloading of the grenade launcher. Holland has strict weapon laws, which meant I would never get close to recording a real one.
A few game magazines got hold of that story and since have reported that all the weapon sounds in the game are made with various staplers!”

Voiceovers- There is only a handful of characters in Killzone who get dialogue, and only a few of them get any sort of real speaker-time. The dialogue consists of the four main characters, 2 human generals, and 2 Helghans, with the occasional peon getting a line or two in the cut scenes. During game play, there is also voice acting, with people on both lines throwing out one liners once in awhile. My favorite one-liner is from Hakha, who will occasionally say after a particularly cruel or gory kill, “nasty! But effective!” This would often be heard when sneaking up on someone and cutting their throat with a knife.. or some other knife related kill. Regular soldiers on both the human and helghast sides also talk it up, and the composer, de Man, revealed that “We also used an intern for helping us edit the myriad of in-game voices.” The audio department on the game was very small, essentially consisting of de Man by himself for the majority of the project, and eventually a colleague, along with that one intern.

Music- In the Dolby- Joris de Man interview about audio, there was a small bit that perfectly described and revealed the nature and use of music in KZ:

Dolby: The music in Killzone is played by a real orchestra, so you obviously put a lot of love into it. Still, in many instances of the game the music is conspicuous for its absence and the audio world is populated only by beautifully crafted soundscapes that communicate the mood of the game extremely well. What made you decide whether to use full-on music or only soundscapes in Killzone?
de Man: It was a technical decision; during the game we wanted the player to rely on aural cues of the environment, and be immersed in the battle ambiences. In order for those to be high quality we had to stream them from disc. Each level in Killzone has four different ambiences which were all mixed in Pro Logic II. However, since the game is also streaming level data at the same time this meant there was no room for music.
Instead, I decided to employ the music during the storytelling, which is the cutscenes, and the menus. In general I think it is better to not have too much music during game play anyway, as it can distract the player too much, especially if he or she needs to rely on aural cues.
At the end of the day I'd rather have people say "lovely music, wish there was more" than flip through the audio options to turn it the hell off!

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It is pretty clear that the music in KZ was designed to warn the player, pump them up and heighten the thrill. Their resources were not wasted, and besides, as an FPS, the player would eventually tune any music-music out and focus on what they were doing, being careful not to get spotted, expose themselves or do some other stupid move that could get them killed in a music beat.

Looping music and Adaptive music- For relevance to Killzone, these two areas are best explained by de Man in the segment of interview directly before this. – The game does not use much song-music, but rather focuses on aural / atmosphere music that adapts to in game conditions to tell the player what is going on and set the feel for the situation.

Game vs. Film scoring-
Once again, a segment of Dolby – de Man interview can sum up how KZ and its music/composer relate to game audio..:

“Dolby: What sort of problems have you faced when laying down tracks and mixing for games?
de Man: ~~The biggest issue with game sound is that it is a non-linear format. You can't predict exactly what is going to happen, so the game in effect mixes itself during play, and you have to be more careful with the individual sounds.~~ Our biggest problem on Killzone was memory—the PlayStation® 2 just doesn't have that much of it—so the trick is to make small sounds that still work well.
Dolby: Do you think audio is taken seriously enough in the gaming community?
de Man: These days, certainly. I think people are finally realizing that the days of "bleep bleep" are long gone and that you can have near movie-like quality audio in-game. Surround only reinforces that.
Dolby: How do you envisage audio changing and developing—do you think it will go down the track of background music and soundtracks like films, or become an integral part of game play (for example, invisible enemies only identifiable by sound)? Or both?
de Man: I think both. I think we've barely scratched the surface of what is possible with, for instance, interactive music in games. The hardware is getting better and better as well, supporting all sorts of surround formats from the get-go.
Knowing what we are working on ourselves, I think what you'll find is that a lot more processes that would normally happen off-line in a mix (reverb, effects such as flanging/chorus, voice processing) will be feasible in real time on the next-gen. platforms.
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Dolby: Where would you personally like to go from here—what sort of audio do you want to create for games?
de Man: I'm a big fan of movies and really like the production values that Hollywood productions have. That's the kind of quality I'd like to create for games, both music and soundwise—that larger-than-life sound.
Naturally, surround is a big part of that sound, and I'm looking forward to doing more in that format.”

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Some content of today’s post provided by
http://www.dolby.com/consumer/games/interview_04.html
(Interview with Joris de Man, Sound Designer for Guerrilla, the Developer of Killzone)


My laptop is still not up to speed…
I have come across this link to a trailer… for Duke Nukem. I thought it thoroughly illustrated what fail is - in all aspects, including sound, but particularly video/image.
http://kotaku.com/5026127/duke-nukem-trilogy-trailer-takes-the-cake

Gameplay and Levels.

Gameplay
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Gameplay is the choices, challenges, and consequences that players face when playing a game. A game is its gameplay, without it, it’s just a television show.

Victory conditions – how to win: In Killzone, you must kill everyone (in your way at least) that opposes you in each of the various zones(levels) This is the case for the story mode at least. In the Battles modes, there are other types of gameplay/objectives, such as killing a certain amount of foes first and capturing the enemy’s base. In the story mode, once you have beaten each of the individual levels(met the victory condition – not dying and reaching the end of the level as well) you move onto the next level until there are no more levels, at this point the main victory condition has been met (beating all levels).

Loss conditions – There is essentially only one way to lose in Killzone’s story mode, and that is to die. Taking enough damage to get killed is the only way to lose, and this generally happens when you are shot too many times, but an additional way would be by tripping a laser sensor rigged to explosives, or being blown up by other forms of explosives (grenades, rockets).

Interactivity modes – Interactivity is how the game is played in one sense Interactivity modes are who or what you play against or with. In Killzone, the player plays the story mode against the computer and no one else. However, in the battlegrounds area, the player(s) can play with another person, either locally or through the internet, on the same team or against them. You can team up with a person to play against other people or against a computer and can also be grouped with the computer fighting against the computer. So the game features both Player-to-Game and Player-to-Player modes, but lacks Player-to-Developer, at least from what I’ve seen –the game is not constantly updated and doesn’t need to be maintained as an MMORPG does. As for player-to-platform, you use the PS2 controller, to control what is on the television screen. I believe you can use a headset when doing online play to communicate with others.

Game theory – this involves types of conflicts and how players respond to these conflicts.

- Zero-sum - Killzone is predominately a zero-sum game. You compose a side, the enemy composes a side – in the end, only one will win, the other will lose. This goes for the story mode and the battlegrounds mode(with one possible …oh what’s the word.. to the rules.. exception, that’s it.

- Non zero-sum - In some of the battleground mode… modes, you can team up with another person to beat the enemy, so it is still a someone will lose someone will win situation, but you can work together to achieve this goal, as your interests don’t oppose each other’s.

Types of challenges – challenges are often linked together and are related to the game’s genre.

-Explicit – Killzone is an FPS, as such, nearly everything is immediate and intense. You run around the level and when you come across bad guys, engage in a firefight with them until one side is dead. If you survived, you move along until the next battle. Types of enemies vary from level to level and spot to spot so you’re never sure what exactly you’re going to face (unless you have already gone through a spot before).

- Implicit – some implicit challenges in Killzone would be deciding the best course of action to succeed in a level – to engage in a front-on, all-out assault or crawl through the vents picking people off from above while staying concealed… Choosing which character you want for a particular level is also an implicit challenge – sort of – each character has their own advantages and disadvantages.

-Intrinsic and Extrinsic Knowledge – As an FPS, Killzone is a pretty straightforward game that follows the lines of other FPS’s – shoot things. There is however some intrinsic knowledge that the player must pick up while playing the game, such as how certain weapons work. Many weapons have two types of firing modes (the primary and secondary), the only way to find out which does what is to use them. Then there is the case of a particular weapon.. it is not a gun, but rather some manner of laser + GPS tool that you use to select an area that’s of a fair distance away. When you “fire” this weapon, you don’t shoot anything. Within a few seconds however, missiles rain down from the sky on your target… destroying anything in range. It took me a few tries while playing the game to get the kinks and nuts and bolts of this weapon down.

The main piece of extrinsic knowledge used in this game from the outside world is – bullets, grenades, and rockets kill people. Know that and you know how to defeat your foes.

Challenges and goals –
- Advancement- beating a level in Killzone means you go onto the next level, thus advancing through the game to higher and harder levels.
- Conflict- Once again, Killzone is an FPS, combat is one of the key points to its playability. You are on one side, the Helghans are on another- you try to kill them, they try to kill you. There is also non- violent conflict in the game, namely Jan and Luger’s sexual tension + issues relating to that, and Hakha and Rico’s semi-hatred towards each other based on who the other is.
- Capture- One of the Battlegrounds modes involves taking over the enemy’s base or supplies – this is capture in its purest form – taking something while avoiding death.

Balance – balance is crucial to a game, if a game ain’t balanced, no one will want to play it.
- consistent challenges- as you progress through the game, the levels get harder; this keeps it interesting and worth playing from beginning to end.
- lack of stagnation- there is no way, at least that I’ve found, to get stuck in a level without being able to move forward. If this however does happen, its easy enough to just restart the level – they aren’t excessively long so redoing them is not that big of a deal.
- lack of trivial decisions- nothing really pointless to pick in the game—who you want to play, what weapon you’ll use of the ones available, and how you want to go through certain parts of some levels (full-blown assault or stealthy), you choose these things based on your preferences and needs.
- difficulty levels- From the options menu, there is the ability to choose the difficulty level you want to play on, so inexperienced people can succeed and have fun and hardcore players can challenge themselves with hard settings.

Symmetry – the simplest way to balance a game- giving all players the same starting conditions and abilities. In Killzone, the story is not what you would call symmetrical- its you (and possibly up to 3 of the other main characters) against an entire map filled with enemies. You start with one or two weapons and a limited amount of ammo. Good luck!
In the Battlegrounds are, the player can make these choices and set the symmetry or balance to whatever… you select how many NPC’s characters you want on your team, how many characters the computer’s side has, the difficulty of the NPC’s as well as other options such as whether or not friendly fire is on. So you can make each team perfectly balanced, give you and your team a clear advantage, or give the enemy a major advantage (you against 7 difficult-leveled NPCs with no friendly fire).

Dynamic- dynamic balance allows players to interact with the game. In Killzone, this is primarily done through restoration.
-Restoration- the game world is unbalanced and you must restore it. The majority of levels in Killzone are based in Human-controlled areas (the colony of Vetka) which are overrun with invading Helghast soldiers. Your primary task is to eliminate these invaders and restore human control.



Levels
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Levels are the environments, scenarios, and/or missions in a game.

Structure – levels structure a game into subdivisions, organize progress and enhance gameplay. Killzone is structured in a linear form, with one level leading to the next, starting with the first and ending with the last.

Goal – the goal in Killzone is to progress through the levels by eliminating any foes and reaching the end point of the level that generally ties into the next level. There aren’t a whole lot of side objectives.

Flow – You almost always have to kill the enemies that are in your way, though, I have never tried to run past them to get by. The levels are generally rather linear with the occasional shoot-off in direction possibility, but it is rather easy to figure out where you are supposed to go and how. In some spots there is more than one option for getting by an area, you can take the hallway or the vent shaft, climb a ladder or not. In the end you’ll still get to the same place.

Duration – Levels in Killzone aren’t excessively long nor are they ridiculously short. They find a good mid-ground and a player could do one in a sitting and possibly be satisfied, or do a handful without too much grief. It is also possible, if you are on the more intense side of gaming, to do all the levels in a single sitting, though I wouldn’t advise it. In the Battlegrounds modes, the player can choose the length a level will last, either timewise or points/kills. You can make a mission last 10 minutes or 30 minutes, 50 kills, 100 kills and 500 kills as well as in between.

Availability – Killzone has many levels, both in the story and for the battlegrounds. Once you have beaten a level in the story line, you can go back and redo it as much as you want whenever you want. In the battlegrounds area, you select one of several maps that the play session will be played on. If you decide you don’t like a map, you can quit it and redo the “mission” on another.

Relationship – The levels in Killzone’s story line are all linked to the level before it and after it. For example, one level takes place in a run down part of a city and you navigate through the buildings and streets until you come to a point where you finish the level and start the next, its in the same city, but a different part, that is not as rundown and this part of the city leads to a park that is part of another level. All the levels flow directly into the next. Another set is: military base, space ship, space station- each its own unique level that have a clear organization of events.

Progression – Generally levels in Killzone get harder as you advance through them, though this can also be attributed to the player – someone is good at/likes something while another is better at something else. End levels are clearly harder than starting ones, there are more foes, they have higher armor and health and do more damage to you per hit or are more accurate with their aim.

Time – There is not really time in Killzone other than it moves forward from level to level. You can take as long as you want in a level, it will have no effect on the game- so feel free to grab another drink while your character idles, nothing will change while you are gone (just don’t leave when people are shooting at you.) Levels do not go from day to night, but as levels move on time passes as a way of advancing the story line.

Space – the physical environment of the game. You are always on the ground (even if that ground is in space), so there is no flying you control and thus no problems related to flight.

Perspective and camera – It is an FPS- first person shooter – you get a first person view and nothing else, other than cut scenes which show things from many views (mainly third-person / television show-esque)

Scale – Everything in Killzone is scaled to be a size that is appropriate to what it would be in real life if you saw things through your TV screen. People are a certain size and that size fits buildings the way the person-building ratio works in real life. Weapons on the ground are about the right size one would expect them to be, however ammunition is not, it is scaled up so that is easier to see and grab, the same for health packs, though those I have not really seen in real life as there is no object you can walk over to fill up your health bar, we don’t even have health bars!

Boundaries – Boundaries in Killzone are essentially those in real life. You can not walk through walls, you can not climb up broken ladders, you can not fit into vents that you are wider than, you can not walk on water or float in the air (if you wander off the edge of a giant crane/platform you will fall, and you will likely die.) There is the occasional locked door, but these doors are never unlocked, you just have to find a different way.

Realism – The game isn’t completely realistic in environmental and character graphics, but it is pretty close. It certainly isn’t cartoonish or childish- it has real world like objects and people, so it does display the environment realistically... while not completely or as much as some newer games.

Style – Killzone is rated M. It takes place in a war-torn world; things are gritty, dirty and rundown. There’s haze/dust/fog/gunpowder/dirt floating in various areas and the overall feel is that you are in the middle of a war. An urban, semi-futuristic war, there are billboards and vending machines advertising things (they are generally torn or otherwise beaten to hell), slums, massive amounts of debris everywhere, particularly in city streets and buildings, trenches plowed in the dirt, pools of blood on the ground, and dead bodies lying around. The sensation/vibe is that this is a dark game in a place set in bad times with danger lying around every corner. In other words, it’s great.

Not in your face Interface, it leads to huzzahs.

So for this topic of interface, I feel I must do this report-like thing on Guild Wars, as it is an incredible, in-depth interface that can put anything to shame. And what the hey, I’ll even include Killzone with this as well.

Guild Wars-
The keyboard and mouse are the manual interfaces for this Game, as with the majority of PC games.
There is also a rich visual interface controlled by the manual interface. All of the things in this list below have some form of representation on the screen, from small to large boxes of menus and lists to animations and displays of text.

The buttons… default settings:
1-8, use skills (can also click the icons)
C, target closest
T, target called target
Space bar, perform action
Enter, open chat-send message
Tab- tab through targets
K, open skills panel
L, open quest log
H, open your hero panel-3tabs
I, open/close inventory
B, observe PvP matches
N, open friends list
M, open world map
P, open/close party box
U, open/close mini map
R, auto-run
J, open PvP armor creation box
G, open guild box
F, target self
; , target closest item
O, open score chart (last PvP match you were in’s statistics.)
Backspace, reply to personal message (pm, whisper)
Q, W, A, S, D – movement controls
Arrow buttons- movement controls
Z, reverse camera
X, turn around
Left mouse click, move to position/target foe/ally/item
Right mouse, control camera

Chat options: (all have different colors) Controlled in one box, generally at the bottom of the screen. You can only use one chat at once, and the one you are in is clearly represented by the system of tabs. You can also tell the box to go away- it becomes opaque and only the most recent of chat will be seen (around the last 10 seconds)
This area is also where ANet sends in game news/announcements to players, such as there being a new build and everyone should log off and restart the game client to get the latest nerf, er I mean patch, to get the latest patch. At any rate, these are the chat options:

All – public to everyone in the district or explorable instance
Guild- viewable to all guild members
Party- visible to party members
Trade- like all chat, but for trading purposes
Alliance- alliance wide chat channel
Whisper- personal 1 on 1 chat that can not be seen by others. A noise notifies you of a new pm.

In the inventory box is a small part labeled weapon sets, this lets you have 0 to 4 weapon sets show up on your screen for easy changing of weapons, either by clicking on them, or hitting F1 to F4.

Pressing the control button while hitting another key sends a message to party chat letting all know what you are doing / who you are calling.

Crtl + shift + h turns off the interface entirely
Crtl + shift + print screen takes a screen shot without the interface/HUD

F11 – options, for – General, Graphics, Sound, Interface
From the interface tab you can change almost everything. Move any HUD item to any spot on the screen, change the size, or get rid of it.
Default keys can be changed to do any other of something around 100 or so actions. Create hot buttons for more complex/ longer taking things.


The basic HUD:
Compass
Experience bar
Skill bar
Health and energy bars
Chat box
Mini map (optional)
Party box (optional)
Weapon sets (optional)
Selected object (foe, ally, item)(temporary)
Your skill warm up (temporary)
Target skill warm up (temporary)
Recent skills used against you. (temporary)
Effects on you (stances, signets, enchantments, hexes, morale boost/ death penalty)

Health gain appears in blue text
Health loss you take appears in red text
Damage you do appears in yellow text
Experience you gain appears in green text
Energy gain and energy lost appears in purple text, with a + or – symbol to differentiate

Enchantments appear as a yellow up arrow/triangle on your health bar
Hexes appear as a downwards purple arrow/triangle
Conditions generally appear as downwards gray arrow/triangles, with a few exceptions:
Deep wound causes ¼ your health bar to be grayed out, bleeding causes your health bar to turn a light red, and poison and disease cause the life bar to turn green.
Additionally, hexes that cause health degeneration will cause the life bar to turn purple/pink
All of these are crucial to know/understand when playing the game.

On the compass, enemies appear as red dots, you, and your allies appear as green dots, with your green dot a darker color than the others, and other peoples’ dots slightly darker than friendly NPC dots. There is a semi-transparent, semi-white circle that surrounds your green dot; this is your agro bubble. If a red dot gets in range of this (borders collide, or red dot(s) in the circle) they will attack you.
Foes that you target and/or damage will have their health bar appear over there head to show you where your target is and how much health it has left.



It takes a little while to get used to the interface, and some will acclimate to it much, much faster than others, but once you are at … I suppose, a near-intimate relationship with it, playing the game becomes seamless. You don’t have to think, you just do. Your mind is free to go about other things, and if you know how to position hand(s), how to watch and manage agro, and other aspects, you can play in some of the harder ~leet~ areas while watching a movie, playing with one hand, while the other grasps a sandwich recently acquired from Sub Connection. I have caught myself countless times not paying attention to the game but still owning it up. The game and I have become one, and this is because of the interface. In HCI, they say the less interface, the better, and I have played this game with the interface turned off – its slightly harder but still doable (harder because you don’t know where your health and energy are at, nor do you know where foes are in relation to your agro bubble.

The HUD was brilliantly designed, taking up little space, and the space it does off in the far corners of the screen (by default, and if that does not please you, move it wherever the hell you want or remove it completely, or just certain parts. It really is interactive and marvelous.

At the top most right most part is the standard windows program buttons – minimize, restore and close. GW can be played in a window, at whatever size, though obviously, if it gets too small, you won’t be able to see what is going on but, hey, if that’s how you want to play, you can.



Killzone:

It uses the PS2 controller as its manual interface.
The left analog stick controls movement
Clicking in the left analog stick will cause you to run faster, temporarily
Clicking the right analog stick causes your weapon to zoom (if it has the feature)
The up and down arrow keys will control the zoom of the sniper rifle (the other weapons with a zoom feature simply have one ..or two options- to zoom or not to zoom.
R1 and R2 control weapon fire
L1 will cause you to activate and then throw a grenade
L2 is the crouch key
Triangle will cause you to reload your weapon
X is the action button, used for such things as climbing ladders.
Left and right arrow keys are used to go through your weapons
O selects the weapon

One thing I do not like is that, when you pause the game, the screen just freezes. After a little bit a menu screen comes up… it should come up faster as, well, I’m not sure how to describe it, but the frozen screen thing kinda bugs me.. its like.. for a split second you don’t know if you paused it or not, and I’m a very intense game player, when something disturbs me enough to have to pause the game, I want to know its paused right then and there so I can leave. When you unpause the game, it takes a little longer than most games to get back to resumed play, so this combo can be deadly when you accidently hit the pause button and then try to unapause it instantly.

There are several options to go through and can be changed, but those seem to be more suitable for another topic, such as Gameplay, or maybe even a few other things.

Its HUD consists of your hand with the weapon you are using and stats related to that (ammo remaining, heat level, weapon crosshairs)
Grenades remaining
Health bar
Stamina bar (related to sprinting)

Both of these games have very usable interfaces, they are not cluttered and very efficient. Though, you could clutter GW’s interface up if you wanted to / needed to for some particular reason. They are consistent, in function as well as style (that also fits the game/game genre/setting, and for Guild Wars, you can make all sorts of shortcuts for many many things, while in Killzone, shortcuts aren’t entirely necessary, but you can change the controls if you so desire.

Guild Wars also has some nice features with tips, relating to things such as skills and other aspects of the game (I’m not entirely sure which aspects as I don’t use them, me being a Grand Master Guild Wars Player that I am.) You can also choose between full and concise descriptions for skills, and toggle them off/on as wanted. Concise descriptions make them a shorter read for people who know what the skills do, but just need a tiny reminder. At first I thought this feature (which was recently implemented, relative to how long I’ve had the game) was rather useless, but it means having less text on the screen and that is better.

There is no saving in Guild Wars, it is an MMORPG with servers on around the clock, if something happens, it’s happened, and the only way to undo that is for the developers to go in and change it manually, which rarely happens, but does, when jackasses decide to duplicate expensive items over and over again and get themselves banned.

In Killzone, you can pretty much save whenever your little heart desires. It also makes use of the regenerative health feature (as does GW), but unlike some of the games that have started using this, the health bar in Killzone has levels, about 3 – Your health will be silver at max health – a lot. When you take some damage, the health bar goes down, eventually turning green. More damage causes it to become yellow, and after a lot of damage it becomes red. When you’ve taken too much damage, its not there- you’re dead. The regening health tends to only work in one level, that is, if you take, lets say 20 damage, and that gets you to be at the border of the silver/green health bar, but still silver, you will get back to max health if you wait long enough. If you were to take 30 damage (the numbers are made up), that would put you in the middle of the green zone, and your health can only regen back up to the top of the green level. The same goes for each level of health. To add to this, there are health pickups on pretty much every level of the game, though they are rarer than in games with no health regen- I guess they tried to find a nice balance in Killzone, and I am happy with it.

For the most part, game play is fast and seamless with these two games, because the interface stays the **** out of your business.