New Killzone 2 patch to arrive today

A new patch for Killzone 2 is due to be released via PlayStation Network this morning.

According to lead multiplayer designer Eric Boltjes, it'll now be much easier to find and play with friends. You can automatically join a friend's faction and squad, even if faction balancing is on. Factions and squads are now persistent over multiple games.

All the badges in Skirmish Mode have been unlocked. "Considering that the game has been out for a while, and that many players have already reached the rank of General, we believe this is a nice way for players with lower-bandwidth network connections to experience the full range of weapons and abilities available in the Warzone," said Boltjes.

There's a new 'High Precision' option that makes the analog sticks more responsive to small movements. "It’s not a radical overhaul of the control system, so the layout and the ‘weight’ of the controls remain the same," apparently. And you can always just stick to the regular options.

You'll now be able to switch factions manually if they're unbalanced - so if there are 13 players on one side and 11 from the other, a player can swap to make it 12 versus 12. Players from smaller teams can't join bigger ones, though. You'll keep your points when you switch.

If you spawn somewhere other than base camp you'll no longer have temporary invulnerability. "This will hopefully give opposing players already at this location a fair chance," explained Boltjes.

And finally, there have been some changes to the Badge abilities. "The Assault Badge, for instance, was deemed too powerful by many players - so we tweaked down its Armor ability from 100 hit points to 50 hit points.

"The Tactician Badge’s secondary ability has also been tweaked to make the Sentry Bot more useful. It can aim more accurately now, and its health is a little higher as well. To make it even more useful, we've reduced the way automated turrets target them, so they’re not shot down as fast."

We're told to expect more tweaks in the future. In the meantime, remind yourself why Killzone 2 is worth a big fat 9/10 by reading our review.